Most of us don’t spend enough time thinking. We are so busy doing that we have, I fear, almost forgotten how to think. Yet it is our thinking, more than any other single activity, that influences our outcomes.

The use of e-mail in corporate culture is pervasive. I rarely get letters any more. Even phone calls are uncommon. But I get scores of e-mail messages every day. Yet, I am continually surprised at how people often misuse this medium. Therefore, I would like to humbly offer up 18 suggestions for better e-mail communication and etiquette:

I thought it was about time to overhaul my standard voice mail greetings. I’ve been following the same procedure for several years. I generally update my office phone message daily. I liked providing the current date to let callers know that I was checking my messages regularly. But that has proven to be more trouble than it’s worth.

I am reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. He’s only 29-years old, but is wise beyond his years. This is probably the best book I have read on productivity since Getting Things Done by David Allen.

This is probably the most important question you could ever ask. The answer will determine how fast you advance in your career and, more importantly, how happy you are in your job. Many of us have had to figure it out the hard way—by trial and error.

The secret to staying on top of your personal and professional life is to schedule regular times for review and reflection. You need to assess where you’ve come from and where you are going.

In his book, Getting Things Done he writes: If you’re like me and most people, no matter how good your intentions may be, you’re going to have the world come at you faster than you can keep up…. We book ourselves in back to back meetings all day, go to after-hours events and generate ideas and commitments we need to deal with, and get embroiled in engagements and projects that have the potential to spin our creative intelligence into cosmic orbits…. If the item requires me to take action, I can:  Do it if it takes less than two minutes or add it to my Outlook task list to do later;Defer it by actually scheduling a time on my calendar to deal with it; orDelegate it to someone else for action and enter it into my Outlook task list using the “@WaitingFor” category.

I spend more hours in meetings than out. Perhaps you do, too. Over the years, I have cataloged a list of annoying meeting behaviors or just “AMBs” for short. None of these by themselves are that bothersome. But when you combine three or four of them in the same meeting, it can test the patience of Job.

He said, “View this list as the ten disciplines that if practiced faithfully would make the biggest impact on the quality of your life for the upcoming year.”… Daily, first thing when I get up 2 Prayer Pray for my life, my family, my church, my work, etc. Daily, on my commute into the office or, on the weekends, immediately after reading the Bible 3 Aerobic Exercise Run 4–5 miles, four days a week…. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday at 5:30 a.m. 8 Life Plan Review Review my written life plan (a seven-page document) Weekly, on Sunday evening with my weekly review 9 Solo Retreats Get off-site for 36 hours a quarter to review my business vision, business plan, master task list, and time block.

I have been setting goals in one form or another for years. Every now and then, I stumble across an old list of goals. I am always fascinated by how many of the things I write down come to pass. And, I must confess, it often happens despite the fact that I do nothing more than write it down.