In Shanghai, you can post postcards to your future self. What would you say to your future self?

Source: Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

— SUCCESS magazine (@successmagazine) via Twitter

My mother is a member of her neighborhood’s homeowners association. When I hear some of the tales of accidental Reply All’s, Blind Carbon Copy emails, misinterpreted tone and other email blunders, I wonder how something as basic as email etiquette is still the cause of so many misunderstandings. So, while cleaning out my press release folder, I came across this tip sheet from communication expert and author Roshini Rajkumar. It’s at least 10 months old, so a bit old for SUCCESS.com, but the information is always relevant. You can forward this to your board members, Mom.

• Proof your post or email—two or three times. Grammatical errors and typos are so easy to fix, and when you post content with typos, you’re sending a message about yourself, the wrong message.
• Have a purpose for the message you’re sending or posting. Make sure your post is to the point and clear. If you can’t follow it, how do you expect your followers to? Be short, be precise and be smart.
• Auto addressing. Your computer will happily fill in the email address when you start typing, but just the same way you don’t want anyone finishing your sentences for you, be sure to double check who your computer wants to send the email to.
• Look at your distribution list for emails. DO NOT “reply all” if your question or response is only for one person or worse, it contains confidential information or negative information that should not be shared.  On that note, you can not control what someone else may or may not do with your email so if you don’t want the information shared, be sure to indicate that when you send it out.
• Respect the privacy of others and the confidentiality of their communication to you. Do not forward emails you receive from others without getting the author’s permission.
• Ask yourself: Would you say it this exact way if you were looking the person in the eye?
• This is especially true with e-mail communication. Taken out of context many e-mails and posts can be misconstrued. Example; sarcasm is often very hard to interpret over the internet.

Related articles

• Why You Can’t Undo Sending an Email (and When You Can)

If you’re lazy about cutting coupons like me, (somehow picking up the newspaper that lands at my door on Sunday is too much to muster during a Texas summer when it’s 108–literally) try Target’s mobile coupons. Great thing about Target is they don’t send you any text spam–only coupons that are super easy to use at checkout. Visit Target.com to sign up.

“Attention is the new oil,” Silva, 31, told an Austin South by Southwest Interactive audience in March. “It’s a limited resource, and it’s being devoured faster than ever before.”

The Venezuelan-born philosopher unveiled a new video to the Austin tech crowd, replete with fast-moving, cinematic imagery set to his own words on singularity, self-awareness and the power of human potential. (Watch his newest video, The Mirroring Mind, on SUCCESS Videos.)

Silva says his videos are only one and a half minutes because that’s as long as he can go without catching his breath.

His concepts are vastly cerebral, but something relatable he does say is that the future is getting better. Sharing this school of thought with SUCCESS cover personality Peter Diamandis, Silva says our future is going to be better than we think.

SUCCESS caught up with Silva after SXSW to discuss:

Q: In the words of someone you’re often compared to, Timothy Leary, how do you “turn on and tune in”?

Silva: I have my own rituals and techniques for getting myself in the zone. Context plays a key role. Erik Davis has a fabulous article about “experience design and the design of experience” which I think is key: to create the spaces and contexts that inform subjectivity itself. That’s how I create the zone for myself. That’s how I enter flow. CONTINUE READING on SUCCESS.com. 

Related articles

• Exploring openness in radical video: Jason Silva at TEDGlobal2012