Effective Email Etiquette

Leave a comment

On Thursday January 25, I will return as a virtual presenter to the Wild Wisconsin Winter Web Conference. In 2020 I spoke on the topic of Developing Motivated Cultures (recording available through this link). This year I will share tips and tricks on Effective Email Etiquette. As a resource, the script for my talk is now posted on the Efficient Librarian website.

Here is the start of the presentation.

Effective Email Etiquette – How to Ensure Your Messages Are Understood

All of us send email every day. However, have you ever considered what makes for an effective email that will be read and understood by the recipient? As a primary means of communication with colleagues and the public, it is important to consider the most effective ways to compose email to ensure it is read fully and understood clearly.

Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com

Don’t Send that Email … Unless You Have To!

One of the biggest challenges in effective communication is deciding the medium for the message. For many people, email is a common way to share information. In fact, it is often preferred, as implied by the saying, “this was another meeting that should have been an email.”  Yet it does have limits. Here are times when email is appropriate:

  1. Routine communication: Emails are suitable for routine updates, sharing information, and conveying non-urgent messages. If your message is not time-sensitive and allows for a delayed response, email is a suitable choice.
  2. Documentation: When you need a written record of communication, such as project updates, agreements, or decisions.
  3. Scheduling and coordination: For arranging meetings, confirming appointments, and coordinating schedules.
  4. Formal communication: In professional settings, emails are often appropriate for formal communication, such as job applications, official announcements, and business proposals.

Read the full article to learn more about how to be more effective with CC and BCC, writing impactful subject lines, the perils of public records, and more!

Parrells Between Money and Productivity

Leave a comment

Have you heard the admonishment that “Time is Money?”

It is an old saying that exhorts us to make best use of our daily actions in order to reap financial rewards. Taken to heart, it would also imply that being productive will increase the amount of money we acquire. Is there truth to this conclusion?

Tiago Forte believes that there are similarities between productivity practices and budgeting. In an article on his website, Tiago shares thirteen parallels that define successful application of both skills. The first one has to do with aligning with a deeper purpose.

“What do I want my money to do for me?” Everything else depends on the answer: if you value freedom and autonomy, your decisions will look very different from someone who values security and stability.

It’s likewise very valuable to ask yourself, “What do I want my work to do for me?” Besides the obvious answer of “provide a paycheck,” the conclusion you come to has profound implications for where, when, and how you work.

If you value creativity and self-expression, but an ever greater proportion of your to do list is filled with administrative tasks, you will eventually experience dissatisfaction and burnout, regardless of how many hours you work or how much it pays.

Another parallel he shares has to do with shifting our thinking. Tiago believes we should let go of what “should be” and honestly accept what is actually happening.

There is a deeply seated human tendency, when things aren’t going how we believe they “should go,” to simply deny reality. We can make up justifications, rationalizations, and excuses effortlessly, and maintain them even when the impact on our health, happiness, and relationships becomes unbearable.

Simply knowing what is happening is half the battle when it comes to money or productivity. Getting a hold on the “current state” requires letting go of the lenses and stories we use to buffer reality and protect our ego. This is why making a comprehensive Project List is so powerful – it lays out the current state of affairs in objective detail, allowing us to make fully informed decisions.

Learn about the other eleven parallels by reading the rest of the article.

Declutter for the New Year

Leave a comment

As we move into 2024, this is a good time to clear out the old and get ready for the new by doing a little decluttering. The benefits of clearing space are many, both in the physical sense of making room and putting objects in order, but also mentally to release stress and anxiety. The trick is knowing how to get started.

Star Hansen is an author and organizational expert who has helped many people get their spaces in order. She recently shared her best tips and tricks with NPR in a story called “The decluttering philosophy that can help you keep your home organized.” Star says it starts with understanding your clutter.

Hansen says everyone’s clutter tells a personal story. “What becomes clutter and where your clutter accumulates can say a lot about what’s going on with you. If you have unwanted piles of stuff accumulating around your house, ask yourself: “What’s making this hard to get rid of?” she says. “A lot of times, the trip-up is from holding on to the past or wanting a different reality than the one we’re living in.”

Another important suggestion she makes is to get started is to focus on taking smaller bites at the clutter.

