Rules for Email

Ever since joining corporate America post-graduation, email has become my worst enemy. To get through the day, maintain inbox zero, and keep my sanity, I’ve come up with a few good rules to follow when “doing email”.

1. Five sentences or less

If you can’t communicate an idea to someone(s) in five sentences or less, just call them or setup a meeting. On the flip side, if you get an email from someone that looks more like a novel than a summarized, well thought out message — archive it. If it’s urgent, the sender will come get you. If it’s not, you’ll have saved yourself a whole lot of time.

2. No grandstanding

Email grandstanding is when you blast out an email to as many people as you think may be interested in what you have to say, then CC their bosses, all directs of their bosses, sometimes (if they’re feeling ballsy) their bosses’ bosses, and possibly a few people from the marketing department. Grandstanding is especially prevalent in large corporations where managers spend most of their day in an Outlook inbox, and little work is actually accomplished.

This practice exists because come time for performance reviews, when the HR system sends an email out to your peers with your name in it requesting they fill out a feedback survey evaluating your performance, your peers who spend their hours at work in their inbox will think to themselves — “Oh John? He’s always busy working on stuff. And it’s stuff the whole company cares about too! He’s a real killer. We need more guys like John around this place.”

Bravo for figuring out how to do nothing and make bonus every year, but fuck you for spamming my inbox. People who matter will see right through this, and eventually the jig will be up for all the office grandstanders.

3. Broker peace. Kill the flamewars.

As much fun as it is to argue on the Internet, not much comes out of it (other than a not-insignificant amount of lols). However, at work there’s no room for a Reddit-esq flamewar. When your inbox is being lit up, take the higher ground and don’t engage (if you follow the five sentence rule, it’ll be hard to do so regardless). Instead, email all participants (not everyone on the thread), acknowledge there’s some strong feeling about the matter, and send out a meeting invite for further discussion. It makes you seem like you took the high ground and establishes you as a leader among your peers.

4. The longer your signature, the less important you are.

Next time you get an email from someone, take a look at their signature. From my experience, people on the bottom of the food chain have the longest email signatures. Pictures, colors, 24pt font — I’ve seen it all. Chances are if you need to bring that much attention to the title of your job, your job doesn’t actually matter. For goodness sake, just take a look at how Steve Jobs ended some of his emails.

Be more like Steve — and less like that annoying customer support representative who ends his “high priority” emails with an email signature as long as this post.

Using these rules as a guide, I believe you’ll be able to keep your sanity in corporate America. You’ll be in a position to focus on what’s important, and also possibly even establish yourself as someone who’s above the fray.

Good luck.