Monthly Archives: April 2022

Email: Don’t Get Fired!

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Have you ever received an email that was sent to you unintentionally?  Or seen one where you know someone was copied, but most definitely should have been.  Or better yet, received an email followed quickly by a recall notice?  I am most definitely not letting you recall the first message.  I will be reading every word of it.

So, here’s another quick email tip.

You can read about the last one here: Don’t Fire & Forget.

I refer to this as my “Don’t Get Fired Rule.”  I’ve only met one other person who does something like this, but everyone should.

I put a two minute delay on all outbound emails.

That’s it. Super simple.

It gives you an extra two minutes to think about what you wrote.

It gives you a chance to correct that recipient you fat fingered. (I purposely don’t autofill addresses – maybe another post).

It slows you down just enough, to slow you down just enough.

For bonus points, you can set the rule so emails sent with “high importance” bypass the delay.  So if you are in a meeting and need to send something quickly and folks are waiting on you, just send it high importance. An enhancement idea that I borrowed liberally (i.e., stole) from the other person I referenced above.

Hope that helps.

That’s A Bunch Of…

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Ok, what am I missing?

The seller wants to sell me house that will cost almost $10,000 per month, and wants to rent it back for $5,000 per month.

I presume that if I do enough of these, I will make it up in volume?

Influential Reads – March 2022

Reading Time: 2 minutes

“Investing a little time where others don’t doubles your impact..” – Farnam Street

I am still working my way through Titan, the John D. Rockefeller, Sr. biography.  But I did tick through a couple works of fiction, Dog Stars and The Guide, both by Peter Heller as well as Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer.  They were interesting enough, but not anything I would highly recommend.  However, it did put some books on the board and helped with some consistency in my daily reading.

Here are my most influential reads – in no particular order:

  1. Russia in Ukraine: Let Loose the Dogs of War! – “Put simply, assuming that crises will always end well, and that markets will inevitably bounce back, just because that is what you have observed in your lifetime, can be dangerous.”
  2. What Bond Investors Should Do as Interest Rates March Higher – “So, he argues, the yield curve’s recession signal is distorted.”
  3. Has The Demise Of The Growthsters Been Greatly Exaggerated? – “Anyone who thinks that either 18% or 25% per year returns in a 2% inflation environment (ahhh, those were the days!) is normal or sustainable, simply hasn’t studied market history.”
  4. Spam as a Service – “As for the valuations being assigned to all these companies, and the expectations of their investors – I would be terrified.”
  5. Signs of stress deepen in the office real estate market – “hose numbers likely overstate how much of that office space is actually being used. Recent data from Kastle Systems, which measure occupancy by looking at foot traffic into offices, showed vacancies of about 60% in major markets.”
  6. Inside the bubble – “And people outside the bubble are supposed to feel left behind, because that’s part of the fuel of life inside the bubble.”
  7. 5 Ways to Simplify Your Life – “My favorite way of going through my day is to do every activity in fullscreen mode.”
  8. Dr. Andrew Huberman: The Science of Small Changes – “Forget trying to get people to change, it does not work. It works with children, it does not work with adults unless it’s self-directed plasticity.”
  9. Is Renting Better Than Buying? We Think So. – “You’re actually better off renting and investing the savings. It’s just too expensive to buy a house.”
  10. Tough Guys – “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”

Note: This is based on when I read the article, not necessarily when it was first published.  Unfortunately, my backlog of things I would like to read always seems to dwarf the amount of time I can devote to reading.

Top clicks across the site last month:

  1. Financial Model vs. Operating Model
  2. Influential Reads – February 2022
  3. EBITDA Is Not A Good Proxy For Cash Flow
  4. Ski Gear Thought Experiment
  5. Operating Model Tips

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