I have never seen an email message too short. – Roman and Raphaelson, Writing
That Works Email is both a cornerstone of remote-first culture and a colossal
waste of time. This is because folks think of email as mail—like
they’re writing a letter. But it’s more like popping into my
office. You’d never stop me in the hall and go: “Hey, about Project X—I hope
this day finds you well and you’re staying healthy. As you may know, for
the past six months, I have been working on Project X…”. All that throat-clearing would be so awkward. You’d go: “Hey, Project
X is done! Do you want to try it?” But it’s hard to pare down your email to its
essence. Here are some tips that may help. If you want to communicate: write like you talk. Avoid the big words—instead of “utilize,” try “use.” Cut lengthy
asides and empty jargon—they make it harder to understand what you’re
saying. In his essay “Politics
and the English Language,” George Orwell condemned modern business
jargon as “gumming together long strips of words […] by sheer humbug.”
An all-too-apt description of emails post-ChatGPT. Consider Orwell’s rewrite of this passage from Ecclesiastes: The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong […]; but
time and chance happeneth to them all. Which, in modern businessese, becomes: Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the
conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no
tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a
considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into
account. Get to the point. Journalists crank out stories using a method called the “inverted
pyramid.” The pyramid’s base—the most essential information—comes
first. This structure lets readers bail early and still get the gist of the
story. That’s perfect for email. People are busy; get to your point as soon
as possible. When I’m at my best, I use David Allen’s Getting
Things Done (GTD) method to process my inbox: I use the subject line to triage. Allen’s method focuses on the next action. So, if you need action
from me, try tagging it in the subject line: Include the deadline in the subject; e.g., “[ACTION] Review blog post
by Tue, 13 Jun 2023” tl;dr: “too-long; didn’t read”-style summaries at the top emails save
time and mental energy—highly recommended. And instead of long paragraphs and walls of text: To see posts by date, check out the archives
💌 Clear, short, and simple
⏳ Embrace the inverted pyramid
🏥 Use the subject line
👉 tl;dr: bullet points
To see posts by date, check out the archives
Inspired by the simple unassuming beauty of a well-crafted grocery list
– Field Notes back inside cover
Lists are powerful technology.
In his book Moonwalking with Einstein, Joshua Foer likens early writing to sheet music for story-telling.
Scripto continua had zero punctuation—even lacking spaces between words. This dearth of punctuation meant (Foer argues) that ancient writing was little more than a mnemonic device for remembering stories. Reading silently to yourself was difficult and uncommon.
Today punctuation abounds. And lists are the ultimate in punctuation technology, enabling you to read text at a glance.
Umberto Eco, working as a librarian in residence at the Library of Congress, went further, arguing lists created modernity.
But I think it’s more than just lists—it’s lists you run into again.
Inboxes are only useful when they’re drained
Reliable inboxes are powerful because they let us Close open loops and focus on the work itself, rather than on meta-work.
– Andy Matuschak, Inboxes only work if you trust how they’re drained
The power of the well-crafted grocery list goes unrealized when you leave it at home.
There’s a principle in Gestalt psychology called Zeigarnik Effect—named after the psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.
An incomplete task, Zeigarnik observed, was more readily recalled than a completed task. Zeigarnik also discovered a cure to this affliction: If you write it down, you can forget it.
But, for me, that’s not enough. I have to trust that I’ll run into it again.
If my email inbox is stuffed, it means I’ve lost trust in my TODO list, leading me to keep unread emails around just in case.
This is the core of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. Allen preaches the practice of a weekly review, where you review your TODO list, your “someday/maybe” list, and your calendar once a week to ensure you stay on track.
If you make a list. And you never review it. You’ll never trust it.
The only well-crafted grocery list is the one you have at the store.