Write the Honest Email. Then Wait Twelve Hours.
Somewhere in your drafts folder, or in the back of your mind, is an email you’ve been meaning to send for weeks. The one that tells the client their expectations have drifted. The one that tells a colleague the thing everyone’s thinking. The one that asks for what you’re owed. You’ve written it in your head a dozen times, each version slightly angrier than the last, and sent none of them.
I’ve carried those drafts for months. Here’s what finally got them out the door, and why the wait is part of it.
Write it all, badly
First draft, say everything. The grievance, the history, the thing you’ve been biting back. Don’t edit, don’t soften, don’t imagine their face. This draft is never sent; it’s for you. Getting it onto the page gets it out of the loop in your head, and you can’t write the real one until the loop stops.
Sleep on it
Twelve hours minimum. Overnight is better. The version of you that wrote the first draft was carrying weeks of frustration, and frustration writes long, defensive, slightly cruel emails. The morning version is calmer, and the calmer person can see what the email is actually for.
Cut everything that’s about you
This is the edit that matters. Read the draft and remove every sentence whose job is to make you feel better rather than to move the situation forward. The history lesson. The sarcasm. The three examples where one would do. The paragraph proving you were right all along. What’s left is usually a third of the length and ten times as strong.
State, ask, stop
The honest email has a simple shape. Here’s the situation, plainly. Here’s what I need or propose. What do you think? No preamble about how hard this is to write, no apology for raising it, no cushion of compliments to soften the blow. The directness is respectful. The cushioning isn’t; it tells them you think they can’t handle a straight sentence.
Assume good faith in the wording
Even when you suspect bad faith. “I think we’ve got different pictures of the scope; here’s mine” lands better than “you’ve been moving the goalposts,” even if the second is true. The first lets them fix it without losing face. People fix things far more readily when they’re not being accused.
Send it in the morning
Not at eleven at night, when it’ll sit on their phone and fester. Not Friday afternoon, when it’ll ruin a weekend and be answered in anger on Monday. Tuesday morning is the quietest hour in most working weeks. Send it then and get on with your day.
What I’ve found
The honest email, written this way, has ended fewer relationships than I feared and fixed more than I expected. The client who’d drifted was relieved someone had said it. The colleague thanked me, eventually. The money got paid. And the weeks of carrying the unsent draft turned out to be the most expensive part of the whole business.
Tonight
Write the bad version. Sleep. Cut what’s about you. State, ask, stop. Send it Tuesday.
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The book itself — 40 laws in ten parts, 320 pages, each ending with The Work — is funded first on Kickstarter.