Why Am I So Stupid But Still Smarter Than Your Average Emailer?

Tom Zappia
The Haven
Published in
2 min readMay 22, 2022

Is there some unforeseen reason why what feels like more people than not, are incapable of processing received emails and/or eager to send such unnecessary ones?

I. Unnecessary Emails

  1. “+ @ whoever for visibility” — NEVER NEEDED
  2. Tagging someone to answer a question when they ARE ALREADY on the email chain. They obviously know they should respond if they are the one who knows the answer. If they do not respond, it’s not your problem.
  3. “Looping someone in” who is ALREADY ON THE THREAD.
  4. Follow ups that are sent waaaaay to soon. Never ever should there be a follow up email the same day or really even the next day. Even though I am a person who is constantly checking emails, and if I know the answer or response, usually respond fairly quickly, I am still under the impression that immediate responses are few and far between. And if there isn’t a response within an hour or so, the recipient probably is waiting for a response/approval/info from another party, in order to be able to respond effectively. NEVER should you be following up on an email only a couple of hours later.
  5. Confirmation emails that are only confirming that the question or information has been passed along/forwarded to a different party, and a response is being awaited— UNECESAARY. Just respond back once you have the answer or info that the sender needs.

And to all the people that do take days to respond or just never respond unless someone on the chain tags or reminds them to — WTF? Or my favorite — “sorry, this got buried in my inbox.” How? I love organization. I’m constantly checking my inbox. I have different folders for different types of emails. If I don’t know the answer I mark it as unread and go back to it the same day. Come on people!!!

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