How to fake your clients into thinking you don’t work on the weekends or late at night

I know, I know. I should NOT work on weekends and I should NOT work late at night.

Most of the time, I don’t. But sometimes, I have to.

This is one of the drawbacks of entrepreneurial life. And when I do have to work weird or weekend hours, I absolutely don’t want people to know about it. (So – SHHHH!)

“Why?” –  you ask?

Because I don’t want clients to expect a response from me 24/7. If I continuously respond to emails at 11:00 at night on a Tuesday or at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday, I will be training my customers to expect 24/7 service.

And that ain’t a good thing.

Here’s the great news: there’s a super easy way to fake it. I used to use a Google Chrome browser extension to schedule emails, but Gmail now has its own built-in email scheduler.

How to do schedule an email:

Note: the directions below are for gmail accounts only.

When you have your email drafted, click the arrow next to “send” to see the “schedule send” option.

On a mobile device, click the three dots at the top of your screen and “schedule send” at the bottom:

Choose from the available time options or set your own date and time:

You can see all of your scheduled emails in the scheduled “folder” in Gmail:

You can also see that an individual email is scheduled and you can cancel the send, which will return the email to your drafts:

It’s always best to *not* work nights and weekends, but when you absolutely have to…

Schedule those emails for “normal people hours.”