Productivity
The six paragraphs you retype every week
Everyone has them and almost nobody has written them down properly. Finding yours takes a week of paying attention; fixing them takes an afternoon.
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The benefit is not the typing
A snippet saves perhaps thirty seconds. Across a week that is a few minutes and it is not why this is worth doing.
The real gain is quality. The explanation of your process that you type for the fortieth time, at five o'clock, to someone you are slightly irritated by, is worse than the one you would write if you sat down and wrote it once, carefully, when you had time.
A snippet is that careful version, reused. Consistency in the things that should be consistent, and no degradation on a bad day.
Finding yours
- Open your sent folder and read the last fifty messages This is the whole method and it takes twenty minutes. You are looking for paragraphs that repeat in substance even when the wording differs.
- Write down anything that appears three or more times It will be five or six things and they will be duller than you expect.
- Add anything you have ever copied from an old email That behaviour is the symptom. If you have gone hunting for something you wrote before, it should be a snippet.
- Write each one properly, once This is the afternoon. Get the wording right — it is going out under your name for the next two years.
- Give each a trigger you would not say by accident Two or three words describing the action, not words from the text itself.
What people actually make
| Snippet | Who has it | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-off with name, title, number | Everyone | Signatures do not appear in chat, forms or documents |
| Full postal address | Everyone | Slow to say, easy to mistype, wanted constantly |
| Booking link with a line of framing | Anyone with a calendar | URLs are terrible to dictate |
| The rates or pricing paragraph | Freelancers, agencies | Retyped weekly, worded differently each time |
| The polite decline | Everyone | Worth wording well once rather than badly under pressure |
| The process explanation | Professional services | Three paragraphs, sent to every new enquiry |
| Standing context for AI prompts | Anyone using AI daily | Highest leverage of all. Role, constraints, banned phrases |
| Call-note template headings | Sales, recruitment, consulting | Structure removes the hesitation that kills the habit |
| PR or commit template | Developers | The description that otherwise says "fix" |
| Chase one, chase two | Everyone who invoices | Consistency matters more than originality here |
The AI-context snippet
Worth singling out, because it is the highest-return snippet on the list and almost nobody has made it.
Most people have a paragraph that should be attached to every AI prompt they write and never is: their role, their jurisdiction, their house style, the things they never want in an answer. Typing it each time is unthinkable, so it gets omitted and every answer is slightly wrong in the same way.
Three spoken words at the start of a prompt, and it is there. See dictating Claude prompts for a worked example.
How many to have
The practical limit is how many triggers you can remember, which is about ten for most people. A snippet you cannot recall is worse than none, because you go looking for it and the search costs more than typing would have.
Start with three. The sign-off, the address, and whichever paragraph you noticed yourself retyping most. Add one when you catch yourself copying from an old message, and prune anything you have not used in three months.
Where they go wrong
- Triggers that occur in speech. The main failure mode. Two or three words, describing the action.
- Snippets that should be personalised. If it needs a name and a detail every time, it is a template you dictate around, not a block you paste whole.
- Line breaks behaving differently. Email clients, chat apps and rich-text editors handle them differently. Test in the app you use most.
- Stale content. A price, a link or a title that changed. Review twice a year — a snippet is a small piece of your business that keeps running unattended.
- Too many. Ten is plenty. Thirty is a system you now have to maintain.
Questions
How do I find out which snippets I need?
Read the last fifty messages in your sent folder. The paragraphs that repeat are your list, and they will be duller and more specific than anything you would have invented.
How many snippets should I have?
About ten. The limit is how many triggers you can remember; one you cannot recall costs more than typing the text would have. Start with three.
What makes a good trigger phrase?
Two or three words that describe the action rather than appearing in the text. "Sign off" rather than "best regards". Something you would not say by accident mid-sentence.
Can a snippet contain line breaks?
Yes, which is how a signature block works. Test it in the app you use most — email clients, chat apps and rich-text editors treat line breaks differently and one of them will surprise you.