Avoid emails if it can be delivered over call or meeting

In 2001, Neal Pat­ter­son, the CEO of Cerner Cor­po­ra­tion, sent an email to his work­force rep­ri­mand­ing them for not work­ing the long hours he ex­pected. He threat­ened to with­hold pro­mo­tions until the em­ployee park­ing lots stayed full from early morn­ing until late at night. The email be­came pub­lic. Cerner stock fell 22%, cost­ing the com­pany around $300 mil­lion. The les­son: Never send an email while angry, stressed or upset. Never be overly in­for­mal or too ver­bose, don't hit Reply All un­nec­es­sar­ily and don't fail to re­spond to your email. Fun­da­men­tals of email eti­quette in­clude using self-control, writ­ing in a re­spect­ful tone and valu­ing your cor­re­spon­dents' time. In­clude a clear sub­ject line. Be con­cise; use proper gram­mar, punc­tu­a­tion and spelling; and copy only those who need a copy. Don't send an email when the con­ver­sa­tion is bet­ter de­liv­ered face-to-face or on the phone. Don't in­clude any­thing in an email that you wouldn't say in per­son. Humor and sar­casm sel­dom work in text.

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Sleep does wonders

Your brain slows in the af­ter­noon, but a nap can work won­ders. Nap­ping for 45 min­utes will turbo-charge your brain for six hours. Con­versely, stu­dents who skip even an hour of sleep each night face a dra­matic drop in aca­d­e­mic per­for­mance. Sleep de­pri­va­tion im­pairs "at­ten­tion, ex­ec­u­tive func­tion, im­me­di­ate mem­ory, work­ing mem­ory, mood, quan­ti­ta­tive skills, log­i­cal rea­son­ing abil­ity, gen­eral math knowl­edge." Wouldn't it be great to match job sched­ules with peo­ple's in­her­ent sleep pat­terns? Plus, a later school day would ad­dress teenagers' nor­mal ten­dency to sleep late.

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