6 ms·

How much do you want to bet most people will read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance? Hell, I've learned not to ask more than on

How much do you want to bet most people will read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance? Hell, I've learned not to ask more than one question in an email. The first one is the only one to get answered.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago
I've definitely been that person to ask four bulleted questions in an e-mail and then send a reply asking where the answers for the other three are after I get a response that only addresses one of them.
evancox100 5y ago
If you put a list of bulleted, single-sentence questions and clearly state at the top something like “please answer the below questions” you will get your answers. Just have to make it really explicit and obvious that you expect each one answered
- XorNot 5y ago
  Managers, or really anybody higher then you in the hierarchy, will still ignore the rest of the questions. Remember there's no consequences that they can perceive for only sending you a third of an answer.
jodrellblank 5y ago
This is so often said, and so bloody ridiculous a state of affairs for the information technology industry. How hard would it be to have a shared todo list where the team can put every blocking question which needs answering, and everyone who needs to answer can either do that or delegate the decision or approve skipping it? (And I don't mean a sluggish Jira / Electron / Teams / helpdesk which needs 50,000 fields entered to raise a ticket, either). I suspect it isn't done because nobody can usefully make all the decisions which other people want to push off onto other people, it would take inhuman amounts of time and attention. And that part of the reason "answering only the first question" happens is to drop most questions on the floor, with the idea that important ones will be raised again, as a way to filter out the huge number of unimportant questions. And as a way to deal with the fact that answering one question can change all subsequent questions - if the answer is "that's waiting on finance approval" then it might be about to have a budget cut, or be cancelled, or be delayed until a new financial year, and answering other questions is a waste of time. Still, for when the other questions are needed, it should be something computer people, programmers, IT specialists, can have machines keep track of without absolutely awful interfaces - and maybe involving automated email and replies if needed, like forum posts and newsgroups have had for decades.
- XorNot 5y ago
  You've sort of hit on the missing interface in both email and (in my experience) pull requests: I need a system to keep track of the list of things I want to send, but keep it private to me so as it's dealt with by the other party, the next item goes out. (for PRs its the joy of having a sequence of dependent changes, and needing to make sure people review them step by step even though the whole packet is done).
- lazide 5y ago
  You can’t solve a lack of executive function/decision making capacity (which is what we’re referring to) by making more work/queuing up bullshit work. It will result in everyone just ignoring anything that smells like coming from such a system. Since (almost) no one wants to admit they don’t have enough decision making capacity or can’t prioritize using it for whatever you’re asking (at least now a days it seems, since someone will post them saying they don’t care on social media and they’ll get fired), you will often see defacto rate limiting or pushback in other ways. Common ways you’ll see in real life: - only responding to the one item they want to respond to. - ever increasing delays in responses or ‘missed emails’ (when you try again they’ll respond) - half responses which don’t actually address the problem or answer your question (but are easy to generate). - redirection to another - hard to reach - authority even if not appropriate (as they aren’t spending the time to figure out what your actual question is) - straw manning your question/request as something else they already have an answer to and then answering that. - adding your question/request to a backlog they aren’t responsible for and then ignoring it forever since it’s now ‘on the list’ - making up increasingly more complicated paperwork/procedure hoops with increasingly less pleasant user experiences And many more. For non-decision making backlogs/overloads, there are also the - ‘decades long queue’ method of shedding load like the old eastern bloc (and some healthcare systems) - ‘you need a permit’ (but there is no actual perform form) -‘we only work during (impossible hours here)’ etc. It all boils down to they can’t care enough to get you want you want, so you either have to make them care (which will be met with generally well earned hostility), or find a way to get them to care (which may be impossible). In many countries, getting someone to care requires a bribe.
  - yesenadam 5y ago
mpalczewski 5y ago
Frequently the cause is too many bullet points.
soneca 5y ago
I agree, but I don’t think is necessarily the “first” bullet point or question that gets attention. It’s the one the reader cares most (positively or negatively), or it’s easier to understand/answer.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> ...read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance? Oh hell yes, this is definitely a thing with lots of people. It's one of those WTF realizations that everyone who works in a corporate environment gets slapped in the face with really hard. There are certain people for which you MUST give 1, maybe 2 sentences at a maximum, address them by name, AND, make sure that they're the only person in the "to:" field. Anything different and you risk ghosting or first-thing-only response. If there's other folks in the cc who I know may actually read for context, I will add a '"*** details ***"' separator after a few blank lines and then write up normal paragraphs. I know the "details" stuff will get ignored by the target, but that's OK. It's just there for reference and for others who may chime in.
- dheera 5y ago
  Also I auto-filter bcc'ed e-mails and if your e-mail has a tracking pixel in it (e.g. from Superhuman or some such), it will get deprioritized because I don't believe in privacy invasion attempts. (Also, your tracking pixel will be blocked so it won't work anyway.)
- Aerroon 5y ago
