You Can Make Email Work Again: A Cheat Sheet

Emails that work are easy to read, get to the crux of the matter and tell the recipient what to do next. When they don’t, they clog our inboxes and create more questions than answers.

When your emails are guided by intelligence and minimalism, you give an enormous gift to everyone you work with. Your approach to email will eventually become a gift to yourself, too, as you influence the status quo around you.

Let’s envision the inbound email of your dreams to create a blueprint. It would be a blend of clarity, brevity, and punch. The formula I teach and try to use is this 3-ingredient recipe:

?? Clarity - The through line of the email has a logical flow, which makes it easy for the reader to follow, carrying them effortlessly from the subject line to the signature.

?? Brevity - The email contains the fewest words needed to say what’s important.

?? Punch - The message contains visual cues to highlight well-defined requests and next steps.

Let’s review each in depth.

?? Clarity —

To say things in the simplest, clearest way, take a moment of white space to think before you type. Consider, “What’s the crux of this communication?” Work on your draft (with the recipient’s address removed until you’re done), challenging yourself to be direct and clear.

If recipients are frustrated, don’t respond, or don't take the “right action” after your emails, they might be lost in the corn maze of your writing style. Tell the reader in explicit terms, “Here is what I want you to do next.” Don’t make them guess or read your mind.

Ensure your subject line is effective and matches the current topic. Add indicators of time frame (true urgency), such as “Need by EOB (End of Business)” or “Can wait until Monday,” to break the presumption of a real-time response. This helps your colleagues avoid the brambles of hallucinated urgency.

Design the email body like a bikini—you want it brief but covering the main subject matter. Ask yourself as you write:

• Am I clear?
• Is there missing information?
• Am I repeating myself?
• Do I sound cold, or just effective?

?? Brevity —

In our world of short attention spans, radical brevity gets big points. High-ranking leaders model this behavior because they’re healthily selfish with their time. I’m sure you’ve noticed emails from senior executives are startlingly, consistently succinct. Five to nine words. Fewer words = less work = more time for thoughtfulness.

I know what you’re thinking, senior leaders can be short and even sloppy because they don’t have to prove themselves in an ongoing way like those ascending the career ladder, and I understand. Cover yourself— always think about how your email will be received by someone you still need to impress. (P.S. Nothing is more impressive than being concise.)

Be careful not to confuse your reader with jargon. Many experts are so familiar with their own terms and acronyms that they can’t see how impenetrable their writing is to the reader. Likewise, be careful about using language to impress, as this can create the opposite of your desired effect. Overmining the thesaurus can make you look like a troglodyte, a berk, or a flibbertigibbet.

My favorite tool for creating a habit of brevity is The Mental Highlighter. This simple habit helps you “get real” about the value in each word of your emails.

Let's say you write like many folks do, you sit down without much thought and start typing. You write a verbose, stream-of-conscious email like this one:

Take your draft email and use a Mental Highlighter. Look at what’s really important in the communication and imagine marking it up like this:

You’ll soon see that many of the words are just added fluff. Take them out! Your final result will be a beautifully brief email like this:

?? Punch —

Now, let’s say you have a denser communication to share—one that’s truly filled with more value per word. You will use the final tool of punch, in combination with your Mental Highlighter, to make it easy to read, absorb, and act on.

Take your original text, just as it comes out of your mind:

Use your Mental Highlighter to confirm that your email has a high percentage of valuable content.

Then add some Punch.

Punch tells the reader’s eyes when to stop and when to go, and their minds follow.

Punch is the use of bolding, underlining, and bullets to create visual simplicity for the reader. It’s a considerate “mapping” of the email’s path, leaving little that requires extra mental energy. It might look like this:

Get to an action request or next step as you conclude your writing. You want to tell the reader explicitly what you need without recapping what they’ve already read. And, of course, you want the sign-off of your email to set the emotional tone of the relationship you hope to achieve with the reader. If you think choosing between Warmly, Best, Yours, or Cheers is an inconsequential decision, think again.

In our over-busy world, people don’t read. They skim, especially in email. To grab a skimmer’s attention, you need a clear message, radical brevity, and visual signposts that will move your work (and relationship) forward.

Be crisp, bold, and be YOU. I know you’ll see the rewards.