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How to Increase the Emotional Intelligence of Your Email Messages

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A good article on the emotional intelligence of email at the 99% by Scott McDowell. Here’s the first part:

Earlier this year I attended a presentation with Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence and godfather of the field of Emotional Intelligence. According to Goleman, there’s a negativity bias to email – at the neural level.

In other words, if an email’s content is neutral, we assume the tone is negative.  In face-to-face conversation, the subject matter and its emotional content is enhanced by tone of voice, facial expressions, and nonverbal cues.  Not so with digital communication.

Technology creates a vacuum that we humans fill with negative emotions by default, and digital emotions can escalate quickly (see: flame wars). The barrage of email can certainly fan the flames. In an effort to be productive and succinct, our communication may be perceived as clipped, sarcastic, or rude. Imagine the repercussions for creative collaboration.

He goes on to give six tips for making sure your email messages communicate the right tone.

10 Things Google Has Found to be True

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A good summary of Google’s philosophy from it’s website, which encapsulates some helpful principles in general for understanding the changes that have been brought about by the internet (and which many companies still haven’t caught up with):

  1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.
  2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
  3. Fast is better than slow.
  4. Democracy on the web works.
  5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
  6. You can make money without doing evil.
  7. There’s always more information out there.
  8. The need for information crosses all borders.
  9. You can be serious without a suit.
  10. Great just isn’t good enough.

How Information Overload Affects Decision Making

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A recent article from Newsweek. Here’s the summary:

The Twitterization of our culture has revolutionized our lives, but with an unintended consequence—our overloaded brains freeze when we have to make decisions.

And this is very interesting:

The booming science of decision making has shown that more information can lead to objectively poorer choices, and to choices that people come to regret. It has shown that an unconscious system guides many of our decisions, and that it can be sidelined by too much information. And it has shown that decisions requiring creativity benefit from letting the problem incubate below the level of awareness—something that becomes ever-more difficult when information never stops arriving.

An Interview with Tim Challies on Productivity, Part Two

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Today we complete the interview with Tim Challies that we started yesterday. Thanks again, Tim, for your insight!

6. Many of my readers know of you through your very helpful blog. What is your process for blogging? For example, how do you choose what to blog on each day? What do you do if, say, on a Saturday afternoon an idea for a post comes to you. Do you collect post ideas and work from a list, or just decide afresh each day?

Most days I sit down at my computer at 8 AM and just see what happens. I maintain a list of potential topics within Things, but usually what happens is that an idea will strike and I’ll try to spend a day or two thinking about it and running over it in my mind. After a couple of days of ruminating I find that the words tend to come quite easily. Occasionally when the muse is speaking I will sit down and write out several posts at once. But far more often I write and post all at the same time. I’m not nearly as organized as some might think. But I find this adds to the immediacy, freshness and honesty of the blog. What I’m thinking today I’m writing about today. Or that’s the hope.

7. Why do you think Christians should care about productivity? (Or, dare I say it, if you don’t think Christians should care, why not?)

Christians should care about productivity. That’s not to say that they should necessarily be driven by a desire to accomplish more things in less time. Rather, they should be motivated to use their time well and to do everything with excellence. God is glorified when we use our time well and when we do what we do well. There can be productivity in simplicity, not just in quantity.

8. In the last three months, what has been the most helpful productivity practice or tip for making you productive and effective?

I think it is one that came while writing The Next Story and it involves reducing my dependency on technology. There are times when I feel that there has to be a technological solution to every problem, and especially to every problem created or exacerbated by technology. So when I find that I need to record more information than ever before, I want to find the perfect app to deal with the increased quantity. But in many ways I’ve found it better to take steps backward, depending more than ever on pen and paper. And I am honestly more organized and productive for it. Until I lose my notebook.

Second to that I would say it is trying to maintain an empty inbox. Few things feel better in a digital world than looking at an inbox and seeing nothing there. That’s especially true when it’s 5 PM on a Friday. Just don’t tweet your accomplishment because every one of your hilarious friends will send you an email to fill it back up.

9. Do you have any bad productivity habits that you think might undermine your productivity and which you are seeking to change?

Absolutely. My biggest weakness is distraction. I wrote a whole chapter in my book on the subject and still find that I succumb to it. I find it very, very difficult to shut down my email while writing or blogging or preparing a sermon or doing any other kind of work. And it proves a constant temptation and constant distraction. I simply need to discipline myself to shut down email when trying to focus on other matters. My most productive days are the days in which I do batch processing of my email and then shut it down and forget all about it.

