Maxim - Three email rule

A visualization of the three email rule

 

In a recent office move, there was occasion for me to take down a bunch of hand-written post-it notes that I had written myself to remind of various professional maxims or just general good work habits.  Figured rather than just put them back up at the new desk, would take a few moments to convert them into a more preservable format.  The goal is to be relatively visual so they are in my face, the words are often too easy to ignore.  But I'm certainly not anywhere decent in drawing, so block diagrams are my best play at something legible.

The maxims themselves are generally adaptations, synthesis or snippets of my reading, conversations, training or other knowledge.  I will try to credit them when possible.  This one is a generality I've seen in a few different forms, including a 2-mail rule.  Thought that sometimes refers to the request-response work flow, so i find the '3' email rule easy to apply by counting the number of messages in a thread.