It’s been a while (10 years!) since my original email etiquette post, but the core issue hasn’t aged a day: after-hours email still has a way of sneaking into people’s evenings like an uninvited raccoon rifling through the trash. The tools have gotten fancier, the notifications more persistent, and somehow our collective ability to set boundaries hasn’t improved in proportion. The idea behind the original advice still stands-your “plate-clearing” at 8 PM shouldn’t become five other people’s new problems.
What’s become even clearer over time is that the real culprit isn’t late-night typing – it’s the silent expectations we build around it. When one person sends midnight missives, others wonder if they should be doing the same. Even the most well-intentioned after-hours email can accidentally signal urgency where none exists. And that’s how work quietly leaks into places it doesn’t belong.
The good news is that delayed send, scheduled send, and “drafts camping out until morning” are still undefeated strategies. If you absolutely must unload your brain into Outlook or Gmail at night, go for it – just let the actual sending happen when people’s coffee is still warm, not when they’re trying to put a kid to bed. It’s not about policing effort; it’s about keeping the team sane.
At the end of the day, the question is the same one we asked back then: Does this need to go out right now? And, as always, the answer is still “probably not.” Your late-night productivity sprint doesn’t have to become someone else’s side quest.