10. What is the most helpful book on productivity that you have read?

I know it’s a cliche, but I’ve got to go with Getting Things Done. I think it’s also the only book I’ve ever read on productivity. In the end I did not adopt very much of the GTD system, but found myself grateful for the issues it raised. It got me thinking in valuable directions, even if the solution Allen proposes is doomed to failure by virtue of its almost impossible complexity.

An Interview with Tim Challies on Productivity, Part One

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As part of the research for my book, I’ve been interviewing various Christian, non-profit, and marketplace leaders. Last week Tim Challies graciously agreed to do a written interview to serve the readers of the blog as well.

Many of you know Tim from his blog at Challies.com. He is also author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and the forthcoming The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion (due out in April).

I’ve known Tim for a few years now and am very impressed with his productivity. So I’m glad to finally have had the chance to probe him a bit on how he gets everything done. I think you’ll find his answers here very helpful and insightful. I’m posting this interview in two parts — the first five questions today, and the next five questions tomorrow.

1. Tim, you seem to be one of the most productive people I know. For example, you write a substantial blog post every day. You started a new publishing company. You completed your second book last year. You are an elder at your church. You read a ton. And it seems that you preserve a good amount of family time. Do you ever get thrown off balance and, if so, what do you do to get back?

It is interesting that you see things that way. When I look at my life I am prone to see vast amounts of wasted time. I often struggle with finding joy amidst so many wasted opportunities.

If I am productive, I think it probably owes to my attempts to simplify my life. While it is true that I wear quite a few different hats during the week, I have tried to keep each area as simple as possible and as clearly defined as possible. I attempt to focus on large chunks of time, so that I will dedicate an entire day to one of those tasks and then dedicate the next day to a different task. Thus on Tuesdays I work in the church office and focus on church matters while on Wednesday I work in my home office and focus on my ongoing work with Ligonier Ministries. I have a wandering mind, so focusing on one task at a time seems to keep me on track.


2. How do you organize a typical day? When do you blog, read, pray, spend time with the family, and get your work done?

At present I have three different varieties of work days. Mondays I tend to take the morning off and spend it with my wife (all the kids are in school, giving us time to go on a date that doesn’t require paying for babysitting). Then I spend the afternoon working and preparing a few blog posts. Tuesdays and Fridays I typically spend in the church office; I tend to leave early in the morning to avoid traffic, so I head home by mid-afternoon. Wednesdays and Thursdays I dedicate to my work with Ligonier Ministries, working roughly 8 until 5.

Devotions come before the work day and family time comes after. I can’t say that I always get the balance right, but I certainly do try. It’s the rare day when my wife and I do not spend 8 PM until bed time just hanging out and spending time together, even if that just means we’re sprawled out on the coach together reading.

3. What type of planning do you do? For example, do you plan daily? Weekly? Do you find this to be a helpful practice?

My life is currently structured enough that I do not requite a ton of advance planning. The one thing my wife and I have found indispensable is to sync our calendars once a week. We do this on Sunday evenings. I open up iCal while she grabs a one-week paper calendar. We plot out the week to come, mostly focusing on our weekly tasks. We make sure that we don’t have any obvious overlaps. It’s a small thing, but it makes a big difference by helping to reduce unexpected surprises (such as finding out that we both need the car at the same time). As my pastoral responsibilities increase, I find more occasions where there are good and necessary interruptions to the routine. I am learning to adapt well.

4. Do you keep a to-do list and/or a projects list? If so, how do you use them and how often do you look at them?

At my best I use Things, a fantastic bit of software (Mac-only). I maintain lists of projects for home, blog, church and office and check in with it every day. Practically, though, I often forget and tend to find myself updating it in batches rather than regularly. I keep telling myself I’ll do better once they (finally) add cloud syncing. I carry a notebook with me wherever I go and this helps give me a place to go to reference lists of things to do. A recent addition is an Action Journal which I use in meetings; it helps me make sure that I leave a meeting with a list of action items. That has proven very, very useful.

5. Do you set goals? If so, how do you determine which goals should be a priority?

I do not tend to set goals. I don’t really know why this is, except that I may not have an organizational structure to make sure that I attain those goals.

Explore and Try Things First, Then Prune

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Seth Godin makes a great point in his post the other today:

Step one: Open all doors. Learn a little about a lot. Consider as many options as possible, then add more.

Step two: Relentlessly dismiss, prune and eliminate. Choose. Ship.

The problem most people run into is that they mix the steps and confuse them. During step one, they aren’t open enough, aren’t willing enough to consider the impossible. And then, in step two, fear of shipping kicks in and they stay open too long, hold on to too many options and hesitate.

