Improve E-mail Communication by Limiting Messages to Two Sentences

Do you find that you procrastinate when replying to long, complex e-mails? On the other hand, you probably jump all over short, easy e-mails as soon as they arrive in your inbox. Odds are, you do that regardless of the priority of the mails. Here's an interesting solution to this uniquely modern communication and productivity problem: Artificially limit the length of all your e-mails. Crazy, right? Hear me out.

In a blog by Newsvine CEO Mike Industries, Mike has suggested that one way to combat this counter-productive approach to e-mail management is for everyone to adopt shorter e-mails. Specifically, e-mail should be treated like a text message, cutting out all the fluff.

If you agree, you can adopt a policy of limiting all of your e-mails to 2 sentences or less. If that's a bit too austere for you, you can also choose to limit your messages to three, four, or five sentences. Whatever you choose, make it your core personal philosophy and add a link to your signature which explains why your e-mails are so terse. Mike provides four simple pages you can link to:

• Two.sentences.es
• three.sentences.es
• four.sentences.es
• five.sentences.es

Photo courtesy Flickr user jacreative