Lately, I’ve been using a single character to respond to a lot of emails. I get through emails much faster (especially on my mobile), and the sender gets useful info back quickly. For example, if I get an email asking for something and I won't get to it until the day after tomorrow, I’ll respond like this:<p>-----<p>2<p>The text above represents a response below. I apologise if this seems rude - I'm taking this approach to make sure I get back to everyone quickly (http://patbrown.org/pointmail.html).<p>1 - I’ll get back to you within 1 day.<p>2 - I’ll get back to you within 2 days.<p>[Higher numbers mean the same as above…]<p>t - thanks, I’ll look into it but I’m not sure how long it'll take.<p>n - No / No thank you - I appreciate your message though.<p>y - Yes / Yes please, that would be great.<p>s - Sorry, I’ve read your email, but it’s highly unlikely that I’ll be able to fit this in.<p>-----<p>The drawback of this approach is that it comes across as douchey to a high percentage of people. Is the approach irredeemably weird / off-putting? Any ideas on how to dial down the douche factor while maintaining the benefits?<p>If it’s viable:<p>- Would two character responses for finer grained meaning work better? For instance, “c1” could mean “It’ll be complete in 1 day” and “w1” would mean “Will get back to you on the below within one day”; and<p>- What other codes / messages do you think would be important to include?
> <i>Any ideas on how to dial down the douche factor while maintaining the benefits?</i><p>Using something that replaces the letter with the matching text snippet?
Igonring the social dimensions.<p>From an information theory perspective, the lack of redundancy may be problematic, particularly if email is a noisy channel. Because hitting send writes to "permanent storage", typos "are forever"...and correcting them adds noise.<p>For example, I accidentally send "1w" when I meant "w1" versus "Will get bcak to you in one day."