PSA: my weekly status email shrank from 800 words to 120

I used to write these long weekly updates to my manager, basically a novel of everything I touched. Took me 90 minutes every Friday morning in Portland. Then my boss forwarded one to the director and got a reply saying 'what do I actually need to read here?' So I cut it down to three bullet points: what's done, what's stuck, what's next. First week after trimming, my manager replied within an hour with a decision I'd been waiting on for two weeks. Turns out everyone was just scrolling past my summaries. Now I keep it to 5 lines max and put any details in a linked doc. Has anyone else found that shorter updates get faster responses from their higher-ups?

2 comments

2 Comments

hayden_butler2719d ago

The part about your boss saying "what do I actually need to read here" hit me hard because it made me realize we're all writing these updates for the wrong reason. We think they want detail but really they just want to know if anything needs their brain power. That 120 word version probably works better because it makes the reader feel smart for getting through it in one pass. But here's the thing nobody talks about, the shorter you make it the more vulnerable you are. When you hide all that work in a linked doc you're trusting your manager to actually click it, and most of them won't. So you're basically choosing between being ignored in a long email or being ignored in a short one... at least now you can see the click through rate so to speak.

josephl6718d ago

Heard a buddy of mine do the same thing at a tech place, trimmed his weekly update to a few lines and suddenly his boss actually answered his questions the same day instead of ghosting him for a week. Shorter is risky with the linked doc thing, but at least you find out real fast who actually cares about your work.