Jan 22 2011

Three Sentences

A family member has over 20,000 unopened emails in her inbox. I get just as many emails and I average somewhere between 5-10, depending on the day/time of the week. I don’t claim to subscribe to the Inbox Zero movement but I try to keep my inbox clean and manageable. I have a complicated email system that I have setup for myself. I use Google Apps for Domain to host the email address for my websites. I commonly use in about 5 email addresses, most of these are tied to one inbox in GMail so that I can send and receive email from all these accounts by logging in once. I also use folders, priority mail, and star important email to try to manage all incoming messages. I am quick to remove myself from mailing lists that I am no longer interested in, I am quick to spam unsolicited emails, and I am quick to delete emails. In addition to all these technology tools and tricks, I’ve started following the Three Sentences discipline.

Three Sentences devotees claim to threat email responses like text messages, so instead of long verbose letters each email response is simply three sentences. I think of it like Twitter for email. There is also a Four Sentence and Five Sentence variation of this, the key is to stick to a disciple of writing short concise emails that get to the point at hand.