TED’s Chris Anderson wants to help you, me, all of us climb out from out from a seemingly never-ending pile of emails–and the solution starts at home.

Fundamental to the problem, according to Anderson, is that it takes longer to respond to an email than to write one ^[1]–counter-intuitive considering it takes longer to write than to read. Reasons include forwarding long email threads (which requires time to read and process), adding unnecessary recipients (increases total response time), and open-ended questions that can’t be answered easily or quickly.

Anderson’s solution is an email charter, a community pledge to follow ten steps that will stop the email spiral. The first and fundamental rule is to respect recipients’ time; that is, the onus is on the sender the to minimize the time it will take to process the email–even if it requires more time on the sender’s end. Other parts of the charter include “celebrate clarity,” “tighten the thread” and “slash surplus cc’s,” as well as giving the efficiency “gifts” of EOM and NNTD (that is, End of Message and No Need to Reply). Taken in its entirety, its a simple yet elegant set of golden rules by which we all, in our own best interests, should abide.

You can check out the charter in its entirety at emailcharter.org ^[2].