YSK these e-mail tips

ickplant@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 1676 points –

Why YSK: These email tips are helpful for people who struggle with boundaries and want to communicate more assertively.

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Some of these are good, some are just needlessly assertive nonsense. Especially the two where it's actively refusing to acknowledge fault or apologize for it, which is standard PR crap. Refusing to apologize and instead saying "thanks for your patience" is what I expect to hear from my ISP when they miss their scheduled install, not from a coworker.

There's nothing wrong with being a normal human being that is capable of admitting their own shortcomings. If never saying sorry means "being a boss" then that explains why there's so many sociopaths as CEOs.

"Hope that make sense?" Vs "Let me know if you have any questions."

The latter is saying "here's the explanation, figure it out, bother me again if you can't". The fromer, while poorly worded, is being helpful, actively attempting to make sure the person understands before leaving them to it. It's both a kindness and doing your due diligence.

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.

I think it goes the other way too. For people that tend to apologize too much, even when it’s not their fault, mixing in a “thanks for your patience” is a good way to balance it out a bit.

I'm torn. I feel like admitting guilt and owning up to your failures is a virtue, but I'm not sure the rest of the world agrees with me

Neurotypical enough to read body language, neurodivergent enough to never understand why

I’m with you. Just being honest about a failure is fine. Doesn’t have to be a dramatic apology, just an acknowledgment with a bit of regret perhaps.

That makes sense. I think that’s a different issue than I was thinking. Ultimately if it’s a sincere comment I think that’s the most important thing.

"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.

My personal ones for corporate use:

  • Never use I when you can use we.

  • Even if you're the only one working on a project, never refer to it as yours. Always refer to it as ours.

  • Don't apologize, present solutions.

  • Don't say "read my fucking email again you goddamn illiterate moron", say "As previously noted in our communications...."

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

So that's where I've been going wrong at previous jobs. Definitely taking note.

I will also attach old emails rather than repeat myself.

Our company "russian anthem starts playing"

To be honest, I find most of these passive aggressive and patronizing.

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.

Seems like a toxic work environnement to get chided for so little..

Agreed. Got my revenge though. They got fired a week after I quit working there.

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.

Nah. By my count, 1 is context dependent, 2 are okay, the remaining 6 are kinda cunty.

I actually like nice catch, as long as it’s not an egregious error. There are often going to be mistakes in a document, even when prepared by someone completely competent. This acknowledges someone as being part of a process instead of focusing on an error.

Half of it is fragile CEO ego reply

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

"When can I expect an update" makes you sound like a micro managing POS

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.

God I hate forced formality like this. This is the kind of shit Gen Z and millennials are rebelling against and I'm all for it. It is stupid for us to encourage people to be themselves and then to expect them to act like a completely different person at work, including the way they talk.

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.

I think you can do all of the things you said without being overly formal about everything! For reference I have ADHD too. ☺️

I honestly don't see these as being overly formal, but I worked in finance and real estate legal compliance for many years and that may have warped my perception. I think it all depends on your environment and how well the person reading this knows you (aka will they be able to recognize your intended tone?)

I don't read formality in these either, fwiw. in fact they're generally pretty casual.

People write work emails differently, but I write more like the "don't" list than the "boss" list in most situations. I also rarely put much thought into it unless it's an extremely delicate situation. The only problem I have with this post is it's presumption that your way is the boss way and the other way is somehow inferior.

"It'd be easier to discuss in person" means "I don't want a record of this because it's either illegal or shows my incompetence".

Any meeting that they want to talk about in writing should ALWAYS be recorded.

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.

YSK, the person that embraces all of these, as written, is RIGHTFULLY perceived as an assholes by their peers.

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.

I greatly prefer some of the "wrong" ones. Not everyone needs to talk like a corporate robot.

All of these are really good examples of writing a good email, except the bottom left one.

The "wrong" example is perfectly fine, and the "correct" example is pretty rude unless you're a project manager addressing your team. Even if you were a project manager, it's still pretty rude.

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.

I think it definitely depends on your relationship with the recipient. While I do think most of those are better options, I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily what you should write.

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.

In a good workplace, none of these fucking matter...

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.

A companies in which managers are constantly telling their employees what they didn't do good (which is actually what they didn't do that the manager wanted them to do). These are usually micromanagers/new managers.

This is borderline toxic management lol.

Good luck finding a good workplace in a capitalist society.

I work IT at a college, its pretty good here. Definitely not perfect, but people are pretty easy going where they don't care about stuff like this.

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Take those tips with a grain of salt, as this sort of conventional politeness strategy is heavily dependent on culture, situation, and sometimes even individual*.

