Just do it.

Lately, I have encountered an epidemic of people who don’t seem to respond.  Not to emails, not to phone calls.  And I’m not talking about your Aunt May who won’t get an answering machine and doesn’t remember things too well anyway.

I’m talking about tradesmen.  People I might want to hire.

I’m talking about government officials.  People whose job it is to impart information and handle problems.

I’m talking about people who have asked for and received help from me and don’t acknowledge it.

There are a lot of people who do respond, who return calls and emails and thanks and good energy of all sorts.  Sometimes they even respond with  negative energy, like “I can’t do that job until a week from Tuesday,” or “Thank you for sending your play but it doesn’t meet our production needs right now,” or “We’re sorry, but your car needs a new transmission.” (Fortunately, I haven’t heard that last one lately.)  All of those are less than desirable outcomes, but they are, at least, resolutions.

And there are, rarely, people who have good and sufficient reasons for not responding.

In general, though, there aren’t that many good reasons, and the world moves too fast these days for failure in this area not to actively hurt your chances at success—no matter what you do.

So, my tip is this:  Make a rule.  Answer every email and phone call within 24 hours.  Maybe you can’t give a definitive answer to whatever question is on the table, but you can say so, can’t you?  “Got your email.  I have to check a few things.  I’ll get back to you on that.”  How hard is that?  And how hard is it to say when you’ll get back and then to do it?

I’m not talking about the phone calls and emails from telemarketers and spammers, or even the just-checking-in messages from friends and relatives, who presumably will allow a little leeway and aren’t depending on an answer before some project or other can move forward.

But for everything else—respond!

Everybody has busy, busy lives.

Surely, we could make them a little less busy for each other if we just stop making people chase us.