Give supporting details and context after that. Don’t hem and haw at the beginning of your email. Make Your Ask and Your Tone ClearĮmail was one of the original contexts in which BLUF was first imagined, so it is a natural fit for the method.įor a large percentage of the kind of emails that you’re likely to send at work, BLUF is relatively simple to apply. By thinking about BLUF when we communicate internally, we put our concluding thought-often, our ask-at the beginning. It gives a clear what (“examples of thought leadership”) and a clear why (“putting together a proposal for Acme”) that, together, let the recipient infer more or less the asker's exact need. This kind of ask gives the recipient enough information that they can fully address your need and help you out without having to exchange multiple messages looking for context. Instead, give as much context to the ask as you can, and do it in one message: It demands more context in order to be properly answered. This time, at least there’s an actual question embedded in the first Slack message, but it’s too general to answer.
PRINCIPLE SYNONYM PLUS
Add up dozens of instances over the course of a day or week, plus time lost getting in and out of a flow state, however, and this kind of sloppy communication can become a considerable time sink.Īvoid this kind of thing, too, where you offer slightly more context but still not enough for it to be an actionable request for your recipient:
Now your recipient has to read your message, type in “Great, what’s your question?” and wait for your response before they can help you. This is a good example of what not to do:Īsking if someone has time to chat or if they have time to answer a question, on its own, forces a context-switch with no immediate resolution. Secondarily, try to reduce the overall amount of context-switching necessary to help you (remember that Slack is fundamentally distractive if you’re writing, coding, etc). Whether you’re asking for help or organizing a call, BLUF your communications with your co-workers by reducing the amount of work that your recipient has to do to help you. Include All the Context Your Reader Needs to Act It is a “full body” writing exercise, not a quick and dirty copy and paste.
It’s not, as the name might imply, simply about finding your “bottom line” and sticking it at the top of whatever you’re writing.īLUF, if you apply it consistently throughout your writing, is a way of organizing your thoughts and understanding the narrative that lets you yield your central points to your reader as quickly as possible. Whether you’re writing for your company’s blog, writing Slack messages to co-workers, or writing emails to customers, BLUF can help you cut through the noise and connect.īut BLUF is more than a simple communications tactic. While the decisions you make may not be life-or-death, you probably also spend a lot of your time communicating with people who are busy, whose time is valuable, and who deserve at least the same level of consideration.
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