We’ve spent a lot of time teaching founders how to run high-performance meetings: written prep, silent reading, clear owners, and a discussion focused on the issues that actually need you. For your most important meetings, that discipline is worth it.
But most of a founder’s week isn’t made of big, high-stakes meetings. It’s made of quick syncs with a team member, fifteen-minute calls squeezed between other calls, and a steady stream of emails asking for your input. Those don’t need pages of prep. They do need to be easy to understand fast.
When you’re moving from conversation to conversation, the hardest part is often the first two minutes: figuring out what this is about and what you’re supposed to do with it. Multiply that by a dozen meetings and a hundred emails, and it adds up to a lot of wasted attention and a lot of low-grade stress.
The fix is to give your team a shared shorthand. Think of them as signal flags. Before anyone brings you a meeting or sends you an email, they put two flags at the top.
Flag 1: TL;DR
TL;DR is internet shorthand for “too long; didn’t read.” In practice, it means a one-line summary of the whole thing.
Not a paragraph. Not three bullet points. One line that tells you what this is about and the key information you need to know.
For example:
TL;DR: The Acme renewal is at risk because their new CFO wants a 20% price cut.
TL;DR: The Q4 hiring plan is on track, except for the senior engineer role, which is two months behind.
The first time you ask for this, you’ll probably get four or five lines. That’s normal. Send it back and ask for one. Writing a true one-line summary forces the sender to figure out what actually matters, which is half the value of the exercise.
Flag 2: WDYN (What Do You Need from me?)
If someone is asking for your time or attention, they need something from you. Make them say what it is, in one sentence.
That might be:
A decision between two options
Approval for a budget item
Feedback on a draft, a hire, or a new promotion
A conversation with someone else to unblock a project
Authorization for finance to make a payment
Simply awareness, with no action required
For example:
WDYN: Approval to offer Acme a 10% discount in exchange for a two-year contract.
WDYN: Nothing right now. Heads up that I may need your help recruiting next month.
Again, one sentence. If the sender can’t say what they need in one sentence, they probably haven’t figured it out yet, and it’s better for them to discover that before the meeting than during it.
Why two lines make such a difference
Together, TL;DR and WDYN give your brain a quick map before you dive into the details. You know what the topic is. You know what role you’re being asked to play. You can decide in seconds whether this needs your attention now, later, or not at all.
That makes meetings start faster. It makes long email threads less overwhelming. And it reduces the mental friction that builds when every conversation starts with “so, what’s this about?”
It also helps your team. Writing these two lines forces clarity before they bring something to you. Many problems get solved in that process, because once someone writes down exactly what they need, they sometimes realize they can handle it themselves.
How to start
Tell your team that every meeting invite and every email that needs your input should begin with:
TL;DR: [one-line summary]
WDYN: [one-sentence ask]
Model it in your own emails first. Be consistent about asking for it. And when you get five lines instead of one, send it back with a smile: “One line, please.”
Save the full high-performance meeting format for the conversations that need it. For everything else, two signal flags will take you a long way.