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I tried emailing like a CEO and it made my life better

309 points by ajoy 9y ago

ameshkov 9y ago
Ok thx
seniorsassycat 9y ago
Jeff Bezos is famous for forwarding emails with just a question mark to employees when he receives complaints from customers. https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-receive-a-question-mark-e-mail-from-Jeff-Bezos-at-Amazon-Inc https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-receive-a-question-ma...
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  A senior editor at buzzfeed is not Jeff Bezos
falcolas 9y ago
Perhaps the problem is attempting to review emails at a time when you can't formulate proper responses, i.e. on the phone. If it comes by email, it's probably not urgent enough to justify looking at them at a time when you can't respond. On the flip side, they probably deserve more than a casual glance and a two word response.
- rbcgerard 9y ago
  Yes - or you get an email about X, but you need to know more about Y to come to a decision on X, so that X email lingers while you wait for info on Y
jasonmaydie 9y ago
Some people get anxiety when email piles up in their mailbox and may spend a considerable amount of time sorting and categorizing their emails, some go as far as making zero inbox a thing. I would hazard to say most people don't care about their inbox. I for one don't mind at all if an email I didn't read festers in my inbox for years, after all if it's not urgent enough to call or physically reach out to me about it it's not that big a deal.
- nxsynonym 9y ago
  I currently have around 3k unread emails in the gmail box. Granted, most of them are highly unnecessary or don't need a reply. It doesn't bother me one bit. If I need to find a particular message, I'll search for it. If something is important and I missed it, I'll either get an auto-sent reminder or someone will reach out again or in another way. I am not a slave to my email, just like I don't feel the need to pick up my phone every time it rings. Have I missed some time sensitive information? Occasionally. Has it blown my life up and caused a world of hurt? Not once.
- gtsteve 9y ago
  > it's not urgent enough to call or physically reach out to me about it it's not that big a deal Exactly. If someone has a problem with me taking a couple of hours to get back to an e-mail I say, "you wouldn't send the fire brigade a postcard would you?"
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    "Thank you for saving my house from the fire last week. XOXO"
  - UncleSlacky 9y ago
    Moss would email them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesx85EHRTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesx85EHRTo
- petercooper 9y ago
  some go as far as making zero inbox a thing. That's me. I am very conscientious with emails. Nearly all get actioned or a reply and I often use it as a to-do list. But I also get both my work and personal inboxes to zero every weekend :-) It definitely makes me feel better as things sitting waiting to be done make me anxious (to the point of getting all the cooking stuff into the dishwasher before sitting and eating a meal :-D)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
glorkk 9y ago
> Like any good member of the proletariat who wants nothing more than to serve capitalism [...] Never change, Buzzfeed.
hashkb 9y ago
On the flip side, I take my time to write detailed replies with full explanations of issues. Usual reply: "can u hop on a call"
- cwilkes 9y ago
  Being snarky I would ask you how is that working out for you? I bet on the call your replies are short. So just reverse the order: make your emails short and to the point with the abstract of your reasoning behind it. End with you can discuss in detail on a conference call. I bet no one takes you up on it.
  - bshimmin 9y ago
    Sometimes when I write a lovely, thorough, well-crafted email and get a "can u hop on a call 2 discuss" response, I "hop" on that call and simply read out my email. Occasionally I add little pauses to make it sound like I'm not reading, if I can be bothered.
hnrodey 9y ago
Rules for good emails 1. Keep the message as short as necessary but no shorter. 2. Put the most important information at the top of the message. 3. If it email is for an ask, call out from who you need the response and put it at the top of the message. 4. If you need to send a long email with many details, put the most important information at the top (ie. what the reader needs to know) and then fill in the body with details he/she can choose to indulge. Example Hey Jane, I need your input on how to prioritize my current work. Can you provide guidance on where I should focus? Bug XYZ was assigned to me and it's taking longer to complete because we have a dependency on Vendor ABC completing a change to their web service. This is impacting the commitment to my team on Feature 123 because we are near the end of our sprint. Lemme know.
- canadianwriter 9y ago
  We usually have a lot of CC's. So we use the @ system. Eg. @stacey - can you get me the numbers on whatever?
  - alexhutcheson 9y ago
    I just bold the names, which has a similar effect.
    - sandworm101 9y ago
      I try to avoid any formatting beyond ascii. It just makes life harder when people are trying to cut and paste.
      - jdmichal 9y ago
        I use *s surrounding, just like here. Outlook automatically bolds it, but they're still present for unformatted views.
    - hnrodey 9y ago
      Not as much of a problem today given the richness of mobile devices and rich text formatting but manipulating fonts (bold, italic, etc) to draw attention was problematic because people/devices would drop down to plain text formatting so the recipient does not get what the sender thinks they will see.
parenthephobia 9y ago
> I wanted to know, did you always email this way, or did you only start once you became the boss? His answer (over email): “Yes.” I’m going to assume the yes was to the first part of the question and he skimmed over part two. This isn't something to emulate. People who only read the first few words of an email before replying make communication harder for everyone else. Sometimes things can't be accurately summed up in half a sentence.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  Answering "yes" to "A or B" questions is a terrible approach - if I had to start defining communication anti-patterns it'd be one of the easiest examples. Saying "always" or "the first one" isn't hard, and actually answers the question.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  And yet this is ubiquitous. Nearly nobody reads the whole thing, or if they do they respond to only the most interesting part. The rest is ignored. I have a rule: Ask exactly one question in an email. Because asking more doesn't ever work.
  - mprovost 9y ago
    That's a great rule - also, always ask the question in the first sentence.
  - twobyfour 9y ago
    The trick to asking more than one question is to number them. Dear Ms. Busy Client, In order to complete Project X on time, we need your decisions about the following by end of day Friday, please: 1) How many widgets will be required? 2) Do you prefer the red or the green? 3) If we order the widgets from China instead of Mexico, we can save $10 per widget, but delivery will take twice as long. We believe this trade-off is worthwhile because foo. Please confirm that this is acceptable to you. 4) etc. Thanks, your humble vendor Then if you still don't get an answer, you ask for a meeting or call like you would have to anyway, but at least you have a handy checklist to make it efficient.
