No Stupid Questions

Hi andrewta,

Your issue with incpmplete responses might be because you aren't structuring your emails in ways that reduce the cognitive load on the recipient.

If your message is too complicated, it is more likely busy or distracted recipients will miss something. Try these steps:

1. Use short, easy to read paragraphs.

2. Avoid complex sentence structures. Use short, easy-to-parse sentences instead.

3. Avoid jargon or flowery language.

4. Clearly highlight all requests/questions/actions you expect the recipient to respond to.

Communication works both ways and will work better if you communicate clearly. This may not eliminate all problems with incomplete responses, but we can all be better communicators.

Thanks,

ALoafOfBread

I run into this when texting my mother.

She'll ask the same thing from 2 different perspectives (probably a better word but I can't think of it atm). Both are technically the same question, but I can't just say "yes" it "no", because it answers the question from just one or the other, but indicates the opposite from the other question's pov. Or sometimes needing to know between 2 possibilities she asks about one and then follows it up asking about the other.

For example, if we've recently met up to see my baby niblings (not even sure if this is a common use word, but I mean my nieces/nephews, aka her grandchildren), she could ask "Could you send me the photos you got in a text?" And then she would follow up with something like "Or did you already send them to my email?"

Now, I can't say "yes" or "no", I have to spell out what I did.

Other times it will be a question that she knows I picked one of the 2 options, but instead of just "did you do option A? Which would allow a quick answer "yes" which conveys that I did A, or I could say "no", which would indicate I did option B. One word, clear defined message. But she'll (sometimes during the process of replying- oof that's frustrating), she'll add "or did you do option B?" meaning I now have to spell out what I did.

I like efficient communication, and hate wasting a lot of words. And I'm any other circumstance, a 1 word answer works so well to convey the entire thing. But she almost always throws in a wrench by adding another question that conflicts with the ability to do that.

I'm not sure. Maybe. Sometimes. I don't know.

I can only tell you that my best results have come from replying with a neutral "Thank you", then repeating the questions. I prefer it when they answer all my questions, but ultimately, if I want answers, I need to persist, and so I do.

I number my questions. Helps for visual organization.

It's funny that some replies are saying your post itself is too wordy or long. People just can't focus on anything anymore. As for the suggestion of bullet points, I've had people reply a single answer to an email that just had three short bullet points. So no, it's not always because the questions are buried in text, it's because people react to the first thing they see and don't finish reading.

Yep that's fine push to production by Friday plz.

I make a point to ask one question.

First I ask it as the first line.

Then I elaborate on the question, what I mean, and why I'm asking in the body of the email.

Then the last a paragraph is restating the question in a different wording.

If you want to communicate clearly, then put effort into avoiding all ambiguity. If you have many questions, write many emails.

Sometimes I'm busy man and trying to get something done

Even when we converse, we get across just one point at a time. You have to respect other people's time and bandwidth (Okay, one or two points).

If you've got questions, put them in bullet points.

I'm not scanning a wall of text to find everything.