• Quick Tip: A digital camera can serve as a simple hand held copy machine.  If you need a copy of a rebate before mailing it in, just snap a photo.  Want a copy of a deposit before mailing it off?  Grab your camera. (0)

Reader Question - Emailing Your Boss

How to write emails to your boss

Don’t try to impress your boss with the length of your email. Most of the time they will appreciate a short and to the point message. If you need to explain something in more detail, consider listing the main points as bullets at the top and add the rest of your explanation at the bottom or as an attachment. This allows them to quickly grasp the issue without reading through several hundred words.

Another advantage of a short message is that it is more likely to get read. If your boss is busy, they may read a short email and leave longer ones to be read later.

You can help your boss prioritize your emails, by adding a short code in the subject. For example, anything you need to tell your boss just to keep them in the loop should have a subject starting with FYI:. You can create other prefixes based on whatever works best for you. By helping your boss categorize emails before even reading them you increase the chances that your important messages will get prompt attention.

Often the best thing to do is to sit down with your boss and ask how they prefer for you to communicate. Some bosses like status reports throughout the week via email. Others prefer to handle everything in a weekly meeting. Having this discussion with your boss shows that you value their time and work style and can lead to a much stronger working relationship.

It is also a good idea to figure out how many subjects to deal with in a single email. If your boss sorts emails into folders and then deals with them, you probably don’t want to write an email the covers 10 different topics. At the same time, your boss probably doesn’t want to come in Monday morning and find 20 short emails from you about various things. Usually it is a good idea to batch FYI type messages, but separate emails by topics for items that require your boss’ answer or action.

• There are many different ways to manage your todo list.  I am currently having the most luck with a single sheet of paper placed in the center of my desk.  I draw a line across the middle.  The things above the the line are the things I must complete.  The things below are the other items I think of during the day.  I write big so I can only fit a finite number of items on the page.  For right now this is working very well. (4)

Offline Reading

As more and more content becomes available on the internet it is easy to shift our reading online. There are some benefits to this. It is easy to get timely information on breaking events quickly. The downside is that you can spend a good deal of time reading things with little value or worse. Your educational reading can degrade into a few hours of mindless surfing the web.

Sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, and Reddit supply a constant stream of interesting content that often is little more than a waste of time. I’m not saying that you can’t get anything valuable off of the web. However, if most of your reading is done online the chances of it turning into a waste of time are high enough that you should consider putting some watch guards in place.

Online reading has some significant downsides:

1. Lower writing quality. While this isn’t always the case, the financial scale of many online publications often results in lower writing standards than print publications.
2. Shortened attention span. Online writing is usually designed to be read in a short period of time. This isn’t a negative thing, but you want to make sure you don’t train yourself to have a short attention span by never reading anything that takes more than5 or 10 minutes.
3. Eyestrain. Many people are using monitors that are not particularly easy on the eyes.
4. Distractions. When you buy a book, the author makes money through your purchase and then has to provide you with a good reading experience. Online, the author usually gets money when you leave the site by clicking on an advertisement. This tends to make online reading a very distracting experience with all kinds of things visually (and sometimes audibly) vying for your attention.

If over half of your reading material is on your computer screen, I would suggest it is time for a change.

• With well over 3,000 votes in the Organization category, we are ready to move on to the Personal Development section.  So take a few minutes to vote for your favorite answers. You just select a question that looks interesting and then select the best answer from the two presented.  When you stop seeing any new interesting answers, just move on to another question. (0)

Paperless with the Kindle

James Harris has some interesting thoughts on going paperless when it comes to magazines. In particular he looks at how his Kindle has changed the way he reads. I have a Sony Reader which uses a similar screen and I agree with him that it is a very pleasurable way to read. Here are some quotes from his post.

We are really very close to having a paperless society that pundits have talked about every since I can remember. People always exclaim they hate reading off the computer screen even though they spend hours a day doing so. Now the Kindle offers a better way to read, even better than paper, and that starts to suggest going paperless is possible.

I’m a little less optimistic. I think we have a long ways to go before the infrastructure for really being paperless is in place. I agree that all the technology is there, but things have to hit a critical mass before they really become useful and I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

Paper is still very inexpensive. The used paperback I bought for $1.00 is very durable and I could go through 300 of them before approaching the cost of an electronic reader. Even more important, the books still retain some value after I read them. I can give them away, sell them, or trade them in for other reading material.

I think electronic readers would start making sense if a $15 book was now $3 or $4, but they aren’t. Publishers are trying to keep the prices only slightly lower than the print editions even though they are basically one-time-use.