lkrubner 9y ago
My experience has been that a lot of people are surprisingly uncomfortable writing. This includes people who have gone to the best universities --- people with excellent educations. They can write well enough to get through school, but they don't enjoy it, and they don't feel they are really expressing themselves in writing. Personally, I feel like my writing skills are better than my verbal skills, so I default to email, because email plays to my strengths. But over the years I've been taught that I'm in the minority on this. Many managers and co-workers greatly prefer to have a conversation. Often, they feel like they are not getting the facts when they engage in written communications. Apparently they need to see my face and read my body language. Apparently this is true even when the subject is deeply technical, like talking about the APIs our microservices use to talk to each other.
- dceddia 9y ago
  I feel the same way. Recruiters are also bad about this. With email, I have time to think through my response and (maybe more importantly) think of a nice way to say no. On the phone, faced with a salesy fast-talking recruiter, I am definitely at a disadvantage. I'm more likely to be talked into further calls and whatnot. I'm pretty sure they know this.
rwc 9y ago
I think the author suffers from a perfectionism problem. She wants to sent the perfect reply. When asked for advice, she sets a bar that’s much higher in her own head for what the reply should be than what the person asking likely intended. Bosses and CEOs don’t seem to suffer from these anxieties, and have no problem sending back short, decisive, and sometimes imperfect replies.
- drb311 9y ago
  The key is: 1. Reply now 2. Do the best you can in the time you can spare It's email. If people need more they can ask for it. At least now they know you'll reply.
albertgoeswoof 9y ago
As a manager or senior <anything> a huge part of your job is communication and distributing information, and email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this. The author has decided to provide poor communication because she can’t handle her inbox. One word replies can be extremely misleading and will cost her more time overall than reading and replying to her emails properly. I would be fuming if I was her boss or worked for her.
- jstanley 9y ago
  > The author has decided to provide poor communication On the contrary! The author has decided to provide efficient, immediate, communication, instead of vaguely planning to send a more detailed reply later if she maybe gets around to it. If everybody treated email this way it would be 100x more efficient. If her reply doesn't contain the info you need, just reply back asking for the info you need, and she'll reply within minutes.
  - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
    But what if you don't know the information you need to know? Or if you're worried about looking incompetent by asking because she always sends such curt replies? Or maybe you're just hacked off that you crafted an email to try to convey a point in a clear, concise manner and she just responded with a one word reply and you have no idea whether she read it and understood it at all
    - jstanley 9y ago
      They all sound like your problems, not hers.
      - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
        They’ll be hers when she’s fired
        9y ago
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mgv11 9y ago
We had external trainer here some weeks ago and at one point he mentioned(boasted) that he had inbox of 4000+ unread emails. On the last session he wrote his email on the board and said that we can just contact him for further questions and of course no one wrote it down.
- gk1 9y ago
  I don’t understand why people flaunt their unread counts. To seem important? To me it just says you are indecisive or unorganized.
  - buxtehude 9y ago
    The flip side of that is what I sincerely have believed for many many years: I don't understand why people flaunt their read counts. I read all the email from people on my team. I also receive a lot of email from various sources in the organization as well as external sources - and sometimes all I'm looking for is the subject to decide if it's worth my time to open it and read it. I feel that not all of that non-team based email is worth my time opening, reading/scanning, then archiving or deleting - time that adds up over the years: How many days of your life have you spent organizing your inbox so that your number is 0? A stack is a beautiful thing :) If I don't care about it, it goes away with minimal effort after a little time. I don't want to be a slave to my email inbox - and at the same time I value the sources of the incoming emails that I don't always read - I read some just not all - and that's ok with me and I do that when it's socially acceptable (not trying to be a jerk about it).
arbie 9y ago
This article desperately needs a TL;DR.
- donquichotte 9y ago
  She started writing shorter and more concise emails (but, alas, not shorter and more concise articles) and liked it.
  - sdenton4 9y ago
    Spend your time where the money is. Journalists aren't paid at the end of the day for their email word counts... And, probably, neither are you.
throw2016 9y ago
What I have realized is some people are just naturally good at this. They are able to get to the nub of the issue, anticipate a pointless back and forth and get things done. It's not simply an issue of length, its communication and I guess maturity, experience and savvy. Of course if you already have authority then it's no longer a communication thing but a power thing, as things will anyway get done and some are inevitably waiting for opportunities to suck up to you. So no point aping a CEOs style if you are not a CEO.
- sbarre 9y ago
  Also when you're the boss you can reply however you want and people will make/take the time to figure out the missing details, because they have to. Try those short replies to your boss for a while and see how it goes. ;-)
eitally 9y ago
The issue with standardizing on two word replies is that people will eventually stop writing you in the first place. This can feel good, but it's usually a bad sign, whether you're an IC or a manager.
- jstanley 9y ago
  She's not saying "don't tell people what they need to know", she's saying "don't agonise over sending the perfect email, just give them the information they need".
EGreg 9y ago
I emailed Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star of TV’s Shark Tank, because he is known for responding right away to anyone who emails him, and because now I can give this story the headline Really? What's his email? I think I direct-emailed him before at blogmaverick and didn't get a response.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- IncRnd 9y ago
  this search: https://www.google.com/search?q=email+mark+cuban https://www.google.com/search?q=email+mark+cuban had this as first hit: https://www.wikihow.com/Contact-Mark-Cuban https://www.wikihow.com/Contact-Mark-Cuban
account0099099 9y ago
This doesn't work. I've gotten many bad reviews, because people thought I was being "curt" or "mean" because I was replying to their question with short replies. None, of my emails were intended to be mean, I just didn't see the point in fluffing up my emails, and only responded with the required information, but I guess people require the fluff or they get their feelings hurt.
