The art of brief emails

I get a lot of emails. Like in a lot of emails. I recently deleted about 5,500 emails, of which a large chunk was still unread. I've tried zero-inbox (thanks to Athur Alston), but not too successful to date. So the following blog was really good to read. It will be great if people are a lot more brief with their emails:

The art of brief emails:

It is with words as with sunbeams. The more they are condensed, the deeper they burn. ~Robert Southey

Emails, to some of us, are like a plague. They spread rapidly, infect you until you're covered in sores and can't do anything useful, and ultimately fill the streets with corpses.

OK, maybe emails aren't exactly like the plague.

But they can take up your entire day if you let them. Enter the art of brevity (not to be confused with this site).

Master the art of writing concise emails, and you communicate essential information without taking up much time - yours or the recipients' time. You also encourage the responder to be brief, with your own brevity. And by eliminating chatter, you also become a better writer.

Some tips for writing brief emails:

• Skip the subject line. Controversial, as many people believe the subject line is key for someone scanning their inbox. Personally, I look at the sender to determine if I'm going to read the email, and I can usually read the 1st line in Gmail, just from the inbox. So the subject line become irrelevant. Just skip straight to the message and forget meta data. The content is the meta data. If the recipient knows you, he'll open the email. Note: this is actually considered rude by some, so be aware of your recipient's expectations. With friends, family and close coworkers, skipping the subject line is fine. With more formal emails, you'll want a subject line, and you might not follow every single one of the following rules.


• Keep it to a few sentences. I've long been an advocate of the 5 sentences rule and in fact, if you can keep it to 2-3 sentences, that's even better. Setting a limit forces you to keep it brief - just like a haiku.


• Skip the greeting. Sure, polite etiquette dictates you have a greeting. But mostly we email friends or coworkers or family, and really, do they care about your greeting? Their time is valuable. Dive into the message.


• Skip the sig. I hate long signatures, especially for someone who I talk to regularly. I already know all your info - why keep sending it? Just sign off, as briefly as possible. My sig is usually: -leo, but if I really know the person I'll skip that as well.


• Narrow the topic. If you find yourself needing to write long emails, it's usually because you're trying to talk about too many things. This tends to lead to problems - the recipient might skip over certain parts, for example. Stick to one topic for now, and get to the point.


• Edit. I know, you want to write it and send it and forget it. Well, that's rude, to the recipient. You're saying they don't deserve a good email. I'm not saying you need to spend hours making every email perfect, but if you can take 10 seconds to go back over an email, remove unnecessary sentences and words, you'll be doing your recipient (and yourself) a favor.


• Consider not sending. Sometimes, an email is unnecessary. Before sending, or even before writing, consider whether they really need a 'thank you' or 'got it' or other such message. Sometimes it's fine, but if the person sends you a 'got it' email, do you need to reply back 'thank you'? Just move on.

If you know people who need to read this post, pls email it to them. Briefly.

If it takes a lot of words to say what you have in mind, give it more thought. ~Dennis Roth

XDR-TB

The Power of a Signature

Amnesty International has a cartoon campaign, using stark black and white imagery to portray suffering in the world, and how a signature can relieve that suffering. It is powerful stuff. It is simply yet starkly communicated.

The power of individuals to change the world.

Happiness is....

Real Insurance launched Pay As You Drive this week. If you're wondering what Pay As You Drive is all about, then Wikipedia to the rescue. The cool thing about Real Insurance's Pay As You Drive is that it does not require a black box. So no device being fitted to the car, and no-one watching over you. So it avoids the privacy concerns. It is also an interesting exercise in trust between a company and private individuals. The product should cause quite a bit of turmoil and interest. Will be good to watch!

I listened to an amazing TED talk the other day. It dealt with the new side to psychology: The psychology of happiness. Up to 10 years ago psychologists asked you what is wrong with you, and then they spent many hours trying to fix it, while you are lying on the couch staring at the ceiling. The new type of psychology today deals with happiness. In other words it studies what makes you happy and why. The intervention: How can the science make you happier? So how cool is that!

Here's the basic sources of happiness (pretty compelling stuff):

1. Pleasure. That is worldly pleasures like material possessions, a good meal, good wine, etc.
2. Good work. This the type of work where you get into the flow. Time stands still. It is typically something you do really well.
   
3. Meaningful work. This is doing something bigger than yourself. Doing something to benefit someone other than yourself.

No surprises: Number 1 does not give lasting happiness, only short term happiness. That's why rich people who don't have to work are so unhappy. This is an amazing discovery to be made by rich wives I think...

True happiness is if you experience both number 2 and 3. If you then add number 1 on top of that, it is like the proverbial cherry on top.

Three steps to happiness if you ask me...

