Oh no, you've said too much.

Before you hit send this week, consider what your readers may not need to hear.

THE HACK RECAP: Last week’s hack was about how to deliver unwelcome news. I talked about finding the balance between what your readers need to know (the actual unwelcome news) and what your readers need to hear (that they can still trust you/what you’re going to do to fix things). Bottom line: In order to make the right decision about what your readers need to hear, you need to understand where your readers are coming from.

THIS WEEK’S HACK: Consider what your readers may not need to hear—and delete accordingly.

When I talk about what your readers don’t need to hear, I’m not suggesting that you lie to them.  And I’m not talking about cutting out words you don’t need (concision is a very important topic that I’ll discuss in a future newsletter). I’m talking about cutting information that your audience doesn’t need. Unnecessary information can frustrate your readers, obscure your message, or even send a message you don’t mean to send. 

Okay then, you might say. Let’s cut all that unnecessary information.  But if I thought it was unnecessary, I wouldn’t have included it in the first place. So how do I decide what my readers don’t need?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. What your readers do and do not need to know depends on who they are and what you’re trying to tell them. But I do have some strategies to suggest, which brings me to this week’s challenge.

Before you hit send this week, ask yourself three questions:

Question #1: Are you telling your readers everything from A-Z when they really just need to hear Y and Z?

My first encounter with what I call the  “A-Z email” came the summer I worked as a receptionist in a small law office. One of the lawyers drafted an email to an expert witness who was flying in for a deposition. The email broke down EVERY step the witness should take, including these instructions for when he arrived at the airport: “Find the bank of courtesy phones. Pick up the red phone. Dial the shuttle.”  

If you trust the guy to be an expert witness,  shouldn’t you trust that he will know what to do once he finds the red phone? If I had asked the lawyer who wrote the email that question, I’m sure he would have agreed with me. But the lawyer wasn’t thinking about what the actual flesh and blood reader needed to know; he just started at A (arrive at the airport,) and he was going to get that expert witness to Z (the court room).

Now this is an extreme example (but it really happened!), and most of us aren’t going to include every step from A to Z. But a lot of emails I read begin around “R” or “S” when they could skip directly to “Y.”

 Writing a project update for a client? Are you beginning with what you did first thing Monday morning (A) and ending with when you turned off the office lights on Friday night (Z)? Consider starting with what goals you achieved this week (Y) and what you’re going to do next week (Z).

Letting the staff know that the office refrigerator will be emptied on Friday? If you’re starting with “the refrigerator is filled with spoiled yogurt” (A), consider skipping right to “please take home your uneaten food by Friday” (Y)? If the goal is to shame people about their yogurt, then A may be the right first step. But if the goal is for them to actually read your email and take home their food, you can get to the point more quickly.

Question #2: Are you making the message about you when it ought to be about the work?

Need to cancel a meeting? Want to ask for a day off? Want more responsibility on a project?  Writing work emails that are also personal can be challenging because it’s hard to know when to focus on you and when to focus on the work.

Maybe you need to cancel a meeting because you were up all night with a migraine. Maybe you want a day off to spend some time with your family. Maybe you’re feeling bored at work and ready for more responsibility. Depending on your request and on your relationship with your audience, you may be able to come right out and say these things. But sometimes your audience doesn’t need to hear about you—they need to hear about the work.

Imagine that you’re coordinating a project for a client and you’re going to miss a deadline. There may be good reasons for this. Someone on your team might have found an error they need to correct. Someone on your team may have missed an internal deadline due to illness or a family emergency. You could probably write a long justification of the missed deadline for your client. But do they need to hear this? Or do they need to hear about the work? When are you going to be able to submit it? How will the delay affect the project going forward?

If you spend too much time on what the team couldn’t accomplish, you’re probably going to cloud the message you actually want to deliver, which is that you are still on top of things. If your readers need to know about the work, focus on the work.

Question #3: If you were on the receiving end of the email you’re about to send, what would you not need to hear?

Putting yourself in your reader’s shoes sounds simple, but we don’t always do this when we’re writing.  Whether you’re sending an email to a client, a colleague, or a connection, try to imagine how they will receive it. What do they need to hear—and what don’t they need to hear?

If you end up applying any of these strategies to your emails this week, please let me know! I’d love to hear what’s working and what’s not working.