- mfringel 9y ago
  Alternately, your definition of "fluff" was everyone else's definition of "required communication." A short reply can still be ambiguous, which requires clarification, which then wastes time. Given your many bad reviews, do you think it might be worthwhile to revisit your data?
- crispyambulance 9y ago
  You're right, only the most high-powered people in an organization can get away with terse responses that leave recipients guessing at what their precise intent was. "Fluff" is a highly subjective term. What may be fluff for you could be critical signalling for others. Stripping everything down to the bare-bones of what you (or I) may think answers the request sounds intentionally flippant and dismissive. If we fail to address the recipient in a context they understand and share with us that is taken as an offense. With a little effort, however, it is totally possible to be cogent, compact, AND polite.
- vidarh 9y ago
  It works, but as a general rule, you need to include more fluff than the person above you in the hierarchy unless you know they're fine with you being shorter. The trick is figuring out just how much more fluff is ok. But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers. You need to adapt to the style in use in the business, not because it is objectively curt or mean, but because people judge whether or not you're being curt or mean subjectively based on their base of comparison, and that is your co-workers.
  - 9y ago
uladzislau 9y ago
Well CEO can do it because she is a CEO. If any employee would use this method it'd be considered poor communication and the person considered as lazy and incompetent.
- vidarh 9y ago
  You can as a general rule not be as informal as your superior (unless you know the person well enough), but need not be much more formal. Put the most important bits first. Be as brief as possible while still being courteous. Recap at the end, including specifically calling out necessary next steps. My experience is that people often tend to include detail that is only of interest to them, often because they're not certain their request will stand on its own. Only spend time to add information you're certain is necessary (and I know I often err on this); if your manager needs more info to make a decision, they'll ask. People will often be grateful if you spare them the details of things they don't need the details of, as long as you can show you've done your work if/when they do ask. The more they can trust you to have data to back up what you ask for, the less they'll actually ask.
turc1656 9y ago
Why would a link like this be on HN? It's Buzzfeed. The same people that bring you those quizzes like "Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are". I can't take this article seriously and I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to. Although, I do have a new unread email goal. I just assumed I was the world champion. Didn't realize I was already being bested by the guy with 150k unread. That's roughly double mine. I have a long way to go. Need to figure out how to get myself on some more bullshit distribution lists so that I can compete.
- froindt 9y ago
  >Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are. You just reminded me how glad I am that I aggressively hid every upworthy, clickify, clickhole, and buzzfeed from Facebook. It's somewhat tolerable that way.
- snowwrestler 9y ago
  I would not blanket-dismiss BuzzFeed. Sure, they publish mostly clickbait, but it's not all crappy quizzes and listicles. They employ some good writers and journalists.
- vxNsr 9y ago
  Because this specific article is worth a read. You're complaint can be expanded to include the whole internet: Why would you use the internet, the same place that brings you those quizzes like "Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are."
splittingTimes 9y ago
I started to follow this approach [1] 6 month ago and it is amazing how much clearer my own thoughts in communication have become. 1. Subjects with keywords. The subject clearly states the purpose of the email, and specifically, what you want them to do with your note. Keywords: ACTION, SIGN, INFO, DECISION, REQUEST, COORD 2. Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). Lead your emails with a short, staccato statement that declares the purpose of the email and action required. The BLUF should quickly answer the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. An effective BLUF distills the most important information for the reader. 3. Be economical. Short emails are more effective than long ones, so try to fit all content in one pane, so the recipient doesn’t have to scroll. use active voice, so it’s clear who is doing the action. If an email requires more explanation, you should list background information after the BLUF as bullet points so that recipients can quickly grasp your message. Link to attachments rather than attaching files. This will likely provide the most recent version of a file. Also, the site will verify that the recipient has the right security credentials to see the file, and you don’t inadvertently send a file to someone who isn’t permitted to view it. === [1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...
- bshimmin 9y ago
  so try to fit all content in one pane, so the recipient doesn’t have to scroll Oh no, have we introduced "the fold" into emails too, after a decade of forlornly trying to persuade people it doesn't exist on the web?
  - pc86 9y ago
    If you look at heatmaps of user interaction with webpages, it absolutely does exist.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    Well it sounds like it does exist, in the sense that the whole article and the parent comment's experience suggest brevity has been working for them to maintain attention. Unless you mean trying to pack as much in as possible without exceeding an arbitrary measurement of where the fold is, as opposed to just being very brief and to the point? If so, that does seem to defeat the point and would be inconsistent.
joshuaheard 9y ago
I once heard a CEO's job is to make decisions and communicate them. This article seems to reinforce that. I'm not a CEO, but I try to be as concise as possible when I communicate by email. Two things I do are not mentioned in the article. I always address the recipient by name if possible. And, I always add my signature, which on my computer includes my address and phone number. Addressing the recipient by name gets their attention better. And, having my contact info in every email makes it easy if they want to communicate with me via another medium. Also, I always say Please and Thank you. In terms of email management, I use the Getting Things Done method, which works well for me.
LeoJiWoo 9y ago
Probably should be a disclaimer to articles like this. Doing X like Person Y makes life Z really only works well when you are basically very similar to person Y. Emailing like a CEO works best when you are a CEO, and are above office politics. Probably shouldn't email like a CEO if you aren't one.
danvoell 9y ago
Yes and No on this. One of Bezos' big things is "don't manage by proxy". This feels like a communication proxy. Be natural. If you write novels, learn how to be more direct. I have had a lot of terrible bosses who try to act/write/behave like CEOs.
makecheck 9y ago