So what do the psychologists do? They help you do all 3 better. For 1 it means savouring life. For 2 and 3 it means finding what you do really well, and then design your work around it in a way that benefits someone other than yourself. Quite biblical really.

Do No Evil

I was at a breakfast hosted by Google today. Our host was an account manager at Google, and he made for fascinating conversation. I mean, being at a Google breakfast is exciting to begin with. It just is. I got a really cool pen for one thing. A stainless steel pen with a 1GB memory stick in it, and a laser pointer that gets recharged through the USB plug of the memory stick! How cool is that! And I've never liked getting pens, because I always lose them. I hope to keep this one.

So back to the conversation. I asked him what they think about the talked about merger between Microsoft and Yahoo. He said they don't have a problem with it, as long as these guys don't fall behind. He is worried that it takes Microsoft so long to integrate acquisitions, that the integration will make them fall behind in search, and that is not good for the internet. What is not good for the internet is not good for Google. "Do no evil". He believes that. He really really does. How amazing is that!

I must say I am really frustrated with my laptop (again). It just goes slower and slower as time goes on, and it lost its indexing. That makes it very hard to find documents. Don't you think it will be time well spent by Microsoft just fixing their software? Forget for a moment about enhancing and adding features: Just fix what you have. Make it stable. So that it does not break. And while you're at it, make my computer start-up faster. I hate sitting their in the morning for 10 minutes waiting for it to start-up and do all its early morning exercises. It is such a waste of time. Open the laptop, on. How difficult can that be? I see that is what the Macbook Air does... I think I should get one of those.

Let's see, what else did not work today. O yes: The ferry had to drop about 5 people off at the Taronga Zoo before going to Rose Bay. Everyone was most annoyed. When we moved to Sydney from Johannesburg, something became quite clear. People need things to stress about. It does not really matter what. Whether it is rape and murder, or the toll fees for the cross city tunnel going from $1.50 to $1.85, it creates stress in people's lives. Maybe the rape and murder in Johannesburg creates a little more stress, but relatively the excitement levels about the stress are not all that different.

Walk into a news agent in Sydney, and look at what graces the front pages, and then do the same in Johannesburg. Different planet.

Dr Bill Stone

I think we face three major issues in the world today:
1. Poverty
2. Climate change
3. A crisis of faith

All three of these are complicated, big, difficult to solve and will be with us for as long as we live. And they are interrelated. They are also solvable. They are at least solvable enough for us as individuals to actually make a difference to the lives of other individuals. But the start of this posting is not about any of these 3.

This posting is about a guy with the name of Dr Bill Stone. I saw a TED talk today by him. Bill Stone is well known for exploration under the earth. Going where no man has ever gone before, into under-earth caves, tunnels and most amazingly water. Bill Stone is Shackleton at heart. If he realises his dreams, the name Stone will be as famous as Shackleton.

In his awesome and inspiring TED talk, he first explained what he has done in the bowels of the earth, and the equipment that he has invented for it. Bill is really excited about expensive exploration equipment. What Bill wants to do is lead a mission to the moon. What makes this mission so fascinating is that he does not want to take enough fuel to get back. Taking enough fuel to get back, and making sure you have everything you need to get back when things go wrong, is what makes space exploration so (much more...) expensive. So how do you get to the moon on the cheap? And cheap is below $1 trillion... You don't take from the earth enough fuel to get back.

So how is he planning to get back? On the moon, there is a crater called - wait for this... Shackleton Crater. Stone plan to makes his way over to the Shackleton Crater and mine for fuel on the moon. The fuel that he needs to get back to earth! Talk about crossing that bridge when you get to it!

So why is this so amazing? Well it is amazing in the sense of Shackleton, Amundson and Scott. It is amazing in the sense of Lewis and Clark. But it is also amazing in the sense that it may not cost $1 trillion, but it will cost an absolute fortune. It will most likely be in the billions of dollars. So what makes more sense? Does Dr Stone and his merry men get on a rocket and blast off on their lunar adventure (it will make for awesome television!), burning through billions of dollars in the process, or should we not rather spend that money on treating AIDS or malaria in Africa? It is a question of such epic proportions that tug at the heart of the human race in such a fundamental way that it makes my eyes water.

Is Dr Bill Stone an embodiment of the human spirit that will inspire a whole planet of humanity and make us all dream about how great we are as a species? Or is he insensitive to the plight of billions of people that struggle to make ends meet, struggle to survive, struggle with illness, injustice and extreme poverty? Or is that an unfair question to ask?

Clearly this is not about Dr Bill Stone, but rather about us. How do we keep doing what we are doing with such absolute disregard for the plight of the poor (or the planet, for that matter)? Do we dream about what we can do as individuals? Our great achievements that we so love to strive for? The triumph of the human spirit? Or what exactly does the triumph of the human spirit mean? Does it count when people are facing injustice?

How do we frame this question?

I don't know.