A general way to make work easier and smoother for your boss or client is if you understand his work habits and styles, and you adjust yours as much as possible. As a trivial example, if you live on opposite sides of the world, then working in an overlapping time zone really helps, but I’m not covering that too much here because that’s the sort of big issue that would be specified before you even start work. (If it isn’t, then try to make at least some of your day overlap—a little real-time daily back and forth can go a long way.)
But here’s a completely different work style your boss probably has. He probably gets tons of emails every day and as such, he probably glances through his email inbox multiple times per day. When he glances through them, how does he decide which ones to open and read? Based on the subject line.
As a result, a common albeit minor cause of frustration is when you get emails with subject lines like “Quick question.”
Here’s the problem with that, imagine everyone sent you emails with that subject. Far, far too many people do! You’d scan your email inbox and see a list of emails, trying to choose which to open, that say:
Quick question
Want your opinion
To review
Feedback request
Have a moment?
And so forth. What would you think? You wouldn’t know where to start. You’d feel overwhelmed. Maybe you’d judge which to read by the sender since that’s really all the information you have.
So, while I’ve previously argued in another chapter to put the urgency of an email into the subject line, here I’m arguing that you should put a quick summary of the issue, question, or at least the universe into the subject line.
These two points, taken together, will lead to clear subject lines such as the following:
Urgent: website down, I’m on it
Not-urgent: Please review process doc draft
Urgent: can you meet with John Smith tomorrow?
Not-urgent: Strategy doc update
These are great subject lines because, in addition to conveying the urgency, the boss can clearly scan and prioritize the emails and know when to open and review each. A minor hassle avoided. Here’s a toast to all my emails coming in with subject lines like these!
