Emails are just as fundamental these days as food and water in our lives, and they form a large part of our daily communications.

Roughly 300 billion are sent around the world every day, according to Statista. On average, each of us who works in an office gets 121 emails per working day on average! Yet we send them and read them without thinking about them for a second.

But emails are essential. In some situations, they can’t be replaced with a short meeting or a phone call. We send them because of traceability or a time difference, or we need to have many people reading the same thing.

A study of around 1 million emails that was done with Microsoft shows the average employee spends 28 percent of his or her day working on emails.

But given how essential emails are, did anyone ever teach you how to write one? 

I have dedicated the last 25 years to learning and teaching. I have trained in the Scouts and the Israeli Army, and I teach business at a German university today. Just like anyone else, I send and receive emails and texts. Loads of them. I use them to stay in touch with customers, collaborators and students around the world.

Read More…

You could call me a productivity junkie. I’ve read countless books on the topic, hired a business coach to revamp my systems—I even write about productivity for a living. But like every junkie, many of the things I’ve tried have left me feeling burned out.

There was the time I hired an assistant to create a folder system to tame my emails, only to find that I preferred leaving my messages out in the open in my inbox. Shortly after was the two-day stint where I managed to hyper-focus on one task at a time using the Pomodoro Method, but then I felt exhausted and reverted to treating my task list like a sampler platter—a little bit of this for five minutes, a little bit of that for the next. (I need variety!)

I was starting to think something was wrong with me. That is, until I learned about productivity styles.

Developed by consultant Carson Tate, productivity styles refer to the way your brain is wired to process information, solve problems, and complete tasks. Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to getting stuff done, these styles give you the tools and knowledge to make the most of your innate tendencies.

Read More…