Answer your communications, answer your WhatsApp's, answer your messages, answer your emails, answer people!
I don't understand people that struggle with it. I have a few ideas and tools for you on how you can get better at texting people back or replying. So one of my biggest pet peeves is people not replying to messages, not even to me just in general. When people say "I'm bad at replying" and things like that, that is going to cripple you down the line because you are in a world that is based on communication.
If people communicate to you and you don't have the ability to do the most simple thing, such as replying to a text or replying to an email, then what are you going to have: less communication. Which means less life and less growth. How do you expect to grow your business or your job or your friendships? Life has much bigger challenges than answering people back. So we need to fix this issue and people should be good at communicating. Because it will achieve growth.
Here are a few ideas. First of all, don't open a message, unless you're going to reply to it right away. There's a fantastic rule that I use that if I have to read what someone says, just to check if it's urgent, I always mark it back to unread. So I make sure that I replied to the person, but I never open it and then say, "I'm gonna reply later". No, either I reply right then and there, or I mark it as unread. So I am ensuring that they will get a response from me, that's number one.
Number two, make a mental decision that you won't leave people hanging. Take away this idea that texting is something that you don't do, or that you don't get back to people.
Number three, only engage in lots of communication if you're willing to take on that amount of communication. Sometimes I want to speak to more friends or text five or so friends and expect their replies. Don't do that if you're then going to not reply. If you're planning on a birthday and you send invites to people, you need to then reply to them once they RSVP, don't just go cold. So always make sure you answer people.
Now it could be people messaging into your business and you think, "I'm not interested", and not reply. I have an events company and people write to us all the time wanting to DJ at an event. And they might even be DJs that don't fit at all the genre of our festivals. But I still make sure to reply to them. Don't leave people hanging because they get that reply and then at least you've completed the communication, it's not left open. They'll appreciate it down the line because you would want someone to reply to you.
So make sure to practice these few things. And I hope that it inspires you to just go back over your messages, set aside a bit of time, and get back to people. It'll help you out. It helped me out and it's something I use often.
Gal Ezra,
Managing Director,
Empower Funding