mistakes ยท post 06 of 7 in this channel
Writing three paragraphs where one line would do
It is not a security failure. It is manners, applied in a place where manners leave a permanent record.
the three wethenorth market addresses
hn2paw7zfvndw3dovycegeqmvvnf4pl67b3g2p7pohjlzavloosh73id.onionhn2paw7zrgujyhnt6mgxlt2q6uhgbke4itpqitxhyfbumq3wtnckbuyd.onionhn2paw7zadwkcra3qzv5e4q547i7e5lvxm62cfxqftuqdu7moiu2ceyd.onionprinted the way they were handed over. no labels, no numbering, nothing here says which one to try first. this feed never opens them, so it has no status light, no percentage and no date of checking to give you.
where it shows up
Messages to vendors. The delivery address field. Feedback. Dispute submissions. Anywhere there is a box and a cursor.
The same instinct produces all four, so fixing the instinct fixes all four at once.
what the instinct is
Requests feel rude without a reason. So people supply one, and the reason is always about themselves, because that is what reasons are made of.
It is a good instinct. It makes ordinary life work. It is simply expensive in a place where everything you type is stored on a server you do not control.
what actually gets written
Where you live. What you do for work. When you are home. Why you need something. What is going on in your life. That you have ordered before. What you are worried about.
None of it changes the answer to the question. All of it describes a person, and taken together it describes them a great deal more precisely than any single line does.
the accumulation problem
Any one sentence is harmless. The problem is that they are all in the same message box, from the same account, over months.
A dozen harmless details in one place is not a dozen harmless details. That is the arithmetic people never do, because they are writing one message at a time.
the fix, which is one habit
Write it, then delete the sentence doing the least work. There is always one and it is almost always the one about you.
Then read the first line alone and ask whether an answer to only that line would be enough. If yes, send it. The rest was decoration.
More of this is in what to write, which is the same idea aimed at one specific box.
brevity is not rudeness
Anyone working through a queue of messages finds a short specific one a relief. It reads as competence, not coldness.
You can be warm in four words. Thanks, and the question. That is a complete, friendly, entirely sufficient message.
If you want a test that works while you are tired, count the times the word I appears. Every one is a sentence about you, and most of them can go without changing what you are asking for.
That is a crude measure and it catches the specific failure this post is about, which is what a measure has to do to be worth using.
The version of this habit that sticks is not restraint, it is editing. Write whatever you were going to write, then take one pass through it before sending.
Restraint fails when you are upset, and upset is exactly when the long messages get written. Editing survives it, because it happens after the writing rather than instead of it.
replies
a reader askedWhat if a short message gets ignored?
the answerShort specific messages get answered faster on average, because they are easier to answer. Length is not what gets attention here.
a reader askedI have already written a lot. What now?
the answerClear what you can, as covered in clearing the inbox, and change what you write from now on. The second one matters far more than the first.
a reader askedIs this really a risk, or just caution?
the answerIt is one of the few things on this site that is entirely within your control, costs nothing, and cannot be undone once done. That combination is worth a habit.
what this post is not Not advice to be curt or unfriendly. It is about volume of detail, not about tone, and the two are easy to confuse.