10:00pm PST – I’m on my way I the airport and I can wait to get my butt in sunny Miami. I have a lay-over in Toronto then I head to Miami. I hope to get pictures up on my blog ASAP when I get back. I’m pretty sure there is no Internet conncetion on the cruise ship so hopefully when I come back. I’m writing this blog post between traffic lights on my iPhone.
12:30pm EST – I am in Miami, I arrived safely and all flights were on time. Now, what’s for dinner near Aventura?
1. Get to the point. This is very critical especially if you are sending a brief reminder or note. Many people consume many hours receiving and responding to emails. The last thing they need is to reed a paragraph when the main point is to remind them to bring home milk. Also people find it hard to digest such heavily written messages and may stop reading the email half way through and then are concerned that they missed out on something.
2. Send emails in bulk. Let’s say you have a question or comment that is generally received through your email. Instead of wasting valuable time replying to each and every one of these common question, send an email to the general audience with the question. First of all, this will make them feel like you care about there concern or curiosity and secondly, you don’t have to worry about missing out on someone.
3. Don’t use bulky email signatures. The last thing people want to see at the end of an email is you phone number, address, website, blog, twitter account, etc. First, many people can only read emails written in plain text so therefor defeating the purpose a signature. And many times, if you are sending a quick note as opposed to a lengthy email, who would really care about a signature? A simple initial, name or even a smiley face will suffice in most cases.
4. Proof read, proof read, proof read. Honestly, this can’t be emphasised enough. Even if it’s a quick reminder or a message to your boss, they way an email is written gives a great impression on your ability to communicate. It is really demoralizing (I will find a better adjective after I post this) reading an email in which every other word is spelled incorrectly and is missing proper punctuation.
5. Be careful with the use of sarcasm. Email is very different than vocal communication because you cannot tell the use of sarcasm. Example: “That speech on social media sucked, dude. lol ;-)” It is hard to tell in this case wether he/she thinks that the speeched sucked or thought it was great and just winked. Unless you know that the person you sent this email to and that he/she is aware, then I recommend you don’t do this.
If you have any thing to add please feel free to comment.
As of late I have been taking it easy, recovering from a cold and preparing for my vacation coming up soon. It has also been a while seen I have posted some interesting links to my own blog. This terrible cold is really putting a damper on my creative brains! I’ve been all over the place! So instead of posting someone with much detail, I’ve decided to post a roundup of links I’ve come across. Enjoy!:
Aside from jump-starting cars, shoveling driveways and wadingthrough unshoveled sidewalks, what are you doing in/with the snow?
I just came back from a full 5-days of skiing in fresh powder. It was, well…A time to learn from my mistakes but in there were many nice things about freezing your behind of while going to a mountain with two poles and your feet glued to a platform. The weather was beautiful; clear skies, great visibility, fresh powder and a rather warm -4 degrees Celsius.
Let me just say I wouldn’t give up my day job to become a professional skier. Frankly, the sport was much harder than it looks like on TV. Those athletes make it seem easy. It’s the exact opposite. Even if you think you have unbelievable co-ordination.
So why did I try skiing instead of snowboarding? One reason only. (And a good one, too.) There is no way I can go down the slopes with both my feet restricted to a board. Not a chance. You might as well lock my wrist to the dashboard of a truck going down the mountain at full speed.
What are YOU doing in the snow? Making snowmen, building snow forts? Or even snowball fights (I would have to save that for a whole other post, or book in my case.)
5 new centimetres of snow yesterday, 6 new centimetres of snow today, plus all the snow from the 5 days before. Yes, it’s a white Christmas here. Expecting more helpings of snow for this coming week and even a wind chill.
The first thing I see when I look out the window is more snow. The light and fluffy stuff is expected to keep coming our way for the next month or so. But they say, it won’t be as much snow 3 weeks from now then there is today.
How is YOUR Christmas? White? Or the usual colours you see every day?
