Why "Don‘t Send Emails At Night" Is Terrible, Outdated Advice in 2024

I can‘t stand when people say "don‘t send emails at night."

As an online sales and marketing expert who has tested hundreds of email strategies over the years, I‘m here to tell you that this common piece of advice is not only outdated – it‘s straight up harmful to productivity in many cases.

Here‘s why this old-school email superstition needs to die, backed by cold, hard facts and data.

Humans Aren‘t Robots (Shocker!)

News flash: humans are not machines that all operate on the exact same 9-5 schedule. We have this thing called circadian rhythms – natural, biological cycles that influence our sleep patterns and energy levels.

Guess what? Not everyone‘s rhythms are in perfect sync. About 40% of people identify as "morning larks" who rise early, and 30% are "night owls" who are most alert later in the day. The remaining 30% (the "in-betweeners") have more typical schedules.

Forcing owls to send emails at 8am while larks can never communicate after dinner is fighting against people‘s natural productivity flows. If a night owl has a writing burst at 11pm, why force them to hold that email and derail their flow?

Plus, people‘s schedules and lifestyles vary. A busy working parent might squeeze in emails after putting their kids to bed. A freelancer may keep nontraditional hours to communicate across time zones. Banning emails outside of a rigid 9-5 punishes people for these real-life circumstances.

Late Night Emails Don‘t Cause Stress – Unclear Boundaries Do

The main argument for shutting down after-hours emails is that receiving them stresses people out and creates pressure to respond immediately. And yes, that can be a valid concern IF a company has unhealthy expectations and poor boundaries.

However, the problem there isn‘t the literal time the email arrives. It‘s the unstated implication that an immediate response is required. That‘s a cultural issue – not a timestamp issue.

When organizations encourage employees to disconnect after hours and respect reasonable response time windows, sending emails at night isn‘t inherently stressful. People know that the sender isn‘t expecting anything til morning and they can comfortably resume work when they planned.

What causes stress is managers having unrealistic, always-on demands and modeling 24/7 communication – then pretending that prohibiting emails between 10pm-6am somehow fixes overwork culture. It‘s a bandaid, not an actual solution.

The real fix is explicitly setting expectations that responses can wait til the next business day. Some companies even use email scheduling tools so night owls can write whenever inspiration strikes but their recipients still receive the messages at a "normal" hour. Technology can decouple sender and receiver timing.

Time of Day Doesn‘t Dictate Importance

Here‘s an example I love:

Let‘s say a West Coast sales rep is frantically trying to pull together a key deal before end-of-quarter at 8pm Pacific Time. She needs input from her East Coast manager who‘s already offline for the night.

If the rep waits to send that email til 9am ET the next day out of politeness, she loses precious working hours and risks missing her deadline. The manager would much rather get a late night email and take 5 minutes to respond than derail the whole deal by waiting.

Just because an email is sent outside standard hours doesn‘t automatically mean it‘s non-urgent or can wait indefinitely. Artificially holding messages in drafts prevents the recipient from making that assessment and choosing how to prioritize their own responses.

After all, if something is truly urgent enough to handle ASAP, the sender probably shouldn‘t be using email at all. That‘s what phone calls and real-time chat are for. Email by definition is an asynchronous channel with built-in accepted delays.

Your Customers Aren‘t All in One Time Zone

In case you hadn‘t heard, the internet and smartphones killed the concept of "business hours" years ago. Ecommerce runs 24/7, 365. Many companies, especially online businesses, have customers all over the world who expect responses on their schedule.

If you‘re a U.S.-based software company with a huge user base in Australia or Japan, ignoring their emails for 12+ hours because they hit outside your 9-5 is terrible service. Even if you don‘t have staff in those time zones, rotating coverage or using chatbots for initial replies keeps you reliable.

And even if you are only serving one region, consumer email habits don‘t conform to a neat little window. One study found that over 50% of people check their email more than 10 times a day, and 55% check it before breakfast. Others regularly read messages right before bed.

If you‘re trying to engage busy people, you need to reach them where and when they‘re already online – which is rarely limited to the hours right around a traditional lunch break. Experiment and see what timing generates the best response rates for your audience instead of following an arbitrary rule.

The Business World is Evolving

I know the "email anytime" philosophy may sound radical if you‘re used to a very traditional corporate environment. But the nature of work and business communication has changed massively in recent years.

