Delay in execution of business rule?

Content

I have a problem with a business rule processing faster than an email is sending.

 

The business rule looks for the value of field X being "not sent". It then fires the Email Incident Information action, and then sets the value of field X to "sent".

 

Because we will almost certainly fire this email in other rules, and I wouldn't want to include the same information every time, I created a conditional section within the email that only includes the content is field X = "not sent".

The email fires, but arrives blank (I actually added a word outside of the conditional section to eliminate issues with email software, and sure enough the word appears!).