I’d like this post to be a gentle nudge to all you multi-taskers out there to try and switch back to solo focus when it comes to writing your emails.
I am continuously struck by the time I have to take when composing and sending relatively short emails. But here’s why I’m Ok with it. If it’s important to you, it’s worth the extra attention to get it said right the first time. More and more these days, when I’m proofing and editing emails, I find I’m deleting not adding text. Less really is more – more clarity, less chance for misinterpretation.
It’s not just that you may send (or think you’ve sent) to someone you didn’t mean to (just a tiny nudge of the trackball away), but more: without the facial expressions of the other side of the conversation, it’s so, so easy to be misunderstood and cause unintended grief. Whether real or imagined, grief is grief and it can seriously derail things.
And these days you can’t just go running after the cyber mailman and beg him to retrieve your note – although occasionally, if you’re really lucky, you can recall an email before it’s clicked on – no, usually you hit the button and it’s gone, around the world twice before you can blink.
The biggest bummer is that mostly you won’t know you’ve said something squirly until you hear it interpreted in a way you so, so weren’t thinking of. I have to believe that this happens far more among women than men, for the same reason it happens in face to face conversation between men and women all the time.
And why? Because we come from different planets right? Thank you John Gray (who by the way is a truly entertaining public speaker – well worth seeing even if you don’t give a ding dang about his books, which I think you should) for opening this doorway for us.
Personally, as a woman, I believe I know how much is written between the lines, but sometimes I wonder what life must be like without all that extra reading?
P.S. Do men wonder the reverse? Probably not…
