Edmund Wilson’s Pre-Google Canned Response

There is one behavior I’ve seen over and over again among the super-productive and that is the ability to say “No.”

As you become successful, you may be presented with more and more opportunities, some of which will turn out to be distractions from your original goal. Saying “no” without feeling guilty about it is probably one of the easiest ways to increase your productivity.

Edmund Wilson, considered by some to have been among the most important American literary critics of all time, used the following canned response, which he would use to answer almost all inquiries, putting a check mark next to what had been requested.

These days, most email programs (and social networks) make it easy to set up an autoresponder to let people know hyper-productivity is your goal. Google’s Gmail includes canned responses which allow you to send out more customized autoresponds, send routine paperwork or create multiple signatures.

If super-productivity is your goal, you may wish to consider creating an Edmund Wilson-like autoresponse.