I would say, do your best to imagine the receiver’s Inbox and help them. I wish that E-mail clients didn’t give so much control to senders. (Oh, you picked a crappy Subject line so now I need to use that in my list forever? Oh, you rambled for the first 1-2 sentences so now my message preview is useless. Oh, you mark every E-mail “high priority” so now that sort column doesn’t really organize things usefully.)
gregmac 9y ago
I have always disliked the massive over-use of e-mail, and when I first heard "Email is where keystrokes go to die" [0] it really resonated with me. E-mail is temporal, but far too often used for things of long lasting significance. Though it's somewhat of a necessary evil for communicating externally, I don't use it internally for anything more than I have to. Here's my take: Anything long-lived belongs on wiki, ticket system or other shared storage location. E-mail a notification to say there's an update, but the official version doesn't belong archived forever in everyone's inboxes -- well, everyone other than employees who happened to start after it was sent, of course. Quick questions are better done over chat, if for no other reason than the single-line interface tends to encourage single-line questions. Long conversations are better had in person or by video chat. How many times have you been on an e-mail thread that included several angry paragraphs written back and forth because of an incorrect assumption or simple misunderstanding? My ideal interactions start with a chat message or ticket, switch to in-person/video if needed, and document the result (if relevant) in a ticket or wiki page. No e-mail involved. [0] https://jamesclear.com/keystrokes https://jamesclear.com/keystrokes
shadowRAMM 9y ago
I would like to add this bit to anyone attempting this: If you are the CEO you can ask your IT team to check on emails and they jump on it pretty quick. If you don't have that ability then remember the following. Subjects of emails trigger anti-spam. So be choice, sparse, and unique if possible with email subjects. carry on.
Froyoh 9y ago
I have a strong urge to keep unread emails at a minimum. Mark all as read is very handy.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
Here's the next rule for you: DO NOT TOP POST Seriously, posting inline is easier to write and read and makes your email more clear. You don't have to wrangle your words to make it clear what part of their email you're replying to. If you don't need to refer to anything they said, delete the whole email and just put in a couple of words alone. Stop top posting!
- amyjess 9y ago
  I've worked at four companies over ten years. Everyone at all four companies top posts exclusively. Bottom posting is a good way to be branded "that weirdo who can't follow standard procedure". In the business world, this old Japanese proverb applies: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    This article is already about changing your email habits. You think the bottom poster is getting stranger looks than the guy who only writes 2 word replies?
polock 9y ago
It seems like dumb. Everyone has their owns style. Don't copy anyone's and make your own character and style.
gk1 9y ago
I think author is missing the point of "emailing like a CEO." It's not about being terse, it's about clarity. Yes, emails with clarity are often short, but not all short emails are clear. I wrote about this just yesterday: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/clarity/ https://www.gkogan.co/blog/clarity/
otterpro 9y ago
Since moving to Slack, my email has been reduced drastically (both in length and also in quantity), and also writing long emails were limited for sake of archiving or recording as part of formality. Slack, or similar platform, allows workers to write shorter messages, as well. However, one downside is that Slack is more chatter-prone, so the message has been shortened, but now there's a lot more chatter/messages going around.
- shostack 9y ago
  Not only that, but if I see a snippet of a request or chat in my Slack phone notifications, I can't read the whole thing without removing it from my notification queue. Often I get things that I need to get to a desktop to properly respond to. At least with email I can "Mark Unread" or label/put in a folder. I wish Slack had a way to snooze notifications while still letting you read the whole thing.
CASHforGOLD 9y ago
Fucking buzzfeed? Quality source of information.
yuhong 9y ago
I am thinking seriously about Yishan-style CEOs at this point. I wonder how many professional (as opposed to founder) Yishan-style CEOs even exist at this point. Yishan is not a founder-CEO BTW.
- sushid 9y ago
  What is being a Yishan-style CEO except for the fact that you're not a founder/co-founder? I'm not sure how this is relevant to the article above?
  - yuhong 9y ago
    Look up "yishan dehrmann"
akud 9y ago
It sounds like what the author really needs is a chatroom.
ThomaszKrueger 9y ago
When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say "I am taking time off from day X to day Y", or declaring my design decisions instead of asking for opinions. In the case of asking for time off, my rationale is to avoid making someone spend time evaluating if my request is acceptable.
ChrisArchitect 9y ago
email, still very much the original internet killer app, is mostly crap these days not because it has changed, but because people are so so so bad at it
calimac 9y ago
I got more out of the hacker news comments than the article. The article did however drive my motivation but left me thirsty for tactics. Thanks News.YC.com
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Good read. I cut about 10k emails from my longstanding primary email address. This got me down around 90k emails. I am still trying to unsubscribe from stuff, keep up with deletions, yadda. It seems completely hopeless. I find myself moving to a different email address. Deleting around 9.5k emails there got me down below 500 emails. It is making it increasingly difficult to bother to log back into my old address. So this article is kind of timely for me.
wyclif 9y ago
I don't wanna email like a CEO. I want Inbox Zero for Life: https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html
MichaelMoser123 9y ago
"Let’s call this “boss email.” It’s defined by nearly immediate — but short and terse — replies. The classic two-word email. For underlings, it can be inscrutable. Is that an angry “thanks” or a grateful “thanks”? Does “please update me” imply impatience with you? Boss email can be the workplace equivalent of getting a “k” text reply from a Tinder date. One of the features of this is that it would feel wholly inappropriate for an underling to reply to their boss using the same fast terseness. So is the boss email also a power move, a way of asserting dominance? I doubt many bosses sit staring at their employees’ emails trying to figure out what “ok” really meant.”" Wow that's some deep social commentary - similar to Gogol's "overcoat"
internetman55 9y ago
The way to deal with this email style (in my experience) is to read absolutely nothing into any aspect of the communication and respond succinctly to exactly what they said. But that would probably only work if your boss is writing that way because he's actually trying to manage many things and communicate efficiently. If he's doing it as a way to look cool or whatever, he might just get mad at you.
kapauldo 9y ago
Short emails make you sound like a dick. I wish there was a solution.

