Two lines today

Here's the method, and it's small. The chapters before this were the reason it's small. A friend's message gets a reply today, and the reply is two lines, and two lines is not a minimum you're allowed to exceed. It's the standard. If you find yourself writing a fourth line, you've reattached the proper reply, and the proper reply is what was keeping the message open.

What two lines contains. One line that answers or acknowledges what they sent. One line that keeps it going, a question, a date, a bit of your own. "Lovely cake, she'll have been made up. Yes to October, I'll send dates Sunday." That's it. If there was a question in their message, the answer is the first line. If there wasn't, the first line is just the thing you'd have said if they'd shown you the cake in person, which is never more than a sentence.

Where it's sent from. Wherever you read it. The queue, the bus, the two minutes before a meeting. The rule is that the reply doesn't wait for a better place, because the better place is where the meaning-to lives. If you read a message and can't reply in the next minute, don't read it. Leave it unread until you've got the minute, which will be today, because the minute always comes.

The opening. Not sorry. Not "sorry for the slow reply", not "mad week", not "I've been meaning to". The earlier book You've apologised enough is about the reflex, and here it has a specific cost, which is that the apology is the surcharge, and the surcharge is what made the reply heavy. Start with the cake. If the stretch has been long enough that not mentioning it would be odd, mention it in three words and move on. "Slow, sorry. Yes to October." The friend didn't want the sorry. They wanted October.

What it isn't. It isn't a call, a visit or a plan. Those are chapters 11 and 21, and they go through the door the reply opens. Two lines isn't the friendship. It's the thing that keeps the friendship reachable. Don't ask it to do more than that and don't hold it back until it can.

When it's an invitation. Chapter 14. Yes, no, or a maybe with a date. The maybe with a date is two lines. "Would love to. Don't know yet, I'll tell you Friday."

Do it now, with the eleven. Not the oldest, that's chapter 25. The other ten. Two lines each, today, from wherever you are. It'll take a quarter of an hour, and at the end of it the list is clear, and the small heavy feeling that's been on your Sundays will be gone, and you'll notice that nobody replied with "is that it".