If I’m working outside of business hours (a few instances per week) I don’t like to slack my direct reports because I personally don’t want to create an “always on” culture at our company.

If your manager messages you at all hours of the day and on weekends, it can become unclear whether the same is expected of you. So, I like to delay messages to 8am the next morning, especially if they’re not time sensitive.

Imagine a message “Just a quick reminder that project X is due next week” sent at 7pm on Friday. Unless the person is expected to work over the weekend, why not delay it to 8am Monday?

Its the same reason I don't make jokes deprecating them to them within a group (and try not to in private with them). What can be a joint form of bonding where you make light fun of each other can start becoming bullying (even if inadvertently) when one party feels like they aren't free to fire back anymore. I've witnessed that dynamic before, where childhood friends worked with each other and one was the owner and continued the familiar personal reactions while the other started feeling less and less able to interact that way (at least in group settings).

Many of us are somewhat blind to certain power imbalances, others of us are very aware because they deal with it in many aspects of our lives. In any case, it usually matters if there's an imbalance, whether we want it to or not.

If my manager sent this, all it will do is make me think about it over the weekend, irrespective of the "lowering of importance". I would rather keep my mind free over the weekend and see the message Monday morning.

I get no sort of he's-a-hard-worker credit for working late, but plenty of up-and-at-'em plaudits when they receive an email at what they think of as the "correct" time of day. Meanwhile, I'm asleep, and catch their first round of replies when I wake up. It's somewhat ridiculous, but not a big deal.

Text messaging, yes is asynchronous - but you don't know what the settings of the persons device are. They could have forgotten or not have quite hours set and now it is very much a synchronous notification even if it's not synchronous communication.

Sending delayed - again things happen. I would rather send a delayed message when I am in full control of the situation rather than possibly not the next morning due to any chain of events from weather, traffic, family, etc.

I feel like this comes from my philosophy of even if individuals are correct, it doesn't mean they are kind. We live in a community with individuals and we should compromise and balance things where needed.

Some people, including myself unfortunately, are uncomfortable with unread messages. The biggest problem is, you’ll read the message, but not respond right away to avoid creating the impression “keep messaging me at this hour”. Then, when the appropriate time to answer comes, whatever your definition of that is, you’ll forget to actually answer.

I don’t have this problem with email, but messaging platforms create this with read receipts, online/offline status, etc.

FWIW, this is the prevailing opinion of almost everyone I know. The only question is what is the appropriate window when you should text. 8-22? 10-22?

Let people manage the settings on their own devices - whether they’ve forgotten to set their quiet hours is not your concern. Trust other people to take care of their own responsibilities. If they mess up, they deal with the consequences - it’s not your problem. If they feel the need to answer your text immediately when for you it wasn’t necessary, let them choose for themselves. Don’t presume to take that choice away from them.

That's irrelevant. They still get a notification to disturb them, they still can see it when looking at their phone, they can still be concerned about the content and how to respond later even if they don't answer, they can still be concerned about the content even if they don't read it, they could very well be waiting an important message at the time, they might have an experience with other people/ex-partners/etc pressuring them to answer immediately, and so on.

Technical terms like "asynchronous" don't mean anything to how people use a technology. Common social expectations do.

And just the same, Japanese people are not one unified blob and each have their own preferences regarding texting, just like the rest of us.

It's about defaults and majority/average preferences, not about "every single one does this" and it gets tiring to remind people otherwise, as if they don't know.

So even if there was such a thing as default, we wouldn't know it. Let alone from a foreign country that most natives don't speak a foreign language. How many Japanese relationships did you have to form such knowledge on the majority?

Last, but not least, it is not tiring to remind people to reframe the conversation. It is healthy and constructive.

But, I will say that to a greater degree than you perhaps would imagine, Japanese people by and large do know what to expect from other Japanese in minute contextual detail. And with that knowledge, they try very hard to meet others' expectations.

What matters for the analogy to be useful is if there are two big clusters in east and west. Not regional differences within the clusters, or between individuals.

What if they don't want to stop notifications?

What if they don't know how to do it?

What if they want to still get one from the child or partner or friend who's travelling if anything happens to them?

Should they turn it on and off for your convenience, lest you have to forego sending a non-essential text at night?

The receiver has full agency of when they receive notifications and of whom. In fact a person NOT sending a message and keeping it stored later is, in fact, taking away agency of the receiver. The sender assumes he knows better then the receivers.

But you're still sending the message, regardless of if they want it or not, and even if obviously they might not have done those things, not know how to do those things, or simply not want to have to do those things, but still not want to have to get some message at night.

Sorry, but you're intruding with your late nightn message. And that's irrelevant to what they have or haven't set on their phone.

>In fact a person NOT sending a message and keeping it stored later is, in fact, taking away agency of the receiver. The sender assumes he knows better then the receivers.

It's not about agency, it's about courtesy.

if they don't know how, the first time they bring up this issue, i'll help them change their settings.

yes, there are always corner cases, and there may be a situation where it is necessary to avoid sending messages at certain times. but this can be communicated. what bothers me is people getting upset if they receive a message at the wrong time as if it was the senders fault.

Following this direction puts the default for each medium, regardless of its properties, into "it's rude to attempt communication".

IMO, it's overkill. We invented communication to communicate, and we built in things like being asynchronous to some forms of communication. So we should not give them up just because someone might find it rude. There's a level after which the sender should have more say over what is rude than the receiver.

yes, i agree that getting upset when you get a message while sleeping is not right, but sending a delayed message when you have the option to can be a good idea.

You're the one sending the message, so you're the one who should wait to do it when it it will be convenient for the recipient. If you're texting me in the middle of sleeping hours, you're telling me that your convenience is more important to you than mine.

On Personal alerts though I gave up the granular filtering a long time ago, real people in my contact list all go through without any specific rules, and I'll actually tell people to stop sending me links to facebook rants in the middle of the night.

Some of the companies and automated services have special rules (my bank, Google account alerts etc.) to let notifications through, but by default I won't allow any service to have notification bells, mail and SMS are silent as well.

Instead of expecting them to guess your waking hours, you could just set your DND to not alarm during those hours. If I didn't do that, I'd be frequently woken by things like Facebook Messenger message alerts.

People need to learn to take control of their situation and not rely on others to do it for them? That seems to be the norm in Western cultures, at least.