Your Long Emails Are Killing Your Productivity!

If you like to write, and consider yourself organized, you may consider it a badge of honor that you can write long, detailed, well-organized emails about many topics. So this short article might rub you the wrong way.

But I’m here to tell you: STOP IT!

Stop writing those long, bullet-pointed, well-documented emails, with important items italicized and bolded, and spacing “just so.” They are killing your productivity.

No matter how well you organize them, long emails are hard on absolutely everyone in their path. Firstly, yours!

Problem #1: They Take Longer to Write!

For starters, while it may seem convenient to mix together several items into one long missive, it takes a lot of time to compose long emails.

You might have details handy for one or two items, but other items can take extra time to flesh out and research — time that you could have used to send out shorter emails on the other subjects you have already completed.

This unnecessarily holds up the other tasks that are ready to go.

Problem #2: They Don’t Get Read!

Everyone’s busy! No one wants to read long emails, no matter how detailed and well-organized you may write them.

Most often what happens is people skim long emails, and all the special details and nuances you spent all that time writing?

Lost!

Literally you are wasting your time writing long emails because people simply don’t read them well.

Problem #3: Things Get Missed!

Because people don’t take time to read your entire long email, important things usually get missed.

That means they might respond to one or two items, but the other twelve? They will ignore.

That necessitates you writing another follow-up email asking them about the missed items.

This creates a monster email thread that is convoluted and confusing! And it becomes a nightmare to find specific things within long emails too!

As time goes by the email thread snowballs into a gigantic tsunami of words! Good luck finding anything in that!

Problem #4: It’s Hard to Keep Track of Everything!

Because long emails are so, well, long, and because they often mix several things together, it means that it’s very hard to keep track of each agenda item.

It’s hard for you, and it’s hard for your recipient.

If you simply delete completed items, it gets confusing for everyone to realize what’s been accomplished.

If you strike-through completed items, it’s ugly and hard to read.

Can you see the problems here?

The Solution: Short, Targeted Emails, One Subject Per Email!

While it may seem counterintuitive at first, breaking your long emails down into several shorter emails will skyrocket productivity and make it easier for everyone to get things done faster.

Here’s some advantages:

• If you stick to just one subject per email, your emails can be short and concise. Everyone loves a short, clear message!
• Short emails will be read completely! So things don’t get missed as easily.
• One subject per email makes it easy to keep track of things — you can search by subject in your email software, and the subject lines will reveal what each email is about.
• Once completed, a short email thread stops. There’s no crossing out finished items and tagging more and more information into a monster long email — that’s a thing of the past!

Conclusion

You will do everyone in your organization a favor if you simply stop writing long emails. Make your emails short, concise, and to the point, and include only one subject per email.

You will thank yourself, and your recipients will too!

See my other articles on how to write effective emails for more productivity tips.