Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.

Good morning. This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast Podcast.

Today's tip comes from a listener who discovered how to write much more efficient emails.

Email is a great tool.

I love hearing from before breakfast

listeners for instance. Email can be sent and received at

whatever time works for the sender and recipient. This is very efficient.

But email can also cause a lot of confusion.

People skim long messages and miss the last line asking for what the message was really about.

Or people read a long message trying to figure out what the sender wants,

only to get to the end and realize that the sender doesn't need anything.

The email could have been processed at a less urgent time.

In any case, before breakfast listener Peter wrote in with an email format that he uses.

It forces the writer to be more thoughtful, gets to the nub of the problem quickly,

and allows the recipient to deal with it efficiently and effectively, he says.

Here's how it goes. First, put in the subject line what you want the recipient to do with the email.

Example phrases include,

for approval, for info,

for endorsement, for action, update to previous email,

and so forth.

After you've written what the person should do with it,

...