What’s the most important meal of the day for your body? Breakfast, of course.   Why? It establishes your metabolism and gives your brain fuel to operate well.  Just the same, if not moreso, breakfast is the most important meal for your mind too.  One braniac refers to the most important hour of your day: Hour One.  What you put into your mind during Hour One is critical. So what do you feed it? When you check your email, you graze on the random. Yet, many of my friends start out EVERY day by doing just that.  Think about the message that your Inbox (with 100 or more emails waiting to be answered) sends to your subconcious: “We are behind, overwhelmed, hurry!”

I am so guilty of this. I wake up in the morning by my iPhone alarm, sit up on the edge of the bed and read email. It is no wonder that after that I have trouble focusing on any reading or study. Read the rest of Tim’s thoughts and recommendations on this topic at Sanders Says.

Long presentations rarely achieve more than short ones. The longer the presentation, the more information there is for audience members to process. And so the less likely they are to get your core message.

If there’s one distinguishing concept between GTD and other productivity systems, it’s the deliberate split between defining a successful outcome and the very next action step toward accomplishing it.

To Do lists tend not to make the distinction, which can mean the difference between the item being perceived as actionable or not actionable.

Read further details on this at: Tools for Thought

Writing focuses your thinking. When you write something down, you aren’t just creating a paper record, you’re changing the way you think about it. Writing down a goal changes a whim into a conviction. Writing down your expenses changes excessive spending from a bad habit to a conscious choice. Writing down your idea turns a vague suggestion into a clear concept.

Writing is like an upgrade to your thinking. In the normal flow of thought, you can’t edit typos and make adjustments. If you get distracted, it can be hard to return to your place. And since your short term memory is only about 5-9 items long, you can’t think over more complex ideas.

When you start writing things down, you have an upgraded level of thinking about them. Writing things down makes you more aware of opportunities and problems, like a temporary boost to your IQ.

“No team, creative or otherwise, can exist without focus or direction. However, success rarely occurs in dictator-esque environments. “Good leadership and management practices apply across all types of work, both creative and traditional, because the common denominator is people. People in every oeuvre have skills, motivations, aspirations, personalities; each person brings their own mix to the table. Work, by nature, is accomplished through groups of people working towards a common goal and leading and managing are fundamental to the effectiveness of reaching that goal.”

Though most managers understand intellectually that time is their scarcest resource, few make the effort to gain a strategic perspective on how they spend their hours each week. Still fewer make a regular practice of keeping track of how the priorities they say are most important jibe with the way they actually spend their time. “Those we label natural born leaders know how to leverage their time,” writes Warren Blank in The 108 Skills of Natural Born Leaders (Amacom, 2001). For those in whom this talent is not innate, here’s how to do it.

Click here to read the full article

Millions of people have gotten “urgent” emails asking them to take immediate action to prevent some impending disaster. “Our bank has a new security system. Update your information now or you won’t be able to access your account,” or “We couldn’t verify your information; click here to update your account.” Sometimes the email claims that something awful will happen to the sender (or a third party), as in “The sum of $30,000,000 is going to go to the Government unless you help me transfer it to your bank account.”

People who click on the links in these emails may see a web page that looks like a legitimate site they’ve visited before. Because the page looks familiar, these people enter their username, password, or other private information on the site. What they’ve actually done is given an unknown third party all the information needed to hijack their account, steal their money, or open up new lines of credit in their name. They just fell for a phishing attack.

This is an excellent write-up on this issue. If it doesn’t benefit you, it will benefit someone that you know. Click the link at the top to read the entire post.

But perhaps not enough time is spent learning about how to communicate with email. And more specifically, how to communicate clearly and concisely, two crucial aspects of communication that are often overlooked.

How many times have you received a rambling and incoherent email? How many times have you hit “Delete” because you have no idea what the person wants and no time to sort through the long message?

The truth is that people don’t have time for long emails, and they don’t have time to try to find out exactly what you want. You have to tell them, in as short an email as possible.

Misunderstandings are also a problem, because of the nature of email. People are often ambiguous, and their messages are interpreted differently than they intended, leading to a waste of time and energy.

Communicate clearly and concisely with the following rules…

Scientists say that a successful midday nap depends on two things: timing and (no kidding) caffeine consumption. Experiments performed at Loughborough University in the UK showed that the sleep-deprived need only a cup of coffee and 15 minutes of shut-eye to feel amazingly refreshed.

Seriously, this combines COFFEE and a NAP! How much closer to perfect can you get?

Read how on Lifehacker…