Hacker News Reader

I used to send these monthly massive 'update' emails to all the execs at my tech job. While it's not feedback, at some point I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested.

I was pleasantly surprised when the CEO gave a huge 'THANK YOU FOR THE TLDR version' in a reply all. The 'bottomline' comment kind of reminded me of that haha.

View on HN

> I switched to including a TLDR version at the top for the busiest people and a long-form explanation for anyone interested.

Yep. That's a good practice. I write a 2-4 sentence blurb at the beginning, that just says the key idea, point or request, followed by some empty space. And then a row of asterisks with the word "details" in it, where everything gets properly fleshed out in the right order.

Never got feedback for that, but I know it works because it has helped to halt email-thread-diarrhea.

I started doing this because there are SO MANY people who literally only read the first few sentences of an email, respond to the first thing that comes up and ignore the rest.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com