You can also work within short time constraints. Say you only have an hour to declutter your home this week. Hansen says to divide that time into 20-minute intervals. For the first 20 minutes, look for trash to throw away. The next 20 minutes, identify anything you want to give away or donate. Spend the last 20 minutes putting items back where they belong.

Learn the rest of her five tips by reading the rest of the story.

New Year Resolution – Purge Your Files

Leave a comment

Do you still have a paper filing system? If so, when was the last time you examined it to see if the content was still worth keeping? Often times when we accumulate paper, it becomes a file and forget system. Paper goes in and never comes out, making it ineffective storage.

Yet the value of effective paper filing can be easily overlooked. Files are a useful tool for knowledge workers as they contain valuable information or ideas for future projects. The folks at Getting Things Done (GTD) have some very useful ideas on how to build and maintain your paper filing system. That way the material can add value to your work. The first point they share is to keep the filing simple by using an A-Z system.

People have a tendency to want to use their files as a reminder system in addition to reference, and therefore attempt to organize their files by projects or areas of focus. This magnifies geometrically how many places something isn’t when you forget where you filed it. One (or at least as few places as you can get by with) simple alpha system files everything by topic, author, or company so it could only be three or four places (if you forget where it is.)

Another key piece of advice is to purge paper files once a year. To do this go through each file to see what still have reference value and identify items that can be tossed. I find the period before or after the New Year is a great time to do this as business is usually slower, providing quiet time to organize. As the folks at GTD say a file purge is useful because:

That keeps them from being stale and you from feeling like it’s a black hole you’re putting things into. It gives you the freedom to keep anything you think you might want or need later.

Learn other methods to keep your paper files in order by looking at this GTD sheet.

However, if your focus has shifted away from paper into the digital world, then take time in the coming months to learn the best methods to Build a Second Brain!

The Tyranny of Small Choices

Leave a comment

Have you ever stopped to consider how many choices you make during the day?

Often when we think about decision making our minds consider the big operational decisions we make at work or in our lives. Yet the vast number of decisions we make every day are small. These choices range from what shirt to wear in the morning, to choosing a restaurant for lunch, down to what TV show to watch at night. Most of us pay little heed to these types of decisions, as they seem inconsequential beyond the moment they are made. However, sometimes these small decisions have outsized impact due to the fact that thousands or millions of people are making similar choices. This leads to the tyranny of small decisions.

In a recent article on the Big Think website, author Jonny Thomson explores how small choices can have oversized impacts. Early in the article, he explains the concept of the tyranny of small decisions.

In 1966, the economist Alfred E. Kahn first coined the term ‘tyranny of small decisions’ in an article of the same name. Kahn used this concept to describe how a series of small, individual choices could lead to an end point no one really wanted. It’s when various discrete and minor actions string together into something not desired by the decision-makers as a whole.

Kahn used as an example a train service that has lots of passengers in the winter, but little ridership in the summer. The choice the passengers make about when to take the train, seemingly inconsequential to each individual person, add up to impact the train service to the point where it could shut down.

Later on in the article, Thomson offers some examples of ways that the tyranny of small decisions can immediately impact your life and business. This first example is about skimping on training days, especially around cybersecurity.

Sixty percent of small businesses go out of business within six months of a cyberattack. Cyber-vigilance matters, and small decisions to skimp can have huge ramifications. Buying only basic internet security might save some money. Missing or having irregular cyber-awareness training might make you popular with your team. But few businesses can survive an $80 million hack.

Learn more about the tyranny of small decisions and ways to avoid them by reading the rest of the article.

Leadership & the Spirit of Excellence

Leave a comment

Many organizations strive for excellence, yet it is very hard to capture the spirit necessary to make that a reality. What is it that separates those organizations that achieve it from those that don’t? It may all come down to leadership.

The website Big Think recently featured an article called 5 ways for leaders to cultivate a “spirit of excellence” in teams. Written by John Roussot, it starts out by defining what is meant by excellence.

Excellence is not just a destination but a journey — the gradual result of always striving to be better. In the world of team dynamics, this pursuit of excellence becomes a shared mission, elevating each member’s personal and professional performance. Excellence, then, is not merely an aspiration but a continuous process, grounded in the humility to constantly learn, adapt, and grow. This journey is marked by a willingness to test new ideas, learn from every outcome, embrace failures as stepping stones, fail forward and collectively evolve through rich experiences.

What are the five ways that leadership can cultivate a spirit of excellence? It starts with curiosity.

