How the Head of Growth at Superhuman Does His Email
Gaurav Vohra on how he uses focus and flow to find order in the chaos of his work life
There must be a lot of pressure being on the founding team of an email client like Superhuman. You’re supposed to be the best at email — superhuman, in fact. So what happens if you’re having an off day?
For the rest of us we can shrug off a slow response with, “Sorry, my inbox is slammed.” But Gaurav Vohra doesn’t have that excuse.
His product, Superhuman, is designed to keep you focused and in flow so you can get through your inbox twice as fast as before. So I wonder what happens when Gaurav doesn’t get back to someone as quickly as he wants to?
Maybe he says, “Sorry for the slow response, I switched back to Gmail this week.”
Or, just maybe, the product he’s built is so good that he doesn’t have off days any more. Maybe he’s developed such an anxious-attachment to his email that corresponding with him is like emailing with the world’s most talkative time traveler: his replies arrive so quickly it feels like they get there before you even hit send.
The answer, it turns out, is pretty surprising:
Gaurav doesn’t worry too much about response time.
He has explicitly told everyone he works with not to expect a reply from him in less than 24 hours. And that’s only if they email him on weekdays.
