As head of school, I would have my assistant head of school read sensitive emails that I was planning on sending.
As time went on, I would stop sending such emails entirely, and insist on face-to-face meetings.
That's because we do a terrible job of accurately reading intent when it comes to things like email.
We lose sight of tonality. We lose sight of intent.
Read MoreOne of the biggest time wasters occurs when we repeat work that can be easily automated or duplicated (think: copy and paste.) This is true in every industry and position. Amongst coders, work repetition was so prevalent that it inspired the creation of the “Don’t Repeat Yourself” technique (or DRY Principle,) which discouraged the recreation of reusable code. While DRY, was made famous by coders, it is easily applicable to non-programmers as well.
Many of the things that we do often – such as replying to emails, crafting correspondences, writing articles, briefs, or proposals – unnecessarily take up large chunks of our day. At its core, DRY is about saving time by reusing work that’s already been done and materials that’ve already been prepared so that you don’t have to continually repeat the same work time and again.
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