- 10almonds
- Posts
- We Hope This Email Blows Your Tits Clean Off
We Hope This Email Blows Your Tits Clean Off
Improving things in and out of your office!
The 10almonds Team
February 18, 2023
Here at 10almonds, we love to make health and productivity crazy simple, and sometimes it’s impossible to separate the two, because of how much each affects the other. Today we talk work-life balance, and cut straight through the mess of one of the least manageable parts of many of our working lives… emails. We “hope this email finds you well”—and we’re about to make your day better, either way!
🧠 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Eight Hours A Day…Really?
❝Eight hours for work; eight hours for rest;
Eight hours for what we will!❞
It sounds so nice, so simple, so easy, so stress-free! The 8:8:8 model of productivity was championed by trade unionists fighting for workers’ rights in 1890, and the phrasing itself comes from a deeply rousing verse penned in 1878.
In reality, of course, it only works if:
Those are your working hours
You work from home (or teleport to and from work)
You have no other responsibilities (shopping, housework, child-raising, etc)
You sleep easily and perfectly at night
So what to do, rather than despair?
We recommend doing a Time Audit—take note of where your time actually goes, rather than where it is supposed to go.
Now, write your schedule from scratch, realistically this time, taking into account how long things really take and what your existing commitments are.
What time slots are left, if any? That’s the time in which you can put new tasks (of any kind).
The benefit? You will now be able to make informed decisions and refrain from overcommitting, getting overloaded, and burning out (and breaking down).
(or do your own—just make a note of when you really start and finish the various tasks of each day and then afterwards make the data visible however works for you; it’s really just that)
📧 WE HOPE THIS EMAIL FINDS YOU…
The Right Kind Of “Email Hacks”!
Are you a Gmailer or an Outlookista? Whatever your preference, you’re probably facing many of the same challenges that most of us face in our work and personal lives:
Email’s greatest strength (its ease of accessibility) brings about its greatest problem (our inboxes are cluttered and chaotic), not to mention that each of us are usually managing a whole flock of email addresses.
Sometimes we put productivity resources up against each other; that’s not what we’re going to do today! Each of these can play a role alongside each other; grab as many as will make your life easier:
ProtonMail: this is an email client; it’s the nicest, simplest, easiest, free email client that doesn’t track, let alone share, everything you do.
Bonus: there also exists ProtonCalendar (it’s a calendar that doesn’t share your data), ProtonDrive (it’s a cloud storage provider that doesn’t share your data) and, because they’re indeed serious about your privacy, ProtonVPN (it’s a VPN that, of course, doesn’t share your data).
Clean Email: maybe you’re stuck with the email provider you have. It happens. But it doesn’t have to be a chaotic mess. This tool will make tidying your email (and keeping it tidy!) a simplified dream.
Right Inbox: a Gmail extension with many useful features, including read receipts, emails scheduled for later (e.g: time your email to send at 7am to look like a morning lark when in fact you’re peacefully snoozing), add unforwardable “For Your Eyes Only” notes to emails, and more.
Email Finder: find the verified work email address of any person, so long as you know what company you’re looking for them in! No more “I thought it was lastname.firstname@ and it was firstname.lastname@”, no more “the wrong John Smith”, no more “undelivered” bounceback notices. Just: your email delivered.
Unroll.me: love your subscriptions, but hate the clutter? Unroll.me aggregates them for you in a virtual roll-up, with an “unroll” button to read them.
On which note, anything you’d like to hear more of from us? Let us know! You can always just hit reply, or use the feedback widget at the bottom of this email 😎
😴 TO END THE DAY
For After Your Day…
You might want to save/like/etc this video for later!
Also…Check out the comments on the video 😭
📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW
Why We Sleep - by Dr Matthew Walker
We all know sleep is important.
We all know that without it, we’ll suffer rapid cognitive decline.
We all know approximately what we’re supposed to do to get good sleep.
So what does this book bring to the table? Mostly, deep understanding (written from the perspective of a career in sleep science) presented in such a way as to be applicable, by you, in your life. Stop sabotaging yourself before you even get out of your bed in the morning!
Hustle culture champions early mornings and late nights, and either or both of those might be difficult to avoid. But to make what you’re doing sustainable, you’re going to have to make some informed decisions about looking after your #1 asset—you!
Dr. Walker writes in a clear and accessible fashion, without skimping on the hard science, and always with practical application in mind. All in all, we can’t recommend this one enough.
What did you think of today's newsletter?Sorry to bother you. But the feedback really helps us. |
Wishing you a healthy day of productivity and night of rest,
The 10almonds Team