My Rules for Email

A lot of my work as a PhD student happens over email. Drafts get reviewed there, meetings get scheduled, and collaborations move forward or stall. Over time I’ve written down a few rules that keep my emails clear and my inbox under control. Here they are, grouped by when they apply, plus a few for cold emails.

Set up once

1. Put your contact info in your signature. Many students treat their signature as a mini-resume, with a title and credentials but no phone number. The main job of a signature is to make you easy to reach, so include your phone number and address.

2. Turn on undo send. A 30-second delay is enough. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught a typo, or remembered one last point, right after clicking Send.

3. Set up folders and rules. Make subfolders for your main projects, and set rules that send recurring emails straight to them. Add one more folder called “Action Needed.”

Before you write

4. Ask whether it should be a call. For a sensitive topic or a disagreement, talking in real time usually settles things faster than a long thread.

While you write

5. Write a subject line that names the topic or the ask. It tells the reader what to expect before they open the email, and it makes the email easy to find later. If the conversation moves to a new topic, change the subject line.

6. Say hello and goodbye. It’s common to jump straight into the content, but don’t. Tone already gets lost over email, and skipping the greeting makes it worse. I only break this rule with the few people I email several times a day.

7. Keep it short. If you want people to read your emails, make them as short as you can.

8. Use emphasis sparingly. Bolding two or three key words helps the reader catch what matters, but some people find it off-putting, so use it with care. And never write in all caps. IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU’RE YELLING.

Before you send

9. Do an emotional proofread. Read the email as the recipient would, and ask how they’ll take each sentence. Then adjust the tone. Words like “Thanks,” “Please,” and “I appreciate it” go a long way. Run spellcheck in the same pass.

10. Fill in To and Cc last. If they stay blank until the end, a half-finished draft can’t go out by accident. Once they’re filled in, check that the email is going to the right people and that you didn’t hit Reply All by mistake.

11. Schedule emails you write outside work hours. Rather than sending an email at midnight on a Saturday, schedule it to arrive at 10 am on a Tuesday.

Every day

12. Reply within four hours. Even a short “Got it, I’ll send a full reply tomorrow” tells the sender their email didn’t get lost.

13. Get to inbox zero. By the end of each day, file what’s done. Move anything that still needs follow-up to “Action Needed,” or pin it if there are only a few, and check that folder every day.

Cold emails

14. Say why them. Name a specific paper, project, or result of theirs. If the email would read the same sent to anyone else, rewrite it.

15. Show one concrete thing. A repo, a post, or a quick result that builds on their work says more than a list of qualifications.

16. Keep the first ask small. “Could we talk for 15 minutes?” is easy to say yes to. Bigger asks can come later.

17. Follow up once. If there’s no reply after about two weeks, send one short note. Silence usually means busy, not no.

Most of these take a few seconds each. If you have a rule I’m missing, I’d like to hear it.