I predict that those tips would work poorly with people from cultures where negative politeness ("don't burden the others") is valued over positive politeness ("show appreciation towards the others"). This is fairly common in East Asia for example, but even here in Latin America I got a few people rolling their eyes at "biztalk" like "obrigado pela paciência" (thank you for the patience) over a simple apology.

In special, I can picture the centre advice rubbing a lot of people the wrong way, as it's basically the writer lifting a burden from one's own shoulders (struggling to word something) by creating a burden to the reader ("I expect you to be available offline for a meeting").

*if anyone wants to dig deeper into this subject, check Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. It's a bit of a technical read for Linguistics (more specifically Pragmatics), but I got plenty laymen who love the book.

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.

Yup - the mixed reactions are likely due to the cultural dependency. I'm almost sure that, if we were able to map those replies in a world map, the positive reactions would all clutter into some spots of the world, while the negative ones would clutter in other places. (That would be rather cool to study.)

That would be incredible to study. I'm now going to pay attention to this with my friends from different cultures.

For me personally, receiving a ‘just wanted to check in’ feels less aggressive than ‘when can I expect an update’

Otherwise I agree with the rest

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.

I don't read it any differently with or without just. I'm not sure what you mean by apologetic or why that would be a bad thing.

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

Some of those "wrong" ones would be fine for instant messages like Slack or Teams.

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

Its not that simple. Its ok to apologize sometimes. But not so apologize every fucking time like I do for every minor slide. Also I can see the usefulness to just make the shot call instead of staying 1h writing that message/email. Others are ok too.

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.

Oh I know exactly what you mean. When I was in my government position I would write paragraphs of information as a response to what some may think was a simple question, but you're right, in those types of positions you have to over explain because it saves a lot of headache going back and forth.

Yeah you're right. I'm in IT. Some stuff sometimes is better discussed via short call. But in government positions I can see you need to have it all on record sure.

I'd never say 'always happy to help' because sometimes I'm actually not, particularly if a client is a pain and badgers me constantly. I don't want to invite more interruption

The thank you for your patience one has always rubbed me wrong. There's honor in apologizing in my opinion. I do like the making a mistake one though and I've tried to adopt that mentality when I'm working with QA on something I've merged. I want them to feel good about finding the mistakes and I want to avoid an adversarial relationship. I've learned that I get way better tickets from QA if they like how I treat them. Treat them like valuable experts and they'll act like valuable experts.

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.

I'm a native speaker, and it comes off as condescending to me.

"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.

Some of these are great. “Could you do” takes the burden off the other person to propose something initially, and suggests respect for their time. “I will need to leave for” begs forgiveness rather than asks permissions, and since you are communicating it, it gives others the opportunity to correct your decision. These are examples of saving everyone time while still communicating them. Being too nice can be a time waste, like saying hello and then waiting for a response before asking your question.

Some of these take away the autonomy of the other person though, and that’s shitty. “When can I expect an update?” is one of those. It would be better to express this in terms of what you need and why, like “I am reporting to X person at noon tomorrow on this, could you give me an update before then?”

Of course, whether you say “just checking in” or “when can I expect…”, if you have no good reason (micromanaging is not a good reason) for checking in then you’re just being an asshole.

Non-native speaker here. What are the disadvantages of being straightforward? In my native language, it is considered more efficient and polite to be to the point. I have worked with Americans in the past, and I have noticed that they are not straightforward.

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.

Nobody really wants to spend time reading long emails at work. Make it short, direct, and polite works best.

Improving my work emails is 99% of what I use ChatGPT for.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I feel personally attacked, but also might reference this moving forward

Yeah, I can tell why this is from adhddd.com, it's all about assertiveness. People with ADHD in general (including myself, to an extent) have trouble with being assertive, so most of the phrases in this chart try to change a meek or mild-mannered response to a more assertive one. I think part of the struggle of life is finding balance because while some of these are generally improvements, others are generally worse, and the difference will depend on the tone you're going for and the person that you're sending the email.

As someone who frequently says "No problem" after someone thanks me for helping them, I'm now worried someone has taken that the wrong way.

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

I think it's because Thank You/You're Welcome is more common in older people, and that saying "No problem" makes it seem as if there's a problem in thanking someone, I guess?

I certainly have seen some older people say things like "it's not a problem at all" after being thanked, meaning their efforts to help didn't put them out or anything. "No problem" is maybe a bit more shorthand/slangy I guess but otherwise it just really does not seem like it should be controversial at all to me.

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Some of these come across dickish

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?

It is pretty funny that the assertive ones that are clear are the ones I have been told are too aggressive and that everything should be passive so the recipient doesn't feel pressured. If course the people that told me that were passive aggressive and always caused drama while all the assertive people got along fine and were clear about each other's opinions and came to compromises.