309 points by ajoy 9y ago

Ok thx

Jeff Bezos is famous for forwarding emails with just a question mark to employees when he receives complaints from customers. https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-receive-a-question-mark-e-mail-from-Jeff-Bezos-at-Amazon-Inc https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-receive-a-question-ma...

albertgoeswoof 9y ago
A senior editor at buzzfeed is not Jeff Bezos

falcolas 9y ago

Perhaps the problem is attempting to review emails at a time when you can't formulate proper responses, i.e. on the phone. If it comes by email, it's probably not urgent enough to justify looking at them at a time when you can't respond. On the flip side, they probably deserve more than a casual glance and a two word response.

rbcgerard 9y ago
Yes - or you get an email about X, but you need to know more about Y to come to a decision on X, so that X email lingers while you wait for info on Y

jasonmaydie 9y ago

Some people get anxiety when email piles up in their mailbox and may spend a considerable amount of time sorting and categorizing their emails, some go as far as making zero inbox a thing. I would hazard to say most people don't care about their inbox. I for one don't mind at all if an email I didn't read festers in my inbox for years, after all if it's not urgent enough to call or physically reach out to me about it it's not that big a deal.

nxsynonym 9y ago
I currently have around 3k unread emails in the gmail box. Granted, most of them are highly unnecessary or don't need a reply. It doesn't bother me one bit. If I need to find a particular message, I'll search for it. If something is important and I missed it, I'll either get an auto-sent reminder or someone will reach out again or in another way. I am not a slave to my email, just like I don't feel the need to pick up my phone every time it rings. Have I missed some time sensitive information? Occasionally. Has it blown my life up and caused a world of hurt? Not once.
gtsteve 9y ago
> it's not urgent enough to call or physically reach out to me about it it's not that big a deal Exactly. If someone has a problem with me taking a couple of hours to get back to an e-mail I say, "you wouldn't send the fire brigade a postcard would you?"
- StavrosK 9y ago
  "Thank you for saving my house from the fire last week. XOXO"
- UncleSlacky 9y ago
  Moss would email them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesx85EHRTo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uesx85EHRTo
petercooper 9y ago
some go as far as making zero inbox a thing. That's me. I am very conscientious with emails. Nearly all get actioned or a reply and I often use it as a to-do list. But I also get both my work and personal inboxes to zero every weekend :-) It definitely makes me feel better as things sitting waiting to be done make me anxious (to the point of getting all the cooking stuff into the dishwasher before sitting and eating a meal :-D)
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

glorkk 9y ago

> Like any good member of the proletariat who wants nothing more than to serve capitalism [...] Never change, Buzzfeed.

hashkb 9y ago

On the flip side, I take my time to write detailed replies with full explanations of issues. Usual reply: "can u hop on a call"

cwilkes 9y ago
Being snarky I would ask you how is that working out for you? I bet on the call your replies are short. So just reverse the order: make your emails short and to the point with the abstract of your reasoning behind it. End with you can discuss in detail on a conference call. I bet no one takes you up on it.
- bshimmin 9y ago
  Sometimes when I write a lovely, thorough, well-crafted email and get a "can u hop on a call 2 discuss" response, I "hop" on that call and simply read out my email. Occasionally I add little pauses to make it sound like I'm not reading, if I can be bothered.

hnrodey 9y ago

Rules for good emails 1. Keep the message as short as necessary but no shorter. 2. Put the most important information at the top of the message. 3. If it email is for an ask, call out from who you need the response and put it at the top of the message. 4. If you need to send a long email with many details, put the most important information at the top (ie. what the reader needs to know) and then fill in the body with details he/she can choose to indulge. Example Hey Jane, I need your input on how to prioritize my current work. Can you provide guidance on where I should focus? Bug XYZ was assigned to me and it's taking longer to complete because we have a dependency on Vendor ABC completing a change to their web service. This is impacting the commitment to my team on Feature 123 because we are near the end of our sprint. Lemme know.

canadianwriter 9y ago
We usually have a lot of CC's. So we use the @ system. Eg. @stacey - can you get me the numbers on whatever?
- alexhutcheson 9y ago
  I just bold the names, which has a similar effect.
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    I try to avoid any formatting beyond ascii. It just makes life harder when people are trying to cut and paste.
    - jdmichal 9y ago
      I use *s surrounding, just like here. Outlook automatically bolds it, but they're still present for unformatted views.
  - hnrodey 9y ago
    Not as much of a problem today given the richness of mobile devices and rich text formatting but manipulating fonts (bold, italic, etc) to draw attention was problematic because people/devices would drop down to plain text formatting so the recipient does not get what the sender thinks they will see.

parenthephobia 9y ago

> I wanted to know, did you always email this way, or did you only start once you became the boss? His answer (over email): “Yes.” I’m going to assume the yes was to the first part of the question and he skimmed over part two. This isn't something to emulate. People who only read the first few words of an email before replying make communication harder for everyone else. Sometimes things can't be accurately summed up in half a sentence.

Bartweiss 9y ago
Answering "yes" to "A or B" questions is a terrible approach - if I had to start defining communication anti-patterns it'd be one of the easiest examples. Saying "always" or "the first one" isn't hard, and actually answers the question.
JoeAltmaier 9y ago
And yet this is ubiquitous. Nearly nobody reads the whole thing, or if they do they respond to only the most interesting part. The rest is ignored. I have a rule: Ask exactly one question in an email. Because asking more doesn't ever work.
- mprovost 9y ago
  That's a great rule - also, always ask the question in the first sentence.
- twobyfour 9y ago
  The trick to asking more than one question is to number them. Dear Ms. Busy Client, In order to complete Project X on time, we need your decisions about the following by end of day Friday, please: 1) How many widgets will be required? 2) Do you prefer the red or the green? 3) If we order the widgets from China instead of Mexico, we can save $10 per widget, but delivery will take twice as long. We believe this trade-off is worthwhile because foo. Please confirm that this is acceptable to you. 4) etc. Thanks, your humble vendor Then if you still don't get an answer, you ask for a meeting or call like you would have to anyway, but at least you have a handy checklist to make it efficient.