  Perhaps those people have just read too many emails in the past that ended up being a waste of their time? Over time they learned to glance at things and predict what the rest of the email is going to say. Think about those download websites where you have to find the download link in the middle of all the ads that are masquerading as download buttons. There's a lot of information on those pages, but people become really adept at spotting the real download button. The rest of the information gets ignored. I think this is why some people insist on verbal communication when you're trying to teach them something. If they get a text guide then they will gloss over things and skip steps leading to failure. With verbal communication you're effectively there to keep them at least mildly focused so that they don't gloss over things.
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    > Perhaps those people have just read too many emails in the past that ended up being a waste of their time? I am sure that's often the case but I still find it rude and dismissive. In the end it doesn't really matter for me as long as I can get my point/request across in a sentence or two (and cover my ass with an "optional" details section). You're absolutely right that voice or face-to-face is essential for certain communication.
nathanwh 5y ago
I’m not trying to out myself as an unnuanced consumer of communication, but I literally did just that reading the parent comment. I wonder what is the percentage of the HN audience that did that
88913527 5y ago
It's easier to consider this question with empathy: imagine times where you replied to emails partially, answering some (one), but not all questions. Ask yourself why you did a partial reply. Then, when you ask questions of others, apply those learnings. For me, I tend to 'jump' to the first answer that comes to mind, without reading the full nuance, likely because I'm optimizing at replying sooner, so I can move onto the next task, because I have many tasks I need to do. I quickly pattern match and move on.
- tharkun__ 5y ago
  imagine times where you replied to emails partially It will be hard for someone that always replies to the first thing only to empathize with this but: This has literally never happened to me. As in, I have never replied partially to something in an email. You will get an answer to each of your items. Granted, you may not get the answer you were looking for but I will answer each and every one, even if it's just a "I will have to look into this one and get back to you" so that the other 6 items can get answered right away. Why do the thorough people always have to empathize and not the other way around?
  - 88913527 5y ago
    I don't think this is practically much different then answering one thing. If you give one answer and 3 "I'll get back to you on that"'s-- this creates a promise of a future asynchronous answer, which is only as good as your word. People often have too many tasks, so to get those remaining items on your queue, they'll have to ask you again. As the recipient, it's more challenging to receive the future promise of an answer with no SLA.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      I would be to differ. To me, there is a large difference between just ignoring 6 out of 7 questions I asked you or you telling me that you do not know the answer right now but will get back to me. I agree that if there's no explicitly stated SLA and no implicit SLA given the relationship history between the two of us (e.g. I might know you're usually going to get back to me within 24 hours on such items), then this is practically the same. I do not operate under such circumstances though. If I tell you that I will get back to you, then I will get back to you within a reasonable time frame and you will know from our previous interactions that I'm good for it in most cases and that it's totally OK for you to ask again after a day because I might have forgotten. I'm not perfect. Since this was an example answer only, it is also possible that for one of your 7 questions the answer will simply be that I cannot get that answer to you within any reasonable amount of time at this point because of other priorities I have and that you should find someone else or I might point you towards someone else. In any case, you will have all of your 7 points answered. I won't just ignore them.
dirtside 5y ago
A major factor in this is a lack of willingness to take the time to understand something, possibly rooted in a meta-failure: not understanding that it takes time to understand things! There's various motivating forces that impel us to race along to the next thing instead of taking a little bit to absorb something, think about it, or discuss it.
evouga 5y ago
I’m rapidly approaching the “email singularity” where it would take me more time to answer one email than the average time between incoming emails. If I receive an email and it’s something I can quickly answer on my phone while waiting for the bus etc., I’ll do so and you’ll get a quick answer. If the email requires me to sit down and compose a long response (or worse, read a paper, or find and run some code) the email gets put on a priority queue to deal with during dedicated email-answering time. If I receive an email with multiple questions, and one of them I can answer quickly, I might fire off a partial answer (under the theory that a partial answer now is preferable to a complete answer much later).
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  When doing the latter, do you at least explicitly acknowledge that there are other questions you have ignored and may or may not come back to?
TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Yes, it's very strange. I had this recently with something I wanted to order online. I asked two questions, the second was answered, the first was ignored. So I had to send a second email to ask the first question again. I'm really curious if it's a symptom of limited modern attention spans, or if you'd find the same issue in vintage hand-written letters.
- bentcorner 5y ago
  IMO, there's two things that make this harder than it should be: 1. People tend to skim and a question could be lost even in a two-sentence paragraph. 2. Email's structure means people tend to reply "at the tip" and branching conversations are difficult to understand. Contributing to this latter problem are: a. SMTP (to/cc are too flexible, each message is it's own "thing") b. POP (deep conversations are just a stack of messages some people may not have the "original" and can't easily reply higher up the tree without breaking client threading) c. Email client visualization of message threads are generally bad. I haven't seen a single client do this well. Outlook can, but out of the box has a very "flat" view. --- So, people tend to read at the bottom and if someone missed something early in a thread you have no chance of getting it addressed a few messages in. IMO something more akin to newsgroups or even reddit/HN tree-view threads could be a better fit for business discussions, but I haven't seen anybody try it.
jopsen 5y ago
Nah, I think people will pick the bullet point that suits them best, ignore the rest, and drop all nuance.. - Don't pick the first bullet point, pick the best :)

