TIP: re Actionable Email or Text

[rcjordan]

About 10-15 years ago, we noticed our ultra-techy SIL had the tendency to scan emails & texts, acknowledge them, but consistently failed to answer direct questions in the body of the content.  Otherwise, he was (overly) diligent when responding.  Twas puzzling for a bit, then we guessed he was receiving so many emails/texts due to his job that he had developed a habit of quickly scanning.

We fixed the issue by re-ordering our correspondences; Actionable items first (bulleted or numbered), then the body.  Worked!

Nowadays, a lot of contacts seem to have this tendency.

 

[ergophobe]

Once I started working in an email-driven workplace, I started doing that.

- subject line explains the email
- one subject per email
- the needed action/decision at the top
- quick summary follows
- "all the details" follows that

My assumption was that "all the details" was never read by anyone, but was mostly there for the e-trail and to provide context for myself when the reply came.

Other rules
 - your emergency is not my emergency
 - your need to hurry will not be compensated for by my attempt to decode the poorly typed, unclearly expressed email.

I realized that attempting to guess what the person actually meant to write before autocorrect kicked in or attempting to take meaning from their ambiguous email was not only wasting my time, but theirs as well.

Anything ambiguous gets bounced.

"I'm looking for a good trial to hike. Do you have suggestions?" is not ambiguous and does not get bounced

"I'm looking for a good cra to buy. Do you have any suggestions?" probably refers to a car, but it could be a typo for 20 other things. That gets bounced:
" > cra
Please clarify"

That's not a great example, but I had a couple of co-workers who consistently sent ambiguous emails with a ton of typos and tight deadlines. I would just bounce them with their inscrutable text quoted and "please clarify" and over time they stopped sending those emails to me.