lkrubner 9y ago

My experience has been that a lot of people are surprisingly uncomfortable writing. This includes people who have gone to the best universities --- people with excellent educations. They can write well enough to get through school, but they don't enjoy it, and they don't feel they are really expressing themselves in writing. Personally, I feel like my writing skills are better than my verbal skills, so I default to email, because email plays to my strengths. But over the years I've been taught that I'm in the minority on this. Many managers and co-workers greatly prefer to have a conversation. Often, they feel like they are not getting the facts when they engage in written communications. Apparently they need to see my face and read my body language. Apparently this is true even when the subject is deeply technical, like talking about the APIs our microservices use to talk to each other.

dceddia 9y ago
I feel the same way. Recruiters are also bad about this. With email, I have time to think through my response and (maybe more importantly) think of a nice way to say no. On the phone, faced with a salesy fast-talking recruiter, I am definitely at a disadvantage. I'm more likely to be talked into further calls and whatnot. I'm pretty sure they know this.

rwc 9y ago

I think the author suffers from a perfectionism problem. She wants to sent the perfect reply. When asked for advice, she sets a bar that’s much higher in her own head for what the reply should be than what the person asking likely intended. Bosses and CEOs don’t seem to suffer from these anxieties, and have no problem sending back short, decisive, and sometimes imperfect replies.

drb311 9y ago
The key is: 1. Reply now 2. Do the best you can in the time you can spare It's email. If people need more they can ask for it. At least now they know you'll reply.

albertgoeswoof 9y ago

As a manager or senior <anything> a huge part of your job is communication and distributing information, and email is one of, if not, THE core method of doing this. The author has decided to provide poor communication because she can’t handle her inbox. One word replies can be extremely misleading and will cost her more time overall than reading and replying to her emails properly. I would be fuming if I was her boss or worked for her.

jstanley 9y ago
> The author has decided to provide poor communication On the contrary! The author has decided to provide efficient, immediate, communication, instead of vaguely planning to send a more detailed reply later if she maybe gets around to it. If everybody treated email this way it would be 100x more efficient. If her reply doesn't contain the info you need, just reply back asking for the info you need, and she'll reply within minutes.
- albertgoeswoof 9y ago
  But what if you don't know the information you need to know? Or if you're worried about looking incompetent by asking because she always sends such curt replies? Or maybe you're just hacked off that you crafted an email to try to convey a point in a clear, concise manner and she just responded with a one word reply and you have no idea whether she read it and understood it at all
  - jstanley 9y ago
    They all sound like your problems, not hers.
    - albertgoeswoof 9y ago
      They’ll be hers when she’s fired
      - 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

mgv11 9y ago

We had external trainer here some weeks ago and at one point he mentioned(boasted) that he had inbox of 4000+ unread emails. On the last session he wrote his email on the board and said that we can just contact him for further questions and of course no one wrote it down.

gk1 9y ago
I don’t understand why people flaunt their unread counts. To seem important? To me it just says you are indecisive or unorganized.
- buxtehude 9y ago
  The flip side of that is what I sincerely have believed for many many years: I don't understand why people flaunt their read counts. I read all the email from people on my team. I also receive a lot of email from various sources in the organization as well as external sources - and sometimes all I'm looking for is the subject to decide if it's worth my time to open it and read it. I feel that not all of that non-team based email is worth my time opening, reading/scanning, then archiving or deleting - time that adds up over the years: How many days of your life have you spent organizing your inbox so that your number is 0? A stack is a beautiful thing :) If I don't care about it, it goes away with minimal effort after a little time. I don't want to be a slave to my email inbox - and at the same time I value the sources of the incoming emails that I don't always read - I read some just not all - and that's ok with me and I do that when it's socially acceptable (not trying to be a jerk about it).

arbie 9y ago

This article desperately needs a TL;DR.

donquichotte 9y ago
She started writing shorter and more concise emails (but, alas, not shorter and more concise articles) and liked it.
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Spend your time where the money is. Journalists aren't paid at the end of the day for their email word counts... And, probably, neither are you.

throw2016 9y ago

What I have realized is some people are just naturally good at this. They are able to get to the nub of the issue, anticipate a pointless back and forth and get things done. It's not simply an issue of length, its communication and I guess maturity, experience and savvy. Of course if you already have authority then it's no longer a communication thing but a power thing, as things will anyway get done and some are inevitably waiting for opportunities to suck up to you. So no point aping a CEOs style if you are not a CEO.

sbarre 9y ago
Also when you're the boss you can reply however you want and people will make/take the time to figure out the missing details, because they have to. Try those short replies to your boss for a while and see how it goes. ;-)

eitally 9y ago

The issue with standardizing on two word replies is that people will eventually stop writing you in the first place. This can feel good, but it's usually a bad sign, whether you're an IC or a manager.

jstanley 9y ago
She's not saying "don't tell people what they need to know", she's saying "don't agonise over sending the perfect email, just give them the information they need".

EGreg 9y ago

I emailed Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and star of TV’s Shark Tank, because he is known for responding right away to anyone who emails him, and because now I can give this story the headline Really? What's his email? I think I direct-emailed him before at blogmaverick and didn't get a response.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
IncRnd 9y ago
this search: https://www.google.com/search?q=email+mark+cuban https://www.google.com/search?q=email+mark+cuban had this as first hit: https://www.wikihow.com/Contact-Mark-Cuban https://www.wikihow.com/Contact-Mark-Cuban

account0099099 9y ago

This doesn't work. I've gotten many bad reviews, because people thought I was being "curt" or "mean" because I was replying to their question with short replies. None, of my emails were intended to be mean, I just didn't see the point in fluffing up my emails, and only responded with the required information, but I guess people require the fluff or they get their feelings hurt.

