In the depths of email overload desperation last week, I wished email messages had an 140-character limit like Twitter updates do. In response, two people recommended doing what Kevin Rose does: Set your desktop email signature to “Sent from my mobile phone.”
It’s a white lie that makes you look less rude for being short. It’s annoying to have to fib (and embarrassing if you get caught somehow–of course all of Kevin’s friends now know his “secret”). But for someone who gets more than 100 messages per day, this technique may be a matter of survival versus just saving time. Haven’t set this up myself yet, but if I wind up at the bottom of another email mountain getting ready for a processing marathon, I just might.
10 Comments
Matt Lynch
Love it!
Sent from my mobile phone.
infmom
That would only work for people who don’t know you well enough to know you have no intention of buying an iPhone. 🙂
four12
Make sure to set your email format to ‘text only’ to make it look more authentic, especially if you use Outlook or similar as a mail client.
Gina Trapani
Make sure to set your email format to ‘text only’ to make it look more authentic, especially if you use Outlook or similar as a mail client.
Ohhh, great pointer, thanks.
Curtis Hollibaugh
Clever.
Although, I personally have no problem appearing rude.
gyffes
I’ll give it clever props.
Make sure ALL the reply-to’s are accurate, however: I know people who try and pass off emails as “sent from work” (at 3am or whatnot) when the formation of the reply-to et al clearly indicates it was created outside the system.
Oops?
ultrafredde
Well,
I consider it my freedom to decide on how I answer to emails – long or short.
I consider it as well my freedom to decide when I answer to an email. Email is by nature asynchronous, but people often think they can missuse it as IM.
It is just a matter of stating your position and habits.
Greetings!
eaitken
Have a look at 19:25 of this video for another approach to managing your email replies.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/david_pogue_says_simplicity_sells.html
You can be as rude as you like in the privacy of your own office, and no-one need know.
Mitch Wagner
I don’t view short e-mails as rude at all – I send them all the time, haven’t gotten any complaints.
Mitch Wagner
Paraphrasing something I heard at a journalism seminar a long time ago: Maybe the Internet needs fewer three-paragraph, formal, businesslike e-mails, and more 1-3 word e-mails, and long, chatty e-mails that go on for pages?