Simple doesn’t always mean easy.

Taking Initiative Means Taking Initiative, Not Waiting to be Told

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One more Godin post today. A really good point from a short profile of Sasha Dichter, Director of Business Development at the Acumen Fund, which he is doing as part of a series profiling a dozen people who have made the decision to lead and initiate:

It’s so easy to get hung up on reacting to incoming, on working through a checklist and on imagining what the boss wants you to do next. It’s far more productive, I think, to decide where you want to go and then go there. And the power and low-price of online tools makes that easier than ever.

The key difference between initiators and everyone else is the simple idea of posture. What do you say to yourself in between assignments? What do you do when you see something that needs doing?

Sasha asks himself (not his boss), “what’s next?” And that’s the shift. You look at a world of opportunities and you pick one. Initiative is taken, it’s not given.

Seth Godin's New Book Now Available

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Poke the Box — that is, take initiative — is Seth Godin’s newest book and it releases today. It’s his first book published non-traditionally, and here’s what he has to say about it:

Here’s a little-spoken truth learned via crowdsourcing:

Most people don’t believe they are capable of initiative.

Initiating a project, a blog, a wikipedia article, a family journey. Initiating something even when you’re not putatively in charge.

At the same time, almost all people believe they are capable of editing, giving feedback or merely criticizing.

So finding people to fix your typos is easy.

A few people are vandals, happy to anonymously attack or add graffiti or useless noise.

If your project depends on individuals to step up and say, “This is what I believe, here is my plan, here is my original thought, here is my tribe,” then you need to expect that most people will see that offer and decline to take it.

Most of the edits on Wikipedia are tiny. Most of the tweets among the billions that go by are reactions or possibly responses, not initiatives. Q&A sites flourish because everyone knows how to ask a question, and many feel empowered to answer it, if it’s specific enough. Little tiny steps, not intellectual leaps or risks.

I have a controversial belief about this: I don’t think the problem has much to do with the innate ability to initiate. I think it has to do with believing that it’s possible and acceptable for you to do it. We’ve only had these doors open wide for a decade or so, and most people have been brainwashed into believing that their job is to copyedit the world, not to design it.

There’s a huge shortage… a shortage of people who will say go.

Today we’re shipping my new book Poke the Box. Writing a book isn’t that difficult for me (I’ve done it before), and it would have been easy to keep publishing books the traditional way, the way it’s supposed to be done. Instead, I took the opportunity to start a new publishing company, to reinvent a lot of what we expect when we think of when we consider publishing a book. I took my own advice.

I hope you’ll check it out.

Go!

A Seth Godin Book You May Not Know About

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I hadn’t heard about it, at least. It’s short and was published last fall as an e-book. Here’s the description: “In this 32-page short eBook, New York Times bestselling author Seth Godin presents 30 ideas for making a difference in a world that needs you.”

The Organized Heart Now Available

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Staci Eastin’s book The Organized Heart: A Woman’s Guide to Conquering Chaos releases today from Cruciform Press.

As a quick aside, I’m excited about Cruciform Press because it is seeking to rethink publishing in light of the new digital environment that we are in. And because it began in the digital era, it is able to build upon these new realities from the start. You can learn more about their vision here.

Back to Staci’s book. Here’s the description:

The fight against chaos is universal, whether it be the outward chaos of disorder and frenzy or the inward chaos of fear and self-criticism. Even if we already know how to do better, something falls apart between our good intentions and getting it done.

Most books on organization just add more rules to your life, whether it be another plan, another calendar, or another method. This book will show you a different, better way that is grounded in the grace of God.

Jesus taught that true change doesn’t come by the addition of more rules, but from the inside out, with a change of the heart that only the gospel can bring. When you identify the heart problems behind the chaos in your life, lasting change can happen. This will not only reduce the stress in your life, but help you be more effective in your service to God.

And here’s what I had to say in my blurb for the book:

“In The Organized Heart, Staci Eastin gives us a refreshing look at organization from an uncommon but incredibly important perspective: the spiritual. This is critical because without understanding the spiritual dimension, all of our productivity techniques ultimately backfire. So instead of focusing on adding new rules, she focuses on the heart. Specifically, she helps show how to avoid letting leisure, busyness, perfectionism, and possessions from becoming idols—and does so in a way that is encouraging and uplifting rather than guilt-driven. This inside-out approach should be helpful to women who are looking to be more organized but know that simply adding on another method is not enough.”