mfringel 9y ago
Alternately, your definition of "fluff" was everyone else's definition of "required communication." A short reply can still be ambiguous, which requires clarification, which then wastes time. Given your many bad reviews, do you think it might be worthwhile to revisit your data?
crispyambulance 9y ago
You're right, only the most high-powered people in an organization can get away with terse responses that leave recipients guessing at what their precise intent was. "Fluff" is a highly subjective term. What may be fluff for you could be critical signalling for others. Stripping everything down to the bare-bones of what you (or I) may think answers the request sounds intentionally flippant and dismissive. If we fail to address the recipient in a context they understand and share with us that is taken as an offense. With a little effort, however, it is totally possible to be cogent, compact, AND polite.
vidarh 9y ago
It works, but as a general rule, you need to include more fluff than the person above you in the hierarchy unless you know they're fine with you being shorter. The trick is figuring out just how much more fluff is ok. But what will come across as "curt" or "mean" is if your e-mails are substantially less fluffy than those of your boss or your co-workers. You need to adapt to the style in use in the business, not because it is objectively curt or mean, but because people judge whether or not you're being curt or mean subjectively based on their base of comparison, and that is your co-workers.
- 9y ago

uladzislau 9y ago

Well CEO can do it because she is a CEO. If any employee would use this method it'd be considered poor communication and the person considered as lazy and incompetent.

vidarh 9y ago
You can as a general rule not be as informal as your superior (unless you know the person well enough), but need not be much more formal. Put the most important bits first. Be as brief as possible while still being courteous. Recap at the end, including specifically calling out necessary next steps. My experience is that people often tend to include detail that is only of interest to them, often because they're not certain their request will stand on its own. Only spend time to add information you're certain is necessary (and I know I often err on this); if your manager needs more info to make a decision, they'll ask. People will often be grateful if you spare them the details of things they don't need the details of, as long as you can show you've done your work if/when they do ask. The more they can trust you to have data to back up what you ask for, the less they'll actually ask.

turc1656 9y ago

Why would a link like this be on HN? It's Buzzfeed. The same people that bring you those quizzes like "Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are". I can't take this article seriously and I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to. Although, I do have a new unread email goal. I just assumed I was the world champion. Didn't realize I was already being bested by the guy with 150k unread. That's roughly double mine. I have a long way to go. Need to figure out how to get myself on some more bullshit distribution lists so that I can compete.

froindt 9y ago
>Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are. You just reminded me how glad I am that I aggressively hid every upworthy, clickify, clickhole, and buzzfeed from Facebook. It's somewhat tolerable that way.
snowwrestler 9y ago
I would not blanket-dismiss BuzzFeed. Sure, they publish mostly clickbait, but it's not all crappy quizzes and listicles. They employ some good writers and journalists.
vxNsr 9y ago
Because this specific article is worth a read. You're complaint can be expanded to include the whole internet: Why would you use the internet, the same place that brings you those quizzes like "Answer these food questions and we'll tell you which Power Ranger you are."

splittingTimes 9y ago

I started to follow this approach [1] 6 month ago and it is amazing how much clearer my own thoughts in communication have become. 1. Subjects with keywords. The subject clearly states the purpose of the email, and specifically, what you want them to do with your note. Keywords: ACTION, SIGN, INFO, DECISION, REQUEST, COORD 2. Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). Lead your emails with a short, staccato statement that declares the purpose of the email and action required. The BLUF should quickly answer the five W’s: who, what, where, when, and why. An effective BLUF distills the most important information for the reader. 3. Be economical. Short emails are more effective than long ones, so try to fit all content in one pane, so the recipient doesn’t have to scroll. use active voice, so it’s clear who is doing the action. If an email requires more explanation, you should list background information after the BLUF as bullet points so that recipients can quickly grasp your message. Link to attachments rather than attaching files. This will likely provide the most recent version of a file. Also, the site will verify that the recipient has the right security credentials to see the file, and you don’t inadvertently send a file to someone who isn’t permitted to view it. === [1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...

bshimmin 9y ago
so try to fit all content in one pane, so the recipient doesn’t have to scroll Oh no, have we introduced "the fold" into emails too, after a decade of forlornly trying to persuade people it doesn't exist on the web?
- pc86 9y ago
  If you look at heatmaps of user interaction with webpages, it absolutely does exist.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  Well it sounds like it does exist, in the sense that the whole article and the parent comment's experience suggest brevity has been working for them to maintain attention. Unless you mean trying to pack as much in as possible without exceeding an arbitrary measurement of where the fold is, as opposed to just being very brief and to the point? If so, that does seem to defeat the point and would be inconsistent.

joshuaheard 9y ago

I once heard a CEO's job is to make decisions and communicate them. This article seems to reinforce that. I'm not a CEO, but I try to be as concise as possible when I communicate by email. Two things I do are not mentioned in the article. I always address the recipient by name if possible. And, I always add my signature, which on my computer includes my address and phone number. Addressing the recipient by name gets their attention better. And, having my contact info in every email makes it easy if they want to communicate with me via another medium. Also, I always say Please and Thank you. In terms of email management, I use the Getting Things Done method, which works well for me.

