Why I Didn’t Read Your Email

I remember seeing your email. No, I guess I didn’t read it. Why not?

I don’t remember specifically why I didn’t read your email, but I’m guessing it was one of these reasons:

Your subject line didn’t make it crystal clear that I had to read it. Maybe you forgot to give the context, or say that there was an action item for me. Maybe it just looked like something I could read later, which means every day more emails pushed it into the swamp at the bottom of my Inbox.

You didn’t get to the point quickly enough. You kind of gassed on awhile about the year, and how things are going, and I thought it was an update. I didn’t realize there was something important there. Oops!

You went on too long. I opened it but when I saw it was 9 paragraphs I closed it again because I didn’t have time right then. And then I forgot all about it. Forever.

You added me to a confusing email string. That’s OK, you can do that, but you asked for my opinion and I looked at the email below it and that didn’t tell me what you were talking about, nor did the one before. Dude, there were like 16 emails in that string! It looked like I would need to do some serious investigation to figure out what was going on, so I saved it for later. Is it later yet?

Hey, I’m sorry. Next time I promise… actually, I'll probably do the same kind of triage next time.

Let’s try this: If you spend a couple more minutes making the email really clear and impactful, and then I’ll read it and do what you're asking. Honestly, it’s the best I can do.

Sound like a plan?