Email Tip No2: Table of Contents for Long Emails

Email 200You are afraid people may not read this long email and thus miss the important information it contains? I know, sometimes we simply have to write long emails.

A meeting may not be possible and the situation is just complicated. But I’ve also heard the notion “When the email is longer than two paragraphs, I am not reading it!” more than once. Avoiding long and often pointless email rantsĀ is indeed a good method to be efficient with emails.

So if there is really no way to shorten what you want to say any more and it is still an epic email, then I suggest you start with a brief introduction why you are writing the email and then continue with an inventory of the parts of your email. Sort of a table of contents if you will; like you would have in a report. (more…)