I’m no power user, but I always find something of interest when I listen to the Mac Power Users podcast. This morning, listening to episode 740 while out on a walk, I was happy to hear a tech person confirming the wisdom of one of the bits of advice — to reply and say thanks — in my post How to e-mail a professor. That’s the one bit in the post to which some readers have objected.
The guest in this MPU episode was Lee Garrett, product manager, productivity coach, and owner of ScreenCastsOnline. He described four elements of communication: sender, receiver, message, and feedback. Feedback, he says, is the element that people forget.
“If you don’t get feedback on the message that you sent, there’s no guarantee that that message has been received. I see this all the time ... and it’s one of the downfalls of e-mail and instant messaging.”Exactly. Sending an e-mail should not feel like sending a message in a bottle.
[The relevant comments begin at 1:11:11. Granted, Garrett isn’t saying to say thanks, but he is saying to reply.]
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