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

I've definitely been that person to ask four bulleted questions in an e-mail and then send a reply asking where the answers for the other three are after I get a response that only addresses one of them.

evancox100 5y ago

If you put a list of bulleted, single-sentence questions and clearly state at the top something like “please answer the below questions” you will get your answers. Just have to make it really explicit and obvious that you expect each one answered

XorNot 5y ago
Managers, or really anybody higher then you in the hierarchy, will still ignore the rest of the questions. Remember there's no consequences that they can perceive for only sending you a third of an answer.

jodrellblank 5y ago

This is so often said, and so bloody ridiculous a state of affairs for the information technology industry. How hard would it be to have a shared todo list where the team can put every blocking question which needs answering, and everyone who needs to answer can either do that or delegate the decision or approve skipping it? (And I don't mean a sluggish Jira / Electron / Teams / helpdesk which needs 50,000 fields entered to raise a ticket, either). I suspect it isn't done because nobody can usefully make all the decisions which other people want to push off onto other people, it would take inhuman amounts of time and attention. And that part of the reason "answering only the first question" happens is to drop most questions on the floor, with the idea that important ones will be raised again, as a way to filter out the huge number of unimportant questions. And as a way to deal with the fact that answering one question can change all subsequent questions - if the answer is "that's waiting on finance approval" then it might be about to have a budget cut, or be cancelled, or be delayed until a new financial year, and answering other questions is a waste of time. Still, for when the other questions are needed, it should be something computer people, programmers, IT specialists, can have machines keep track of without absolutely awful interfaces - and maybe involving automated email and replies if needed, like forum posts and newsgroups have had for decades.