Consider a DVD, you can buy it for $15 or rent it for $2.50. (I know that technically you can read your electronic book again, but in actual use you probably won’t read an electronic book over and over again.) The use of an electronic book is more in line with renting a DVD. However, to buy a book for the Kindle, you’ll pay $10 while a hardback will typically cost $15 to $17. Paperbacks will usually run a bit less and if you buy the book used it can be substantially less. You read the book and then eventually delete them if you run out of space on the Kindle–or you keep it around indefinitely. With the physical book, you can resell it, if you purchased it used, you’ll probably only be out the shipping costs to purchase it–maybe a bit more. You can share your ebook with other people who you trust to use your $300 digital reading device, but that is about it–oh and you can’t read something else while they read it.

When it comes to magazines and newspapers the economics are a bit different. A newspaper typically has very little value a few days after it is published (unless you keep birds and need something to line the cage). So there is pretty much no resell value in a newspaper and it is unlikely that you will loan the paper to someone else. The Wall Street Journal on the Kindle costs $10 per month. At $120 per year it is about the same cost as the physical edition along with the online access option.

I feel like I’m getting more for my money with paper but I actually read more stories when I get the Kindle edition.

That is an interesting observation. Based on the numbers above, he is getting more for his money when buying a book. It would probably be a better test to see how he feels in 18 months after the novelty of the Kindle wears off a bit. One of the nice things about something like the Kindle or Sony Reader is that they are limited use devices. When you try to read on your computer it is easy to jump around opening other browser windows, looking things up, and clicking on interesting advertisements or links. The electronic readers are much more focused on reading, so it tends to be easier to read longer stretches at a time with them than on the computer.

An interesting side note is what Steve Jobs said about reading books on the iPhone. He basically said, “people don’t read any more”. Interestingly enough people do still buy books. So even if reading is going down book purchases are still going well. But if people are buying books they aren’t reading, they are probably going to be more interested in something that will sit on their bookshelf than a file that other people can’t see.

Do you use a digital reader of some type? What do you think it would take for digital books to really take off?

• We have been interviewing a number of people for their best tips in a number of areas.  Now we need your help to vote for the best tip.  Select a question from the list and vote for the best answer.  They answers you are show are selected at random so once you start to see a bunch of repeats, move on to another question. (0)

Reader Question - Hanging Folders

How do you use hanging folders?

I use hanging folders to hold regular manilla folders. So I may have a hanging folder for “Personal Taxes” and another for “Business Taxes”. Then within each of those folders, I’ll have one for each year “2004 Personal Taxes”, “2005 Personal Taxes”, etc. (I talked about this in a previous Tuesday’s Tip.)

Many people organize their files alphabetically. This isn’t a bad idea, but if you have a few files, it may be slower than some of the alternatives. For example: Every time you use a hanging folder put it in the front of the drawer. That way the most frequently used folders are always in the front and the less frequently used folders slowly make their way to the back of the drawer. If you always start looking for a particular folder at the front of the drawer, most of the time you’ll only have to look a very short distance.

I use plastic Rubbermaid tubs with hanging file rails to archive my older files. I’ll take out anything I’m unlikely to need and put it in the tub and then move it into storage. That way my working files aren’t cluttered up with paper I want to retain, but will probably never need again.

Links On Remote Assistants

I asked my remote executive assistant to put together a list of a few posts that discuss working with a remote/virtual assistant. Below are the results:

• The Personal Outsourcing Olympics: Bangalore Butler or American Assistant? - Tim Ferriss
  Very appealing but informative article on the latest trend of entrepreneurs - Outsourcing. Having had a positive experience on all the jobs assigned to a virtual assistant, the author invites others to give their comments through this article. For a novice at outsourcing, he has chalked names of reputed companies in this field.
• How to get your virtual assistant to schedule your doctor’s appointments - Ramit Sethi
  Should you have problems interacting with your virtual assistant, this article by Ramit, would assist you. It’s a mail to his remote executive assistant to fix an appointment with the dentist. Also, the reader gets suggestions on whom to contact, experience of another entrepreneur, and options to get effective output of outsourcing.
• Myth… Busted! You CAN Have Great Help on the Cheap - Patricia Mayo
  Encouraging, one and all, to hire a virtual assistant. Very comprehensive about this technology and how effective and useful can the dealing with a remote executive be for someone with lot of innovative ideas. However, very slyly does mention about the drawback one might have to face.
• Working with a Virtual Assistant - David Phillips
  Should you feel uneasy with the whole concept of Outsourcing, this article would put an end to it. Although it’s a personal experience that is narrated, but the basics, benefits and shortcoming of working with a remote executive assistant is well projected.
• Tips for Working with a Virtual Assistant (and Why You Might Want One) - Leo Babauta
  The author narrates as to how he seized the opportunity that came by and satisfied his doubts on virtual assistance. The article also explains why, where, what and how aspects of remote executive assistance. Very informative for the reader who is seriously thinking about outsourcing tedious errands.

• When you need new socks, get rid of all the old ones and just buy all the same type.  It is much easier to match if all of the white socks match each other and all of your dark socks match each other. (5)

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