One thing to keep in mind is that this was the email response time to Sam Altman, the head of YC. What competent startup founder waits to reply to that?
Responsiveness as a general approach to all email is a bad idea. But one needs to know who are the high-priority emailers, and how much they value quick replies.
If you can answer every mail in minutes from important people, then how can you meaningfully do other stuff?
It's perfectly fine to spend a day without answering to the head of YC if you've had the entire day full at hiring, talking to investors, etc. You can't do that effectively and be distracted by your phone all time.
This is about the nature of emails themselves, if they conveyed a more urgent information then a phone call would've been better.
> You can't do that effectively and be distracted by your phone all time.
I think the differentiator is that some people can and do remain effective at a primary task while handling a multitude of distractions, and that this trait strongly indicates high ability overall.
It also depends on what your task queue is. I’d expect an IC to have a few tasks to work on with complete focus for hours at a time. Senior management however, having delegated properly, I’d expect to have a large set of tasks that require a limited amount of time to address.
Eg you’d expect a CEO to enter a meeting, receive a variety of reports from their staff and make a final call or two — and then moving onto another meeting in an entirely different domain — and do so fluidly without interruption.
Which would make it a lot easier to be readily available for ad-how things like emails. Though 5-minutes feels a little much.
I assumed that the responses were something like "hey, not sure I'll need to get back to you" (and then he researches/investigates after re-prioritizing other work and gets back to him).
Yes, that is the way to do it. Don’t leave the sender wondering. Immediately confirm that you read the email and are prioritizing a substantive response.
Responsiveness as a general approach to all email is a bad idea. But one needs to know who are the high-priority emailers, and how much they value quick replies.