Answer the first three questions  

You're ready to start the day with a cathartic cleanse of the email inbox. But you’ve just come back from a week off work. You see a hundred emails glaring at you, threatening to steal away all of today and half of tomorrow.

How do you cull the herd?

First you answer the emails of your favourite people. Then with the others:

‘What’s this about?’ – Can you tell at a glance? No? You skip to the next email.
Ah – I can see what this one’s about.

‘Is it relevant to me?’ – Can you tell at a glance? No? You skip to the next email.
Okay, this is about a topic that’s relevant to me.

‘What’s the bottom line?’
Can you tell at a glance? No? You skip.

Getting people’s attention by email isn’t hard – if you answer those three questions up front.

Here’s an example of how to use this technique

Here I imagine my reader asking the questions, and I write my answer to the left.

  1. What’s this about? The proposal 

  2. How’s it relevant to the reader? They’re the best person to review the pricing

  3. What’s the bottom line? I need their review by first thing on Thursday 


Now I cherry-pick words from those answers to create my subject line. 

Subject line: Please review my proposal's pricing before Thursday

A visual you can print of the three-questions technique

👀 An impressive subject line in a letter

👀 A reworked report title that’s miles more informative

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Check out my Write Better Emails workshop, where you can learn about more than just the subject line!

Look into the School of unProfessional Writing to learn about plain language at your own pace