Grrrrr, but it’s impossible. One thing I don’t need on top of all my work stress is feeling guilty for contributing to your work stress because I sent you an email at the wrong time. These rules about when the sending of emails is forbidden are well intended but, I have concluded, counter productive.

Mea culpa – I have been inconsistent both in my views on these things, and in my application of my own self-set rules and those notionally imposed upon us. No doubt I will continue to be so. I am at least consistent in my inconsistency.

[Post-script – I wrote this post a coupla weeks ago. I have indeed continued to be consistently inconsistent, and have been happily sending emails all weekend because, well, no I’m not going to pretend I somehow managed to read that brief or do that short notice task in the working week when that is OBVIOUSLY not possible. Pretending I have some magical ability to be at court all the normal working hours AND absorb new briefs simultaneously or whilst I sleep is another sort of dysfunction masquerading as good manners or pro-wellbeing behaviour].

I said notionally, because these rules are largely ignored [post-script, last week was a blur of late night emails in the run up to an appeal, we all gave up apologising in the end], so any potential they might have to change culture is lost. But I try hard to be a part of that culture change and thus I try hard to follow the guidance : no late documents, no emails after 6pm.

Nothing in this post is any sort of manifesto for solving these issues. All this post amounts to is an expression of chronic malaise, and of weariness at never being able to get it right. ‘It’ being work-life balance (on a macro level), and the timing of emails (on a micro-level).

Truth be told, attacking the wellbeing crisis by attempting to regulate our email hygiene is like rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic. It doesn’t reduce our workload or the numbers of emails that require to be sent. But it does add to our guilt levels.

Sometimes, in spite of all my planning and good diary and time management I cannot finalise my prep or document before close of business. Sometimes I have to work on a weekend. (Who am I kidding – not sometimes – often). There are myriad reasons why, mostly outwith my control.

Should I send my document or query as soon as I am able, or hold off because of a diktat until the next morning, when the recipient will have less time to consider and respond to it? I have been trying to remember to schedule emails for first thing the next morning or, on a weekend for first thing on a Monday – thereby keeping to the rules, whilst also avoiding the risk I will forget to send the email if I leave it, and thus managing my own anxiety. But sometimes I forget. And sometimes I calculate its actually necessary or better for the recipient to send it now.

The truth is my opponent is probably in the same boat as me. They may prefer to work in the evening when the kids are in bed and may have valued the opportunity to see my document and have time to sleep on it. In being ‘helpful’ by withholding my document I am robbing them of that opportunity.

‘Yes’ (says the devil on my other shoulder), ‘but in sending it you are putting pressure on them to read the email at an anti-social time’. You know what? I think I’ve actually reached the view that I am not responsible for someone else’s working practices. Nobody can change this but each individual. All my emails are sent with a message that explicitly says there is no expectation my message will be read or responded to out of hours. And I think I prefer sometimes to give people a choice. They are grown ups after all. Dysfunctional grownups, I’ll grant you. We all slip into email exchanges late at night which sometimes could really wait, but…

I have become really fed up of late at the gnawing guilt this change in email culture inadvertently creates when I hit send late at night having forgotten to put a delayed send on – what is this pretence? I find myself spending time wording my email sent on a Sunday night to look as if it was written on Monday, or explaining that it was prepared on a Sunday but queued, just in case it is superseded by someone else’s queued email that arrives first. These are just games designed to make someone feel better, but that someone is not me. Maybe the only result is that the recipient wonders how come it is only them who was working at the weekend and why they aren’t as efficient as the 8am on a Monday emailers? Maybe they just roll their eyes, correctly guessing that I am just pretending to be in control of my work-life balance, and wishing I’d sent them the blinking email the night before when they were wrapping up their own prep.

I work evenings and weekends. I try not to, but I do. There is no point pretending otherwise and it isn’t going to fundamentally change – though I continue to strive to reduce the extent of it. In future, unless my email is something which is not particularly time sensitive and can be happily queued until the next day / Monday, I’m just going to send it when its finished, and I’m going to give the recipient as much time as I am able to read and respond. I do so in the knowledge that realistically (whatever we pretend) my opponent may also be working in the evening. In doing so I am going to treat them like a grown up who can make a choice as to whether to ignore a message till morning or whether to deal with it immediately. Late night emails from opponents are annoying, and we all hate bombshells dropped before a hearing – but if I’m going to receive one, I’d rather have a late night bombshell than an 8am bombshell.