Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “email”
“My brother will love these. It’s the first time he has had a home in four years. Thank you so much.”
He smiled, gave me a big, musky, hug, and drove away.
I wasn’t sure if I had just done a good deed, or been hustled by a Craig’s List scam artist.
This story actually begins months before – so let’s go back to the beginning.
Note: This is a true story, with names changed by request.
“It isn’t just what you know, and it isn’t just who you know. It’s actually who you know, who knows you, and what you do for a living.”
– Bob Burg (Author of the Go-Giver)
In this guest article, Alpesh Shah discusses a fascinating study that shows how most people acquire their jobs – via their networks. He then discusses how he applied this to his life, and provides tips you can use to nurture your own professional network.
Have you ever read a horoscope, taken an online personality test, or even had a keyring that told you what your personality was based solely on your name? Were you surprised at the accuracy of what was said about you?
Perhaps what you should have been surprised by is your own gullibility. Don’t feel too bad about it though – we all do it. It’s what’s known as the Forer effect, and it’s just one aspect of mental bias.
Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First popularized the concept of a Time Management Matrix for prioritizing that I love (Side note: I say “popularized” because it appears Eisenhower was originally credited with using it). The system advocates the use of four quadrants to determine the tasks you “need” to do and deciding what should be made a priority.
In addition to providing text examples, I’m going to have a little fun and illustrate items from each quadrant using one of my favorite comics: XKCD.
When you first discovered that great website of Cat Pictures, you thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. You immediately signed up for the newsletter, and for the first couple weeks you loved it! You’d check your email, notice the shiny new newsletter in your inbox and shriek like a little girl seeing Clay Aiken for the first time.
Fast forward 3 months later, and the novelty has worn off. The cat pictures all look the same to you, and yet – you still get that newsletter in your inbox. Instead of unsubscribing though, you delete it.
Why? Why do we continuously allow junk email into our lives we never read, and not opt-out of it? In this article I’ll show why we do what we do, and my trick for simply and effectively breaking free of self inflicted junk email.