Encourage curiosity: Foster an environment where asking questions is encouraged. Stimulate thought and inspire learning by posing thought-provoking questions and promoting open discussions.

Learn the other four ways by reading the entire article.

Beginner vs Advanced

Leave a comment

Have you ever got advice? Of course, you have. The real question is how often has that advice been useful?

The problem with advice is that it may be good for some people, but not for all. Also, some advice is helpful at the start of an endeavor but could be restricting as experience is gained. Tiago Forte recently thought about this problem and wrote his conclusions on his blog at Forte Labs. His primary insight concerns the crucial difference between beginner and advanced advice.

In any given pursuit – tennis, chess, jiu-jitsu, painting – there is a hierarchy of skills that you have to acquire one by one to progress. More fundamental skills lie at the bottom, like the base of a pyramid, and serve as a foundation for more advanced skills to be gained later on.

I’ve noticed that people often want to skip the beginner stages and go directly to the advanced ones. That’s an understandable desire – why spend more time as a novice than you have to? But if you don’t have a strong foundation and try to build too high, your efforts will inevitably crumble.

How do we determine the difference between beginner and advanced advice? Tiago suggests the following:

Beginner advice tends to take the form of an extremely simple, impossible to misunderstand, black-and-white rule.

The more advanced you become, the more options and pathways become available to you, each one tailored to a specific scenario. In other words, you have to choose which advanced strategy is right for you.

How what does this mean for productivity skills? Read the full article on the Forte Labs blog to find out.

The Overlooked Secret for Work Satisfaction

Leave a comment

What drives people to do their best work every day? Is it a big paycheck? How about impressive benefits? Perhaps it is awards and other types of recognition? While all that is nice, none of these factors is the most important to a sense of meaningful work.

In fact, the secret to workplace satisfaction costs nothing.

It is simply a sense of progress.

There is an ancient Greek myth about a cruel king named Sisyphus, a mortal cursed by Hades to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. The catch was that just before he reached the top, the boulder would slip from his grasp and roll back to the bottom, forcing him to start over. For too many people their workday is Sisyphean in that they put in hours of effort with no sense of progress to claim for it.

According to Teresa M. Amabile, and Steven J. Kramer, authors of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, the best way to find satisfaction at work is to have a sense of daily, meaningful progress. In their surveys of workers, they found that 76% of people’s best days involved progress, while only 13% involved setbacks. As they summed up:

“Of all the positive events that influence inner work life, the single most important is progress in meaningful work.”

What was more surprising to them was how little management understood and appreciated this fact. According to their surveys, a sense of progress was dead last in a list of possible motivating factors. This demonstrates a strong disconnect between perceived and actual reality. On the positive side, it means that managers who pay attention to workflow, clear barriers and set out clear goals will help their employees feel more successful and fulfilled.

A sense of progress is important to authors. There is an old adage that authors succeed by writing something every day. Even if the work they produce is ultimately not used, the dynamic of forward progress in the task of writing is essential to eventually finishing that novel or long essay.

To learn more about how a sense of progress can improve your everyday work, read The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work.

Tidying Before the Holidays

Leave a comment

As we approach the end of the year, invitations for parties and unexpected get-togethers start to fill the calendar. This often means having guests show up at your door. When hosting, it is important to have a warm and welcoming environment. Yet when the stress of the holiday season is combined with the normal day-to-day flow of life, how can one be ready for the festive times in time?

Helpful advice comes from Marie Kondo, founder of the Konmari Method of organization. She has devised a step-by-step guide to tidying before the holidays. The first step is to visualize your space.

Before starting, imagine how you want your holiday season to look and, more importantly, to feel. When you think of the perfect evening with your family, what do you picture? Do you see thoughtfully planned meals enjoyed around a table or a quiet night spent drinking tea with someone you love? Visualizing your ideal holidays will help you decide how to focus your energy.  

A later step is designed to create space to accommodate the influx of new items into the home.

With holiday traditions that often include gifts and packages arriving by mail, more elaborate meals or perhaps a Christmas tree, you’ll likely need to rearrange certain spaces and temporarily store unneeded furniture and items. Start by choosing a place to store everything you plan to put away – preferably somewhere out of sight. Then, pack items away by category, so you can easily return them to their proper places after the holidays. 

Read all the steps on the Konmari website.