How to Make Me Hate Your Emails Less

Receiving emails sucks. Most of them foretell obligation or are things you supposedly unsubscribed from three months earlier. Here are a list of tips to make me hate your emails less.

1. Make the subject descriptive

I will post cress seeds through the letterbox of the next person who sends me an email with the subjects:

Give me as much information as possible in the subject. I should be able to roughly anticipate the email contents from the subject. For instance:

2. Include as much as possible in the first email

Do not make me have a whole conversation with you. I do not want to have a whole conversation with you. That involves opening my inbox again and seeing all the things I am ignoring. Presumably, you also do not enjoy emails. Let’s make things easier by avoiding more emails.

If you want to arrange a meeting with me, tell me when you are available. For example:

Hi Tristan,
Could we arrange a meeting to talk about xyz?
I am available next week on:

See? Now we do not have to back-and-forth. I can simply respond with the time (or calendar event) I want. Two emails. No unnecessary interaction.

3. Don’t bury information

Make things easier on both yourself and everyone else. Please do not make me trawl through a paragraph for the most important information. You do not need to enclose everything in “Could you possibly maybe if it isn’t too much hassle do x for me?”. You can just ask the thing. We are all adults; we know you are not a horrible person. Well, maybe you are, but we still have to answer your email anyway.

Similarly, if you have a list of things to tell me, put them in a list. It is easier to find.

Here are my details:

I hope that helps!

Enter your search text in the box above

Select a result to preview