Wow, Jacqueline, what a great Blab session and AMAZING written recap! Thank you, it sparked so many thoughts.

I had read a lot on email productivity in the past, but I found this advice fresh and useful: write simpler messages. The study Chris cited is fascinating — the shorter the words and the sentences, the higher the chance that emailwill get read and responded too. I could definitely use this advice.

Also, and this might be the most widely-applied takeaway from the session (and super useful) — when you deal with people, ask yourself — are they well-fed and rested? :) if they are, you’ll have a MUCH higher chance of positive outcome. If they are hangry, you’ll be better of just asking them whatever it is you need to ask later (or take them out for a meal and start talking business after they’ve had some food)

Also, I do love Slack, but I never fully understood how it was better than email in terms of productivity. We used Slack when I worked at 500 Startups, and for me, getting on Slack was always an (unproductive) time suck. If I were to read even half the messages there, I’d spend all day, every day doing that. I feel like because Slack is more like a messenger, people feel more free going off topic and just chatting. And yet, I felt like i was missing out on conversations if I didn’t read the discussions. So, I’m conflicted about Slack as a productivity tool at work. (although I love it for private communities like Buffer Community Slack group)

My solution to that was to set up custom notifications. I used key words that were directly related to my scope of work, and had email notifications sent to me when someone used those words.