XorNot 5y ago
You've sort of hit on the missing interface in both email and (in my experience) pull requests: I need a system to keep track of the list of things I want to send, but keep it private to me so as it's dealt with by the other party, the next item goes out. (for PRs its the joy of having a sequence of dependent changes, and needing to make sure people review them step by step even though the whole packet is done).
lazide 5y ago
You can’t solve a lack of executive function/decision making capacity (which is what we’re referring to) by making more work/queuing up bullshit work. It will result in everyone just ignoring anything that smells like coming from such a system. Since (almost) no one wants to admit they don’t have enough decision making capacity or can’t prioritize using it for whatever you’re asking (at least now a days it seems, since someone will post them saying they don’t care on social media and they’ll get fired), you will often see defacto rate limiting or pushback in other ways. Common ways you’ll see in real life: - only responding to the one item they want to respond to. - ever increasing delays in responses or ‘missed emails’ (when you try again they’ll respond) - half responses which don’t actually address the problem or answer your question (but are easy to generate). - redirection to another - hard to reach - authority even if not appropriate (as they aren’t spending the time to figure out what your actual question is) - straw manning your question/request as something else they already have an answer to and then answering that. - adding your question/request to a backlog they aren’t responsible for and then ignoring it forever since it’s now ‘on the list’ - making up increasingly more complicated paperwork/procedure hoops with increasingly less pleasant user experiences And many more. For non-decision making backlogs/overloads, there are also the - ‘decades long queue’ method of shedding load like the old eastern bloc (and some healthcare systems) - ‘you need a permit’ (but there is no actual perform form) -‘we only work during (impossible hours here)’ etc. It all boils down to they can’t care enough to get you want you want, so you either have to make them care (which will be met with generally well earned hostility), or find a way to get them to care (which may be impossible). In many countries, getting someone to care requires a bribe.
- yesenadam 5y ago

mpalczewski 5y ago

Frequently the cause is too many bullet points.

soneca 5y ago

I agree, but I don’t think is necessarily the “first” bullet point or question that gets attention. It’s the one the reader cares most (positively or negatively), or it’s easier to understand/answer.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> ...read your first bullet point, ignore the rest, and drop all the nuance? Oh hell yes, this is definitely a thing with lots of people. It's one of those WTF realizations that everyone who works in a corporate environment gets slapped in the face with really hard. There are certain people for which you MUST give 1, maybe 2 sentences at a maximum, address them by name, AND, make sure that they're the only person in the "to:" field. Anything different and you risk ghosting or first-thing-only response. If there's other folks in the cc who I know may actually read for context, I will add a '"*** details ***"' separator after a few blank lines and then write up normal paragraphs. I know the "details" stuff will get ignored by the target, but that's OK. It's just there for reference and for others who may chime in.

dheera 5y ago
Also I auto-filter bcc'ed e-mails and if your e-mail has a tracking pixel in it (e.g. from Superhuman or some such), it will get deprioritized because I don't believe in privacy invasion attempts. (Also, your tracking pixel will be blocked so it won't work anyway.)
Aerroon 5y ago
Perhaps those people have just read too many emails in the past that ended up being a waste of their time? Over time they learned to glance at things and predict what the rest of the email is going to say. Think about those download websites where you have to find the download link in the middle of all the ads that are masquerading as download buttons. There's a lot of information on those pages, but people become really adept at spotting the real download button. The rest of the information gets ignored. I think this is why some people insist on verbal communication when you're trying to teach them something. If they get a text guide then they will gloss over things and skip steps leading to failure. With verbal communication you're effectively there to keep them at least mildly focused so that they don't gloss over things.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  > Perhaps those people have just read too many emails in the past that ended up being a waste of their time? I am sure that's often the case but I still find it rude and dismissive. In the end it doesn't really matter for me as long as I can get my point/request across in a sentence or two (and cover my ass with an "optional" details section). You're absolutely right that voice or face-to-face is essential for certain communication.

nathanwh 5y ago

I’m not trying to out myself as an unnuanced consumer of communication, but I literally did just that reading the parent comment. I wonder what is the percentage of the HN audience that did that

88913527 5y ago

It's easier to consider this question with empathy: imagine times where you replied to emails partially, answering some (one), but not all questions. Ask yourself why you did a partial reply. Then, when you ask questions of others, apply those learnings. For me, I tend to 'jump' to the first answer that comes to mind, without reading the full nuance, likely because I'm optimizing at replying sooner, so I can move onto the next task, because I have many tasks I need to do. I quickly pattern match and move on.

