When Is the Best Time to Send an Important Email?

Your email may never be opened. Sure, you wrote brilliant copy. You also took the time to craft a compelling subject line. You followed good email etiquette. But, unless you considered the best time to send an email, your message may still be destined for the trash bin.

By my conservative estimate, I’ve sent at least 100,000 emails since the early days of the Internet. (May Prodigy rest in peace.) It wasn’t until I started handling public and media relations a decade or so ago that I gave a second thought to how an email’s send time affects open rates.

Quiz: Do You Know How to Network?

Networking can be a challenge.

There’s more to it than just researching events, identifying contacts, and following up. You also have to balance talking about your goals and interests against getting to know others. Effective networking is as much an art as a science.

This quiz will guide you through some key aspects of effective networking and help you understand how good a networker you are.

How to Turn Your New Year’s Resolutions Into Habits

So you’ve decided to write more. That’s your goal, your resolution.

You’re there; the keyboard is there. Maybe in your head you’re repeating “you can do it, you can do it,” getting pumped for the outpouring of productivity, the astronomical wordcount that will no doubt ensue at any moment now.

Yep, at any second, we’re going to kick into high gear and—Hang on, let’s put on some coffee first.

The 10 Biggest Leadership Mistakes You Really Should Avoid

You made it. You’re a manager or boss, maybe even a business owner or CEO. Now, it’s time to be a leader. If you know anything about managing other people and their ideas, you know that it’s a super tough gig. There are many tempting traps you can fall into when it comes to being in charge, but as long as you’re cognizant of them, they’re possible to avoid. Keep reading for our top ten mistakes leaders make, plus how to be sure you steer clear of them.

How to Make a Clear, Assertive Point Over Email

Giving someone a lot of work to do, taking on a new responsibility, asking for leeway, requesting a favor, disagreeing with someone, expressing a strong opinion, or just saying hi after a long radio silence—these topics are tough in conversation, and when you’re trying to broach a difficult subject over email, there can be even more at stake.

Grammarly has put together a guide of best practices for sending emails on difficult topics without coming across as aggressive, demanding, or rude.

The Best Ways to Set Goals and (Actually) Get Results From Them

A few years ago, I had to come to terms with my burgeoning habit of browsing housing rental ads on Craigslist for places in the Pacific Northwest. I’d look at the listings and wonder, What would it be like to live in Washington? Wondering soon turned to obsession, and obsession spurred research. Before I knew it, I’d made a decision—I was going to leave my ancestral home in the upper Midwest and trek two thousand miles to live near the shores of Puget Sound.

Fantastic Lists and How to Use Them

If you want to get more done, lists are potent tools that can make you a productivity wizard. Our grimoire will reveal the most fantastic lists and teach you how to wield their power.

via GIPHY

Goal Lists

Goal lists are for plotting your long game strategy. What do you want to accomplish in the next six months, year, five years? Odds are, you already have some things in mind.

7 Ways to Motivate Yourself When You’re Exhausted

Romeo and Juliet, peanut butter and jelly. . . some combinations just seem to go together. Deadlines and exhaustion, on the other hand, are a pair that no one likes to experience. What do you do when you are confronted with that undesirable duo? Put up a fight with these seven motivating tactics.

Break your task into smaller steps.

If someone told you to do an online search for a blueprint for a house, you would skip off to your computer without a care in the world.

How to Consistently Write Better and Faster

In this article, here’s what you’ll discover:

• why distractions are more debilitating than you think (and what to do about them)
• a simple four-step formula to dramatically improve your writing
• how to crank out high-quality content in half the time by optimizing every step of the writing process from first draft to formatting

So let’s get started, shall we?

Why distractions are more debilitating than you think (and what to do about it)

Just how bad are distractions for your productivity?

How to Stop Procrastinating and Take Control of Your Life

Are you procrastinating? Is there an essay or a blog post you just can’t seem to get done? We could suggest:

Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today.

Though, it won’t likely help.

Why not? Professionals, students, educators, writers, and so on have all heard this advice, and we all feel compelled to follow it, but—let’s be frank—it’s not easy to just “stop procrastinating.” We don’t procrastinate for the sake of procrastination or laziness.

5 Overwatch Teamwork Tactics You Can Take to Work

This one’s for the gamer geeks. You know who you are. You’re the ones with thumbs permanently crooked from working analog sticks, or one hand formed into a palsied claw from clenching your [insert gaming mouse brand of choice here] in a death grip. You’re the ones whose parents said would never amount to anything if all you did was play video games all day. (To which you had to retort, “I’m building hand-eye coordination!”)

How to Write a Resignation Letter and Exit in Style

When it comes to making big shifts in the direction of your life, changing jobs ranks right up there among the most significant. You’ll be leaving behind familiar faces, tasks, and roles to sail into unknown waters. It’s energizing and daunting at the same time!

Once you’ve made the decision to leave your job, you’re faced with the challenge of leaving on good terms.

Read Today or Pay Tomorrow: Celebrating International Children’s Book Day

Guest post by David Dotson of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library

Dolly Parton has taught me lots of lessons over the past 16 years:

Be proud of who you are.

To reach your goals you may have to step around people or step over people, but never step on people.

Count your blessings more often than you count your money.

Yet the greatest gift she gave me was the gift of reading.

How to Write a Catchy Headline in 1 Minute and 7 Seconds

Guest post from Nick Marquet

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

If you are a writer, your goal is probably for your work to be consumed by an interested audience who will rave about it to their friends. Yet, if you write the most insightful, thought-provoking, earth-shattering blog post or newspaper article — and no one reads it – it’s not very likely that your writing will resonate with a wide audience.