Building Efficient Teams

TLDR; Writing matters, become more accountable with your time, life lessons from a 97-year-old lobsterman, and insights on creativity from Isaac Asimov.

“Not a wasted word. This has been a main point to my literary thinking all my life.” — Hunter S. Thompson

Dear Reader,

On Monday, we started our series about habits for tech-savvy teams. These are the practices that, if implemented, can take your team to the next level in efficiency, happiness, and profitability. (For a recap, go here.)

Today, we cover the first two of these seven habits: Great communication and effective time management. Jump in!👇👇

They Write Well 🖋

Writing is a meditative practice that informs all of communication.

The proportion of collaborative work to total work has never been higher. This makes effective communication an essential skill for team success.

Research shows that those who write well also tend to be happier and healthier. Many people find the process of writing and re-writing to be therapeutic.

Ideas to help your team write better:

→ Try using a tool like the Hemingway app to proof your writing for simplicity. For grammar and spelling corrections, pair Hemingway with Grammarly.

→ The first place you can level up your writing is in your emails. Try out the Five Sentences rule for emails. Try communicating your point in five sentences or less for every email you send.

→ You can also use the AIDA format for your emails and correspondence: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

→ Try improving your storytelling abilities. Story by Robert McKee is the gold standard to improve your storytelling.

As these ideas, rules, and formats start to spread throughout your team, you’ll notice a reduction in the number of emails sent and an improvement in communication. Writing effectively is the hidden superpower of tech-savvy teams.

They Protect and Share How They Spend Their Digital Time ⏱

“Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much can be done if we are always doing.” — Thomas Jefferson

Time is the most valuable resource you have. Tech-savvy teams recognize protecting time is the gateway to achievement.

Everyone has a time of day when they’re most productive. Identify this period, and harness its awesome power. Don’t let anyone or anything distract you during this time, and watch your productivity skyrocket.

Managing time well means giving yourself breaks to recharge. It also means devoting part of your time to learning new digital skills.

Ideas to get the most out of your team’s time:

→ Start using a software like RescueTime to track how you spend your digital time. Actions speak louder than words. Building the case to fire or promote someone is difficult. If you track where you spend your time, you’ll be well on your way to leading by example.

→ Try sharing your schedule on Google Calendar.

→ Turn off all your notifications on your computer and phone.

Technology can waste your time, or it can save you time. Time management is a core skill to master to get the most out of other technology and software.

Writing well is the gateway to no-hassle communication and understanding how your team spends their time is the first step in effectively managing it. Together, these two skills will revolutionize your team’s efficiency and ability to execute.

Enjoyed today’s tips? Tune in tomorrow to learn how tech-savvy teams leverage tech and use self-competition as a motivator for success. 💪

Hot Off The Press 🔥

Fresh on Mission Daily. How do we close the gender pay gap? First, by helping women understand their value in the workplace. Meggie Palmer, founder of PepTalkHer, is doing just that.

On this episode, Ian and Meggie discuss why the stories we tell ourselves matter and how telling the right story can dramatically improve the value we create and receive. Check it out!

Mission News 🗞

This section features the best of what the team at Mission HQ is reading, watching, listening to, playing, doing, and meditating on.

Reading 👓

👴 Learn from your elders. Read these life lessons from a 97-year-old lobsterman and WWII vet.

“John shows me the lobster fisherman’s license he received at age 16. Dated July 1, 1938, the creased and torn document is a remnant from the Depression, when lobsters sold for 15 cents a pound. After high school, he bought a brand-new boat, paying for it the Maine way: ‘I went into the woods and cut 100 cords of pulpwood with a bucksaw and ax,’ John remembers. ‘There weren’t no chainsaws.’

World War II put the brakes on John’s burgeoning business. He was 20 when he hitchhiked to Portland, Maine, to enlist in the Navy, where his sea legs came in handy aboard the USS Nelson. ‘First year on that destroyer, I had to sleep in a hammock, and, boy, that is a job in itself,’ he says. ‘She’d roll upside down and headfirst and all kinds of ways.’ John worked his way up from seaman to torpedoman before being stationed off the coast of Normandy, France, for the D-Day invasion. On June 13, 1944 — the sixth night of the battle — a German torpedo took out 70 feet of the Nelson’s stern…”

Listening 🎧

🌝 New podcast recommendation: Moonrise by the Washington Post.

“A man who meets himself on the moon. A blue orb that bursts into flames. The quest to explain the unexplained. In the first chapter of ‘Moonrise,’ the journey to space begins.”

Deep Dive 🧠

✍️ Read a never-before-published essay on creativity by Isaac Asimov:

“How do people get new ideas?

Presumably, the process of creativity, whatever it is, is essentially the same in all its branches and varieties, so that the evolution of a new art form, a new gadget, a new scientific principle, all involve common factors. We are most interested in the ‘creation’ of a new scientific principle or a new application of an old one, but we can be general here.

One way of investigating the problem is to consider the great ideas of the past and see just how they were generated. Unfortunately, the method of generation is never clear even to the ‘generators’ themselves.

But what if the same earth-shaking idea occurred to two men, simultaneously and independently? Perhaps, the common factors involved would be illuminating…”

Sign Off 👋

Happy Tuesday! Thoughts, recommendations, suggestions? Get in touch by replying to this email or hitting us up on social @TheMissionHQ!

This was the September 17th edition of the Mission Daily newsletter. If you like what you read, join us on our mission.