LeoJiWoo 9y ago

Probably should be a disclaimer to articles like this. Doing X like Person Y makes life Z really only works well when you are basically very similar to person Y. Emailing like a CEO works best when you are a CEO, and are above office politics. Probably shouldn't email like a CEO if you aren't one.

danvoell 9y ago

Yes and No on this. One of Bezos' big things is "don't manage by proxy". This feels like a communication proxy. Be natural. If you write novels, learn how to be more direct. I have had a lot of terrible bosses who try to act/write/behave like CEOs.

makecheck 9y ago

I would say, do your best to imagine the receiver’s Inbox and help them. I wish that E-mail clients didn’t give so much control to senders. (Oh, you picked a crappy Subject line so now I need to use that in my list forever? Oh, you rambled for the first 1-2 sentences so now my message preview is useless. Oh, you mark every E-mail “high priority” so now that sort column doesn’t really organize things usefully.)

gregmac 9y ago

I have always disliked the massive over-use of e-mail, and when I first heard "Email is where keystrokes go to die" [0] it really resonated with me. E-mail is temporal, but far too often used for things of long lasting significance. Though it's somewhat of a necessary evil for communicating externally, I don't use it internally for anything more than I have to. Here's my take: Anything long-lived belongs on wiki, ticket system or other shared storage location. E-mail a notification to say there's an update, but the official version doesn't belong archived forever in everyone's inboxes -- well, everyone other than employees who happened to start after it was sent, of course. Quick questions are better done over chat, if for no other reason than the single-line interface tends to encourage single-line questions. Long conversations are better had in person or by video chat. How many times have you been on an e-mail thread that included several angry paragraphs written back and forth because of an incorrect assumption or simple misunderstanding? My ideal interactions start with a chat message or ticket, switch to in-person/video if needed, and document the result (if relevant) in a ticket or wiki page. No e-mail involved. [0] https://jamesclear.com/keystrokes https://jamesclear.com/keystrokes

shadowRAMM 9y ago

I would like to add this bit to anyone attempting this: If you are the CEO you can ask your IT team to check on emails and they jump on it pretty quick. If you don't have that ability then remember the following. Subjects of emails trigger anti-spam. So be choice, sparse, and unique if possible with email subjects. carry on.

Froyoh 9y ago

I have a strong urge to keep unread emails at a minimum. Mark all as read is very handy.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

Here's the next rule for you: DO NOT TOP POST Seriously, posting inline is easier to write and read and makes your email more clear. You don't have to wrangle your words to make it clear what part of their email you're replying to. If you don't need to refer to anything they said, delete the whole email and just put in a couple of words alone. Stop top posting!

amyjess 9y ago
I've worked at four companies over ten years. Everyone at all four companies top posts exclusively. Bottom posting is a good way to be branded "that weirdo who can't follow standard procedure". In the business world, this old Japanese proverb applies: "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  This article is already about changing your email habits. You think the bottom poster is getting stranger looks than the guy who only writes 2 word replies?

polock 9y ago

It seems like dumb. Everyone has their owns style. Don't copy anyone's and make your own character and style.

gk1 9y ago

I think author is missing the point of "emailing like a CEO." It's not about being terse, it's about clarity. Yes, emails with clarity are often short, but not all short emails are clear. I wrote about this just yesterday: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/clarity/ https://www.gkogan.co/blog/clarity/

otterpro 9y ago

Since moving to Slack, my email has been reduced drastically (both in length and also in quantity), and also writing long emails were limited for sake of archiving or recording as part of formality. Slack, or similar platform, allows workers to write shorter messages, as well. However, one downside is that Slack is more chatter-prone, so the message has been shortened, but now there's a lot more chatter/messages going around.

shostack 9y ago
Not only that, but if I see a snippet of a request or chat in my Slack phone notifications, I can't read the whole thing without removing it from my notification queue. Often I get things that I need to get to a desktop to properly respond to. At least with email I can "Mark Unread" or label/put in a folder. I wish Slack had a way to snooze notifications while still letting you read the whole thing.

CASHforGOLD 9y ago

Fucking buzzfeed? Quality source of information.

yuhong 9y ago

I am thinking seriously about Yishan-style CEOs at this point. I wonder how many professional (as opposed to founder) Yishan-style CEOs even exist at this point. Yishan is not a founder-CEO BTW.

sushid 9y ago
What is being a Yishan-style CEO except for the fact that you're not a founder/co-founder? I'm not sure how this is relevant to the article above?
- yuhong 9y ago
  Look up "yishan dehrmann"

akud 9y ago

It sounds like what the author really needs is a chatroom.

ThomaszKrueger 9y ago

When I see the phrase "emailing like a CEO" I imagine mainly not asking for opinions or decisions rather making statements of fact or decisions. For example, I got into the habit of not asking for vacation, rather I say "I am taking time off from day X to day Y", or declaring my design decisions instead of asking for opinions. In the case of asking for time off, my rationale is to avoid making someone spend time evaluating if my request is acceptable.

ChrisArchitect 9y ago

email, still very much the original internet killer app, is mostly crap these days not because it has changed, but because people are so so so bad at it

calimac 9y ago

I got more out of the hacker news comments than the article. The article did however drive my motivation but left me thirsty for tactics. Thanks News.YC.com

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Good read. I cut about 10k emails from my longstanding primary email address. This got me down around 90k emails. I am still trying to unsubscribe from stuff, keep up with deletions, yadda. It seems completely hopeless. I find myself moving to a different email address. Deleting around 9.5k emails there got me down below 500 emails. It is making it increasingly difficult to bother to log back into my old address. So this article is kind of timely for me.

wyclif 9y ago

I don't wanna email like a CEO. I want Inbox Zero for Life: https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html

MichaelMoser123 9y ago

"Let’s call this “boss email.” It’s defined by nearly immediate — but short and terse — replies. The classic two-word email. For underlings, it can be inscrutable. Is that an angry “thanks” or a grateful “thanks”? Does “please update me” imply impatience with you? Boss email can be the workplace equivalent of getting a “k” text reply from a Tinder date. One of the features of this is that it would feel wholly inappropriate for an underling to reply to their boss using the same fast terseness. So is the boss email also a power move, a way of asserting dominance? I doubt many bosses sit staring at their employees’ emails trying to figure out what “ok” really meant.”" Wow that's some deep social commentary - similar to Gogol's "overcoat"

internetman55 9y ago

The way to deal with this email style (in my experience) is to read absolutely nothing into any aspect of the communication and respond succinctly to exactly what they said. But that would probably only work if your boss is writing that way because he's actually trying to manage many things and communicate efficiently. If he's doing it as a way to look cool or whatever, he might just get mad at you.

kapauldo 9y ago

Short emails make you sound like a dick. I wish there was a solution.