tharkun__ 5y ago
imagine times where you replied to emails partially It will be hard for someone that always replies to the first thing only to empathize with this but: This has literally never happened to me. As in, I have never replied partially to something in an email. You will get an answer to each of your items. Granted, you may not get the answer you were looking for but I will answer each and every one, even if it's just a "I will have to look into this one and get back to you" so that the other 6 items can get answered right away. Why do the thorough people always have to empathize and not the other way around?
- 88913527 5y ago
  I don't think this is practically much different then answering one thing. If you give one answer and 3 "I'll get back to you on that"'s-- this creates a promise of a future asynchronous answer, which is only as good as your word. People often have too many tasks, so to get those remaining items on your queue, they'll have to ask you again. As the recipient, it's more challenging to receive the future promise of an answer with no SLA.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    I would be to differ. To me, there is a large difference between just ignoring 6 out of 7 questions I asked you or you telling me that you do not know the answer right now but will get back to me. I agree that if there's no explicitly stated SLA and no implicit SLA given the relationship history between the two of us (e.g. I might know you're usually going to get back to me within 24 hours on such items), then this is practically the same. I do not operate under such circumstances though. If I tell you that I will get back to you, then I will get back to you within a reasonable time frame and you will know from our previous interactions that I'm good for it in most cases and that it's totally OK for you to ask again after a day because I might have forgotten. I'm not perfect. Since this was an example answer only, it is also possible that for one of your 7 questions the answer will simply be that I cannot get that answer to you within any reasonable amount of time at this point because of other priorities I have and that you should find someone else or I might point you towards someone else. In any case, you will have all of your 7 points answered. I won't just ignore them.

dirtside 5y ago

A major factor in this is a lack of willingness to take the time to understand something, possibly rooted in a meta-failure: not understanding that it takes time to understand things! There's various motivating forces that impel us to race along to the next thing instead of taking a little bit to absorb something, think about it, or discuss it.

evouga 5y ago

I’m rapidly approaching the “email singularity” where it would take me more time to answer one email than the average time between incoming emails. If I receive an email and it’s something I can quickly answer on my phone while waiting for the bus etc., I’ll do so and you’ll get a quick answer. If the email requires me to sit down and compose a long response (or worse, read a paper, or find and run some code) the email gets put on a priority queue to deal with during dedicated email-answering time. If I receive an email with multiple questions, and one of them I can answer quickly, I might fire off a partial answer (under the theory that a partial answer now is preferable to a complete answer much later).

Cederfjard 5y ago
When doing the latter, do you at least explicitly acknowledge that there are other questions you have ignored and may or may not come back to?

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Yes, it's very strange. I had this recently with something I wanted to order online. I asked two questions, the second was answered, the first was ignored. So I had to send a second email to ask the first question again. I'm really curious if it's a symptom of limited modern attention spans, or if you'd find the same issue in vintage hand-written letters.

bentcorner 5y ago
IMO, there's two things that make this harder than it should be: 1. People tend to skim and a question could be lost even in a two-sentence paragraph. 2. Email's structure means people tend to reply "at the tip" and branching conversations are difficult to understand. Contributing to this latter problem are: a. SMTP (to/cc are too flexible, each message is it's own "thing") b. POP (deep conversations are just a stack of messages some people may not have the "original" and can't easily reply higher up the tree without breaking client threading) c. Email client visualization of message threads are generally bad. I haven't seen a single client do this well. Outlook can, but out of the box has a very "flat" view. --- So, people tend to read at the bottom and if someone missed something early in a thread you have no chance of getting it addressed a few messages in. IMO something more akin to newsgroups or even reddit/HN tree-view threads could be a better fit for business discussions, but I haven't seen anybody try it.

jopsen 5y ago

Nah, I think people will pick the bullet point that suits them best, ignore the rest, and drop all nuance.. - Don't pick the first bullet point, pick the best :)