With the rise of remote and hybrid teams, asynchronous communication is becoming the default for many companies. You can‘t expect a dispersed team spanning 5 time zones to all be online simultaneously for a live 10am meeting.

Plus, younger generations simply have different expectations than the classic workday model. Nearly 8 in 10 millennials say they want flexible work schedules, and Gen Z is even more independent. They‘re not interested in presenteeism or being chained to a desk to prove they‘re "working."

As more digital natives enter leadership roles, organizations have to evolve their norms. Strict timing rules will become even more impractical as the workforce diversifies.

And honestly, the smartest companies are already ahead of the curve in prioritizing flexibility and outcome-based cultures, not micromanaging when people send emails. They hire adults and trust them to manage their own workloads and schedules responsibly.

The Data Doesn‘t Lie

Still skeptical that night owls are onto something? Let‘s look at some email open rate data.

Multiple studies have actually found that emails sent between 8pm-midnight have the highest open rates around 22%. The next highest block is midnight to 4am, with 17.6% opens. Meanwhile, the "safest" hours of 9-11am? Only a 14% open rate.

The most common times people check email are early in the morning, lunchtime, and evening – not strictly during the workday. Nearly 60% read emails in bed and 42% check in the middle of the night. Like it or not, people are living in their inboxes at odd hours.

Assuming that sending emails at night is pointless because no one will read them simply doesn‘t hold up to scrutiny. Your message may actually be more visible amid people‘s nightly inbox cleanups than buried in the daily avalanche.

Healthy Boundaries Are About Culture, Not Clocks

Let me be clear: I‘m not advocating for a chaotic email free-for-all where everyone is working 24/7. Boundaries and disconnecting are important. Burnout is real and we shouldn‘t ignore it in the name of productivity.

But having a blanket ban on what hours emails can be sent doesn‘t solve the root causes of burnout. If your organization has a workaholic culture where people feel pressured to be "always on", that anxiety will persist whether collaboration happens in the form of a 9pm email or a 9pm Slack message or a 9pm meeting you can never say no to.

The key is setting reasonable response time expectations and building a culture of trust and autonomy. Judge people based on their overall impact and results, not what timestamp they press send. Model healthy disconnection from the top. And give employees control over how to structure their own "off" time.

When an email arrives shouldn‘t dictate your work-life balance.

How to Handle Late Night Emails Like a Pro

So if we accept that late night emails are a reality and not inherently evil, what‘s the most professional way to approach them? A few tips:

1. If you‘re regularly emailing outside typical hours, communicate your expectations clearly. A line like "I know it‘s late but please feel free to respond tomorrow!" can ease minds.

2. Embrace email scheduling tools so you can time messages thoughtfully without derailing your own productivity bursts.

3. Flip the script and consider how sending at strategic "off" hours may actually increase engagement for announcements or marketing emails. Just avoid 3am for the true sleepers.

4. Reserve late night emails for non-urgent topics that can wait for next day replies. Don‘t abuse the privilege for anything that requires real-time collaboration.

5. Establish a culture where it‘s okay to wait to reply if an after-hours request isn‘t truly pressing. Let people protect their own schedules when needed.

6. Train employees (especially newer or younger staff) that receiving an email doesn‘t obligate dropping everything else. Prioritization still applies.

The Future of Email

I‘ll leave you with this. As technology and business continue to evolve, our email habits will too. Trying to cement "daytime only" communication into our norms forever is simply unrealistic.

More and more work is becoming asynchronous, remote, and globally distributed. AI and automation are taking over more routine tasks, freeing up time for flexible human creativity. The traditional 9-5 at a central office is no longer the default.

But that doesn‘t mean work email has to invade every moment of our lives either. We just need a more nuanced approach than a single time-based rule.

By thoughtfully considering the purpose, urgency, and expectations around each email, we can communicate effectively whenever inspiration strikes while still maintaining healthy boundaries. It‘s about focusing on outcomes, not appearances.

So the next time you‘re drafting a valuable message after the sun goes down, don‘t let outdated superstitions stop you from pressing send.

Just make sure you have an understanding with your team first. Oh, and maybe don‘t go overboard with the 2am missives unless you want to become the office vampire. Everything in moderation!

What are your thoughts on late night emails? Have you found them useful or disruptive in your own workflows? Let me know in the comments!