I think people's take on them also comes from past negative experiences.

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.

While most of these are a good rule of thumb, I disagree with 'Always Happy to Help.' > 'No Problem.'

'I'm Always Happy to Help' is a fine response, if you're actually willing to make your time available for the recipient at the drop of a hat. Sometimes that's called for, but I would only reserve it for a few very specific circumstances. I also don't see an issue with saying 'no problem' most of the time. There are situations where something a little more formal is called for, but 90% of the time 'no problem' should work imho.

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.

Saying It’d be easier to discuss in person comes off as “I can’t legally put this in writing because it’s against your contract” and not “this is hard to word/explain.” Lol. This is straight PR shit.

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.

that's not necessarily what it means. some things legitimately are easier to explain in person. ever try working out a complicated mathematical argument in an email? one can do it, but it's not pretty. in person you can write on paper, draw figures, etc., synchronously with your compatriot observing and even participating. it's not merely a change of medium from text to sound.

Sounds like you need a better maths plugin, not a personal meeting.

In a personal meeting you instantly get feedback on what the other understands and what needs in-depth explanation, and they can ask questions. It's nothing like an email conversation.

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 was hoping for something else when I saw the title.

But, now that I am here:

I will soon start a new job, where the number of emails will be much larger than it is now. Any recommendations for sorting these ‘like a boss’?

I am using Mac mail, but can change to outlook if there are some good reasons - and stuff Mac mail can’t do (mail wise).

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).

These seem to be based on some core concepts of psychology and interpersonal influence (intended or not). I used to work in that area and picked up a few of these tricks along the way too.

Basically what they do is give your recipient a clear call to action-if you want them to do something, it's best to ask directly VS tiptoeing around. The best example there being the just wanted to check in one. If you want an update, ask for it. That way there's no ambiguity what the response needs to be and they can fire it off quickly without thinking. You can wordsmith it to fit your style and company culture but the point is to tell them what you want them to do.

The other thing I see here is a sort of 2-parter. It's about conveying confidence and positivity in your tone. There's a lot of nuance to this and personal communication style and context of the situation play in more. But basically these items like 'nice catch!' and 'thanks for your patience' all kind of do this, showing a kind of team player attitude that also demonstrates that you know your own worth. 'Happy to help' does something similar but is more subtle-it avoids the negative tone of things like 'no problem' and goes a bit further.

Individually theses communications may have a minimal impact (depending on the situation of course) but over time using this kind of language associates you with positivity and confidence and can help you with with you building work relationships.

Don't judge me... I never use exclamation points unless the context is absolutely fitting. Aka, %1 of my email and text, if not less, uses it. It's like I've saved it for it's original meaning. My wife isn't a fan of this.

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.

Some of these are good, because getting into the habit of thanking people for helping (“thanks for catching that!”) fosters good working relationships or providing specifics that, presumably, work for you, too (“can you do [x] times?”) is a better starting point than being truly open ended.

But I well and truly despise the “thanks for your patience/when can I expect” because we ALL know what you mean and I respect someone far more if they acknowledge, explain, and move on from their errors than just…reword shit.

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 imagine a LOT of us have many, teeth-clenching opinions on what constitutes a good email. XD

Problem’s already been solved, however: it’s mine. My way’s the best.

Haha, this is exactly it. The comments here make it obvious people have OPINIONS. I'm here to enjoy it.

Um, I think someone may have hit you upside the head because it's obvious and clear that my way is the best.

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

One really important thing I've learned is that you need to tell your employer when you need time off. You never request it.

Another really important thing I learned is if you have a good relationship with your boss is to discuss or ask when it would be best for the company to take time off and try to arrange you schedule with those dates in mind.

As an example of this, I like to take a vacation in the summer so I will usually discuss the best week I can do that with my boss because it's not very importent to me exactly which week I want as long as it's some time in the summer.

The one about not saying "I think maybe" is one I actively try to do. Assertiveness is something that doesn't come naturally to me but I've been in too many situations where my lack of assertiveness comes across as uncertainty and introduces confusion into discussions where actually I do know what I'm talking about.

I attach a goatse to my email communicationsz tonrrally drive home the point of urgency in the face of devastating consequences.

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Some of these are great and I will definitely steal a few. I especially appreciate these as a non-native speaker.

Imma take a second to plug goblin tools. I'm autistic and it has saved my ass.

Hi Shelley! How are you? I really hope you're doing well. Shelley, we didn't go to school together and you're not my kris kringle, I'm at work and I need x. Ping me if you need anything. Also donuts in the kitchen.