I Suffer from L.E.S.

1. Do you ever find yourself responding to an email from a friend, colleague, or client and before you know it you’ve written so much you have to scroll back up the message just to read your intro sentence?

2. Are you what’s known as a long form Twitterer ? (that is, someone who often hits the 140 character limit in your tweets and spends way too long cutting them back)?

3. Do the replies you get to your emails frequently include the phrase “Hey, I didn’t need your whole life story!”

Well, if you answered yes to one or more of these questions, then you (like me) may suffer from Long Email Syndrome (or L.E.S.)! I was first diagnosed with L.E.S. back in the mid-90′s during my undergrad years. I believe the diagnosis came in the form of a polite nudge from my girlfriend at the time, and I’ve been hopeless ever since (Note: that girlfriend is now my lovely wife, who to this day, reminds me of my problem, except no longer politely).

Oh sure, I and others like me justify our condition by saying things like, “…but I just want people to fully understand my point” or “I don’t want people to feel that I just blasted off a note without thinking,” but at the end of the day these are all simply excuses (not unlike the all too familiar: “I’m just a social drinker” and “I only have a cigarette after watching MacGyver“).

The good news though is that I’m not alone! I know there are many of you who have confronted your problem and have undertaken a series of resolutions, challenges, and strategies to deal with it.

The other good news is that in my professional life heading up the Product team at Rypple, I am literally forced to confront the realities of brief and focused human interactions on a daily basis. As many of you know, much like the Twitter paradigm, when using Rypple to request or provide feedback, the service forces you to keep all you content under 100 and 200 characters respectively. Now, if I had a nickle for every time a user asked why we can’t allow 300 or 500 characters to provide this same content, I’d probably have about $1.35.

Surely something as important as feedback is worth more than 200 characters?!?, they say.

But I couldn’t possible convey all the details of the feedback I’m after with only 100 characters…that’s INSANE!

Why do people feel they need all that space? That, my friends, will be the topic of an upcoming blog by Mr. Debow. But to tell you the truth, many times I’m quite tempted to throw down my mouse and stand in solidarity with my brothers and sisters with L.E.S.! However, after composing myself and having a daily group hug with the Rypple crew (boy do I love those group hugs!), I am reminded of that famous ancient Chinese proverb:

No one has either the time or the patience to read your junk!

[loosely translated I'm sure]

I recently read a great self-help book called You Inc: The Art of Selling Yourself where the authors remarked; “If you want to know how to write the very best 500 word article, write the very best 1000 word article and cut half of it out!“, and “If you want to know how to craft the very best 10 minute speech, write the very best 20 minute speech, and cut half of it out!” Brilliant I say!

By the same token, two of the reasons people tell us Rypple works so well at getting them such valuable and actionable feedback, is that in contrast to email or surveys, Rypple’s character limitations:

a) force the asker to focus their question with such laser-sharp precision, there is no doubt as to the insights being requested and
b) the expectation of a large time commitment on the part of those you engage is totally negated (in fact, 2 minutes of their time is all you’re asking for).

(Note: If I had a nickle for every time a user told me how truly amazed they were at the value of the feedback they were able to get with Rypple, I’d have WAY more than $1.35. But don’t take my word for it…check out the buzz for yourself!)

So there you have it. My name is David, and I suffer from L.E.S.

While I know I don’t suffer alone, hopefully Rypple, and services like it, will keep all of us on the wagon a little bit longer.