A 20-Line Good Morning
One of our dream team bots posts a briefing in Slack every morning. It covers what finished yesterday, today's plan, what is blocked, and a few reference links. Being thorough, it quietly grew past twenty lines. On many days I read only the first three and moved on. The bot was diligent, and the reader was worn out.
A Small Experiment
For two weeks I changed just one rule. I added the sentence 「Keep the briefing within five lines, decisions first」 to the prompt, along with this template.
Line 1: What I need to decide today
Lines 2-3: Two key things finished yesterday
Line 4: What is blocked right now
Line 5: One link for the details
I did not delete the rest of the information. I moved it into a document behind the link. The content was not cut, only reordered.
Results
I marked the days I read the whole briefing on a calendar and compared.
• Previous two weeks: 2 days out of 7
• Following two weeks: 6 days out of 7
There were side effects too. I answered blocked items faster, and I asked the bot the same question twice less often.
Takeaways
• Unless told to shorten, a bot tries to include everything. Humans need to set the length limit.
• Simply moving the important item to the top changes the reading habit.
• Information you hate to throw away can live behind a link.
How many lines is your bot's daily message? Try counting today.