Email

`0:52:59`

kind of like letters. Wedding invitations are great. But things changed. Uh-huh. You started getting stuff you didn't want from people you didn't know. You lost control over who could reach you. An avalanche of automated emails cluttered everything up. And Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and Apple just let it happen. Right. There's sort of the alliteration, the AA. I like this thing. Uh I like using the same letter to start start words when I'm trying to be really have an impact. I feel like it bounces well again. So this avalanche of automated emails avalanche automated. Like multiple syllable words together. That's what creates the bounce. I'm thinking about this red ball. If I'm doing red balls on the syllables, is there's a lot of bouncing here. And I

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like that I like that effect occasionally. You'll see most of my words are short. I don't like a lot of syllables in my stuff, but occasionally I want to go for that. And then because it's rare you feel it differently. Um and so that's where that that goes. When you say because it's rare, avalanche of automated, like those rare more rare words. Like a lot of syllables. Avalanche automated. That is like a it's like coming across it's like going on a walk and coming across like a lizard. Uh and you're like, "That's a beautiful I don't see that very often. Like that I'm going to look at that now." That's how it feels here. It's kind of a weird super weird analogy, but but but but but it's like coming across something you don't see very often. So we're in the rest of the words it's pretty tight and short and

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but then there's these occasional things that stand out. And I wanted the avalanche of automated cuz that's how it feels. It feels like an avalanche. Like you're out of control of an avalanche. You're caught in it. You can't do anything about it. Of course it can be tragic. This is not that, but it's this barrage. It's this force Yep. that feels like it never stops when it comes to email. So I wanted that's what I wanted to get after. Ain't that right? Yep. Also, this is something that I think every writer can implement is whatever your predominant style is, if you do the opposite when you want to emphasize something, it'll stand out because it is distinct and different. 100%. That's great. I agree with that. Now email feels like a chore rather than a joy. Something you fall behind on. Something you clear out, not cherish.

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Rather than delight in it, you deal with it. Right. So more than I would like. Yeah, so this is this is where I'm taking email away from the things that are pleasant. Like the you know, getting an email from a friend, hearing from a family member, whatever. Like that's you can envision that. These are now And that's how most people think about email. It's like, "Yeah, that this this is avalanche of automated stuff, all these hassles. Like yeah, this I'm not into email." So I'm setting the stage to turn the stage Right. And flip it around. So I want people to go, "Yeah, yep." Again, nod their head. "Yeah, this sucks. I yeah, this sucks." Sean Perry has a line that he shared on this podcast that I really like where he

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says, "All stories are about the 5-second moment of change." And what he's saying is that there's something that happens at the beginning and then at the end it will be the opposite of what's going on. So take your classic rom-com, right? You have somebody who's in state A and they have all these things going on and by the end of the rom-com it'll be the opposite. They're going to go through a transformation. And that's exactly what we're about to see in the next section. That's a great point. And yet and yet email remains a wonder. So I think that what you've done here is you've said this is what's happened with email. You sort of set up this pain, this annoyance, this sort of agony of having to check your email. And now what you're about to do is you have that change into sort of delightness and the sense of Yes. And the word wonder and earlier the word treasure. So whenever I'm talking

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about the positive aspects of of email, it's like really special positive thing. They're enchanted words. Yes. So I I I you know, I didn't like go through thesaurus to find these. They just came out. But but but they come out in a way where um they are the right words for that statement. And I I couldn't come up with better ones. I really wanted to think of them that way. Thanks to email, people across cultures, continents, countries, cities, and seas, all seas. Oh I I I caught that. Here's another one. Right. Communicate every day. It's It's simple. Boom boom. It makes it easy for two humans to share their love and for millions of people to earn a living. There you go. There's a lot of

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rhetoric that you're playing around paragraph. I'm not surprised at all. It felt really good. It felt really good. It came together. I love when I've got a couple C's going and then like I got to find some more. And the ones I find aren't contrived. Another C. Yeah. They aren't they they it's like I didn't reach too far. That was clever. Convincing. Yeah. So I But but but the the thing is is like I didn't reach like sometimes you you you reach for a you know, alliteration or something and it's like that didn't fit. You could tell someone is trying too hard. I want to make sure I'm not trying too hard. But um that paragraph to me is the is the um the the the the fill the fill someone up with with positivity and like

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um and and wonder following from the previous you know, it's just like it's it's making it's it's cashing in on what I said earlier. And now it's filling that word wonder with these So good news, the magic's still there. It's just obscured, buried under a mess of bad habits and neglect. Some from people, some from machines, a lot from email Email deserves a dust off, a restoration, modernized for the way we email today. So let me get into some of this. So um neglect goes back to an earlier part in that piece where I said like Gmail I forget like Gmail, Apple, Yahoo, whatever. They let it happen. Right. So that's neglect. That's that's closing the loop, closing the circuit on

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that. Um and people aren't going to remember that, but I do believe it stays with them in a way where subconsciously there's a closing of the loop there. Some from people, some from machines, a lot from email software. That if if you look at comedy writers, a lot of the way that jokes are structured is they'll the first two things in a list of three that'll be the same and then the third one breaks the pattern. Right. Well, I love comedy. I'm not a comedy writer, but I do maybe it's just something that I absorbed perhaps. But really we're about to make email software. So up until this point I have not said what we're going to do. I've just said like what it should be. So this is the first time I introduce that like the problem is actually also

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with email software. Now I still don't actually get deep into that we're going to make email software necessarily, but it's a hint as to what we're about to do with this hey.com Yeah. And with hey we've done just that. It's a redo, a rethink, a simplified, potent reintroduction of email, a fresh start, the way it should be. Hey is our love letter to email and calendars and we're sending it to you on the web, Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. Yes. I added calendar later because we added a calendar later. Right. Um it's funny because that's the one I don't like that in there. Like it's like it feels tacked on. I almost stuttered there. I was like wait, is that in there? Yeah, I I'm like we added a calendar. So

`1:00:41`

I I did add that. Um But yeah, that's that's it. I I barely The whole point of this even though I want to close the loops and I knew we had like months to go until we we released the thing. Um I wanted first to establish that we had this domain hey.com. I want to give people a reason to go and go what the hell are these guys about to do? That was really the idea. So there's some clues but not really and and and then it just feels like it it wraps up and then I want to say like it's going to be everywhere. That's what all the platforms basically suggest. Like this is not like just a small thing. It's a big thing. We're going all out on it. The thing that I learned in the last 20 minutes or so as we were

`1:01:27`

doing this was how much you like playing around with the rhythm of words, right? So you said a redo, a rethink, prayers and payers. All the the these sort of playing around with words of sort of this repetition. The jabs. Right. It's like a boxing match. Just jabs. But they're friendly. I like that. I like the again, to me it's about it it's it's a it's a it's a bounce. It's this bounce. I keep saying the word bounce so it's like getting repetitive, but that's how it feels and I I I like that piece. I like the motion in a piece. Let's talk about this post that you wrote. My favorite post you've ever written is called the writing class I'd like to teach. And basically what you