YSK these e-mail tips

Seriously.. and oftentimes just combining both works better. "Hey sorry I'm late, I appreciate you all being patient" or "Hope that all makes sense, but please feel free to ask any questions if they come up"

I’m so happy to see a sane comment at the top here. So many of these are just stupid and border on alpha male don’t take not shit or admit fault crap.

"Thank you for your patience" gives me such a visceral reaction, lol

Agreed! It’s like…. You know we’re emailing other people too right? Not everyone is a delicate fucking flower that needs to be coddled. Yes there are better ways to word stuff, but typing as a medium often just leaves too much up to interpretation. A difficult conversation should be discussed on a call.

The last one is particularly important if you like to eat.

I will also attach old emails rather than repeat myself.

Our company "russian anthem starts playing"

“Per my last email…”

good ‘ol corporate clap back

I agree, but, you'd be surprised how many people find many of these seemingly innocuous distinctions offensive (if only a little bit). For example, I was once chided by HR for saying 'no problem' during a seemingly friendly discussion.

Most? I can definitely see "when can I expect an update?", that one's terrible. "It would be best if we" sounds pretty self-assured without a modifier such as "in my opinion" (which is what the original option was doing). "Nice catch!" is also a bit too honeyed and casual as well. But I don't see a problem with the rest of them.

it's a guide to being a soulless corporate cog

Yeah seriously, there's nothing wrong with admitting you made a mistake.

Yeah, there are some good ones and some terrible ones.

Also reading the whole thing, it makes it sound like you should never apologize. I see it becoming real toxic real quick.

Yeah some of these sound straight up aggressive lol

My go to is usually like "I just wanted to touch base on [topic]" if I want an update on something without seeming like I'm pressuring them.

You may see it as forced formality, but these tips were created by a person with ADHD to help others who struggle with setting boundaries, especially with time. The creator is a Millennial comic artist. It helps me be more myself when I respect my schedule and don't over-apologize, but I can understand that not everyone sees it the same way.

Also, carefully laying thoughts out in text for 40 minutes takes a lot less time than explaining it meaningfully to multiple people, probably more than once if it was important enough. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.

To me calls are more about efficiency, I prefer to have a call and talk through a complex issue for 15 min instead of needing 5+ back and forth emails over an afternoon to get everyone on the same page.

Yes, either that or "I haven't thought this through well enough that I can explain it in writing, so please let me fumble through an oral explanation and—in all likelihood—waste your time".

Or, "I'm dyslectic and would prefer to talk rather than write", which is fair enough, I think.

Some of them are great and can even make things less awkward for the other person. The "small error" one for example. The "I have an appointment" one is necessary when talking with higher ups in big companies who completely devalue your needs. But some are assholish, yeah.

Agreed, it is not always prudent to be overly assertive.

For example, I may be working with someone else on a project that is not time sensitive, but for my own planning I like to stay up to date on progress. I absolutely would reach out to someone with a "Just checking in, how are things going with X" because, well, that's honestly all I'm doing. Checking in.

Meanwhile, saying "When can I expect an update?" is almost like saying "I don't think you're going fast enough and I'm getting impatient," which sends the wrong type of message, makes me seem like a hardass, and might impact the quality of work if the other person suddenly feels rushed.

I totally agree, bottom left one screams of project manager that scheduled too much in your sprint and they're pressuring you to finish everything asap

Also it depends on if the person holding you up is the client or some other employee at your company.

Often it is the client the holding you up. In which case the best thing to do is send them an email about a week before the actual target date just to remind them, especially if they've done this before.

Yup, I just talk the way I want to talk.

I talk with my own character, politely and everyone is happy.

I don't understand what businesses some people are working in that you'd need to be so careful with how you talk.

I work for a global multi billion dollar company and never had issues, plus the higher ups don't even talk like this in meetings unless it's some official email or something.

This is borderline toxic management lol.

Good luck finding a good workplace in a capitalist society.

This is a fantastic comment, thank you. I think it's fascinating that there is such a mixed reaction, and your explanation certainly helps me make sense of it.

Agreed. The former sounds like "How's it coming?" and the latter sounds like "What's taking so long?"

One tip here is to remove "just" as it will come across as more confident. The use of "just" is often unnecessary and can come across as apologetic.

Instead of either, I like asking if they have any further questions.

Totally agree. I think for me these are more about increasing confidence and assertiveness in communication rather than just better wording.

I write emails for an hour sometimes. Some things you want to have in writing so you can point back to it later. I work in a government position and for a lot of the folks I deal with I need to be able to show I told them this on this date and the trail that goes along with it to be able to take action on what they did that they shouldn't have or didn't do that they should have. That hour on an email could prevent or shorten tons of meetings and headaches. Just depends on your job.

"Ping me, ping me!"

I don't like it, and will always apologize if it is my fault.

Honestly, I think its terrible advice lol. This is the type of shit that makes people not like management.

The thank you for your patience one has always rubbed me wrong.

I wouldn't say wrong - it is disrespectful since I wasn't patient by choice. You fucked up, you own it. But then I'm not a native speaker, maybe it just feels that way in my country.

