How One Email Can Affect Your Whole Day

Recently, I requested some information by email, but the reply wasn't what I expected.
I was grateful for the information, but the wording felt impersonal and somewhat rude, which left me frustrated. It was similar to that feeling when you order fast food and it is almost thrust at you over the counter.

I started going back over what I had written.
Had I worded something poorly?
Why had they chosen to respond that way?

Although the request had been fulfilled, the wording in their response kept me thinking long after I had read the email. Every time the thought came back, it took some of my attention away from what I was focussing on.

There is research that helps explain why this can happen.

A daily diary study by Tim Vahle-Hinz looked at workplace incivility, the relatively minor rude or discourteous encounters that can happen during a working day, and what happens afterwards.

The study found that on days when people experienced more incivility, they were also more likely to continue thinking about work-related problems later that evening, even when the effects of time pressure were taken into account. [1]

What is interesting is the role that uncertainty may play.
With this kind of behaviour, the other person's intention is not always clear.

Ambiguity can leave us trying to make sense of what happened.
Why did they say that, what did they mean by it, and do I need to respond?

These were the exact kind of things I was thinking.
They could have been having a bad day themselves, but I don't know for sure.
My mind was still trying to make sense of it..

Research into rumination suggests that a stressful work experience can remain mentally active after the event has passed.

We can continue returning to it even though the thing that originally caused the reaction is no longer happening. [1]

That means a relatively brief interaction can continue using our attention long after it has finished.

Trying not to think about the email wasn't helpful, so I wrote down what I was feeling instead.

I asked myself a few simple questions:
Will I feel the same about this in a few hours?
Does it even matter?
Why am I letting this affect my day?

For me, that changed things.

Looking ahead made the email seem much less significant than it had felt when I first read it. I could see that I probably wouldn't care about it by the end of the day.

Writing down what was bothering me helped me to acknowledge and name the reaction rather than keep going over it.

The interruption had already taken some of my attention.
It didn't need the rest of my day.

References

1. Vahle-Hinz, T. (2019). Little things matter: a daily diary study of the within-person relationship between workplace incivility and work-related rumination.
Industrial Health, 57(6), 676–690. doi:10.2486/indhealth.2018-0186.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6885595/