Email takes too long to respond to.
Your inbox is too full.
You don’t have the time to get to it all.
Email is taking over your life.
Ok, let’s say for a minute that I feel bad for you (which I don’t. There’s a delete key, people! If you have too much email, get rid of some of it! Or organize it. Or manage it differently so it doesn’t destroy you). I was prepared to throw you a bone by sharing this weird little website I came across recently.
I found three.sentenc.es and thought – that’s odd. Not useful or clever, really. Just odd. The entire site simply says:
The Problem
E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.
The Solution
Treat all email responses like SMS text messages, using a set number of letters per response. Since it’s too hard to count letters, we count sentences instead.
three.sentenc.es is a personal policy that all email responses regardless of recipient or subject will be three sentences or less. It’s that simple.
As I started formulating my snarky comments about this, I noticed (in tiny type) the next line:
* See also: two.sentenc.es, four.sentenc.es, and five.sentenc.es.
Click any of those links and you’ll end up on an identical page, but with the “threes” on the original page replaced with the appropriate number.
How lame! You have your little manifesto, but you can’t even commit to a maximum number of sentences? I thought the idea was odd, as I said, but I could have at least admired the austerity of it. If you believe three sentences is the right number, great. Have it. Take a stand.
But then to make the same claim about two, or four, or even five? C’mon now… make up your mind. Looks like it’s a personal policy to change your personal policy pretty easily.
I also have to laugh at the idea that letters are too hard to count. I’m guessing that’s why they stopped at five sentences.