"Thank you for your patience" should really come after an apology for the delay, depending on the reason. Owning up to the fact that you aren't on schedule is not a failing at all, and acknowledging that your correspondent is dealing with the situation gracefully just serves to further smooth things over.

Being straightforward is fine, but often times being straightforward comes with an air of superiority. It's fine in a boss setting, but you should be careful giving commands to people who don't answer to you as it shows a lack of respect. People just want to be treated nicely and feel like they have a choice.

Polite society is to blame. Being passive aggressive and fake is how we’ve learned to communicate in professional settings.

Tone is difficult to convey in email. Business normies are presumptuous and oversensitive with communication.

Always happy to help!

I'm absolutely using this moving forward.....

Bingo!

A man after my heart.

I think it's really interesting how different people find these dickish or awesome. I wonder if it depends on the context and the source of the email?

In an email to friends, I could see these coming off as rude. But at least in my region, they come off as professional and concise.

I feel like "always happy to help" is one of those London Lies (tm)(how do I do superscript?) ...that might not work in another environment that's not so superficially polite while simultaneously devastating rude. If the sender is in London, "always happy to help" can be transliterated as " I did your work for you, now fuck right off"

It’s also a generational thing: everyone around me up to the mid 30s uses “no problem” to indicate that the request/help was of little bother so the requester shouldn’t feel bad for asking, which can sometimes annoy the people who say “you’re welcome” instead.

“Happy to help”, to me, suggests a greater eagerness than just being kind.

I don't get why its bad to say that/why people would take it the wrong way?

happy to help is such a garbage line.

I hate people doing that. It means that they can’t be bothered to think about their problem and what it actually is that they want from me.

If you can’t put it in words, you can’t put it in words. Changing the medium from mail to sound won’t help. Thinking will.

This was created by a comic creator with ADHD. A lot of these are helpful for people with loose time boundaries.

Depends on who says it and whether they document it after. I do meet up to discuss when I have a lot of questions that will likely lead to questions, but I summarize it in a reply to the email so it is in writing.

A past jerk of a boss used the same phrase to mean what you said, but since he didn't put anything in writing none of the rants he called discussions mattered as he couldn't use them against me.

I hope you get some good answers - have you tried posting in !nostupidquestions@lemmy.world? They have 20k subscribers and you are likely to get some tips.

!nostupidquestions@lemmy.world

@mikkL I've used Getting to Inbox Zero via @jilleduffy task template for Todoist for many years. I can't find a link to the template anymore, but Todoist has an article that covers the basics.

One of the key parts for me is spending time each morning reviewing incoming email and either addressing it immediately, or adding it to Todoist to address later.

@ickplant

Honestly, it depends on what you are doing, but there are definitely ways to keep things organized when receiving a lot of emails.

Just to give an example of my own job (I receive 50-100 or so emails per day), I use Outlook and make use of rules. Within my inbox, I have specific folders for each of the teams I work with, I have a folder for company-wide emails, I have folders for specific tasks I perform, and I have folders for projects that I work on.

The way that I set up rules is basically just to keep a list of important keywords and keep an up-to-date contact list. For the different teams, we have a robust active directory where everyone is discoverable, so I just grab names from a given department and add them to distribution lists labeled essentially "Team A", "Team B", etc. When I get emails from people who belong to those teams, I have rules that look for anyone belonging to those groups and automatically drop them in those folders.

For company-wide emails, those typically originate from a limited number of senders who handle communications, so I do the same thing and just drop them into a news/announcements folder.

For vendors, they'll send emails from specific domains, so I add a rule to filter emails from those domains, regardless from who, and drop them into labeled subfolders within a larger "Vendors" folder.

For tasks that I work with, there are always keywords in the subject field that specify the nature of the request. If it's a ticket, for example, I'll create a rule looking for the keyword "Ticket" and drop them in the Tickets folder. If it's for user enrollment, I'll look for "Enrollment" and drop it in the New Users folder (and these always come from just a couple email addresses so I put those in the requirements, too).

For projects, we do a bit of intersecting. I've got people from different teams and different vendors who are working on a specific thing that I want to keep together. So here I do my best to identify the specific people involved with this project, and also identify common keywords I expect to see in the subjects of emails. So for example, if this is a project to install widgets in the conference room for improved synergy, I'd set a rule looking for the specific names on the project and keywords like "widgets", "conference room", "synergy" in the subject line, prioritize these over the other rules, and it catches about 90% of the emails I want it to, leaving me just a few that land in other places that may need to be manually sorted due to ambiguously named subjects (For the love of god, if you are emailing about a project, put some indicator about the project instead of just putting "Hey" or "Status Update" in the subject line).

Your usage is more traditionally correct. Typographers and writers agree that the use of exclamation marks (also referred to as ‘bang’ or ‘screamer’) should be done sparingly.

But with so much informal (digital) communication, it’s taken on a new life as an indicator of friendliness.

Unlike the Germans, who have international government agreements that change the rules of their written language, English simply evolves with the next crop of teenage whims.

Which may be another way of saying that while you are correct, your wife is more hip.

I like how this post started a lot of good discussions on what people like and dislike in email communication. Really lively in here.

I think this is also a big cultural thing. Some countries really value directness, others see that as rude.

I much prefer this to the main post. I've no desire to email like a boss.