Postbox 4's new Composition Goals feature helps you achieve two important things that are basic to emailing effectively and efficiently:

1. Keeping each message concise and to-the-point. Studies show that recipients are more likely to read emails that are simple and easy to read.
2. Not spending more time than we can spare for each message. Hey, you're busy, right?

Three Helpful Tools to Choose From

1. A character counter — that tracks the number of characters in a message.
2. A word counter — that tracks the number of words in a message.
3. A stopwatch — that tracks how long you've been writing a message.

You can use any two of these at a time.

When you go past a character, word, and/or time quota, the corresponding indicator at the bottom of the Compose window turns red. You can keep going if you like, of course.

Oops! We're over our word and time quotas, time to wrap it up!

One of the clever things about the Composition Goals feature is that it's smart: Its counters and stopwatch are strictly per-message. This means that if you're working on one message and then work on another one — or even go outside of Postbox 4 — Composition Goals will pick up right where you left off.

Note: Composition Goals are a feature of the Compose window, so they don't appear in Quick Replies.

How to Set Up Composition Goals

1. Go to Preferences/Options > Composition.
2. Select the Set composition goals using checkbox.
3. Click the first popup menu to select a counter or stopwatch for the lower left corner of the Compose window, and set the desired maximum number of characters, words or time.
4. Click the second popup menu to select a counter or stopwatch for the lower right corner of the Compose window, and set the desired maximum number of characters, words or time.

See if Composition Goals can keep you from over-communicating and wasting valuable time. This feature is just one more thing that makes Postbox 4 the power user's email app.