Personal productivity isn’t the focus of my writing. It’s industrial technology and strategies, of course. But finding and using personal productivity tips and processes underlie how I can accomplish so much in my life–from writing two blogs, leading a church ministry, leading a number of soccer referee tasks, do marketing for an investment I’ve made, and probably more.
I cannot remember how I met Hassan Osman of Cisco, but we correspond occasionally. He has written a great little e-book, “Don’t Reply All: 18 Email Tactics That Help You Write Better Emails and Improve Communication with Your Team“.
Updated Information
From Hassan:
It’s listed at the lowest possible price ($0.99), and I’m donating ALL profits for sales through Friday Dec 18 to charity. I’m super excited because I’ve never done a launch like this before. The charity I chose is “Save the Children,” an international NGO that helps children all around the world, including the US. My company (Cisco Systems) is matching my donation dollar for dollar, which is awesome.
The amount of money I make per book is not much (my cut is 35%, which means for every book I sell, I only make around 35 cents). However, every cent counts for a child in need. Also, “design A” won for the book cover (thanks to all who voted), so I went with that. Click on one of the following links to check out the book: USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Netherlands, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, and India.
This is a valuable little book. I highly recommend it both for productivity and for getting along with people. Of course, the “reply all” is one of my pet peeves. “Email chains” drive me freaking crazy. That could have been emphasized more. I think he hit in #9 (Tactic #9: Present Options Instead of Asking Open -Ended Questions). The first 5 would be my first 5. I’ve used the saved draft as a template for several tasks over the years. Then the time zone thing is crucial. I live in western Ohio. East coast people think I’m in Central time zone. West coast people haven’t a clue. (I’m Eastern) I am forever re-confirming teleconference times. Buy it, digest it, use it to enhance your email experience.
No TL;DR helps personal productivity
In #3, he addresses TL;DR–too long, didn’t read. I see this in emails and also blog posts. Paragraphs are too long. There’s too much unbroken text. This is a tip for better personal productivity for both sender and recipient.
Email is not going away. But I propose thinking of it much like texting rather than report writing. Attach reports. Just stick to basic facts or information in the body of the email.
Oh, and remind me to do the same.
