Emails: Mind the details

Set your personal boundaries, so you have dedicated time to take care of yourself, your family or household, and your professional responsibilities. You won't be any good to your family if you regularly jump up to respond to work.

The key to success is deciding on expectations, then communicating those to others. You need to get clear in your mind what hours you will be attending to your work. Perhaps dedicate a space in your home as the "office," letting everyone know that you need privacy. Decide when you are "on" and when you are "off."

We all have tools in our pockets to help us.

• For example, consider using your phone's built-in alarm for taking breaks, or giving yourself a reminder to eat lunch, or taking a screen break to reduce eyestrain.
• If you find it challenging to work, consider a productivity method like the Pomodoro technique, where you work deeply for about 25 minutes, then take a short break. Repeat four of the cycles, then take a 30-minute break before starting again. There are many Pomodoro apps to help you.
• Don't forget to use the same technology to turn off notifications and distractions while you're working.

The proposed three-phase plan will allow many businesses to open in the first phase.

Schools and daycare centers can open in the next phase. But that means millions of working parents could be asked to return to their jobs before they have someone to take care of their children.

In the early phases of reopening, businesses could be required to operate at a reduced capacity.

Offices might operate in rotating shifts, but other businesses could have a harder time. Restaurants may have tight profit margins even in better times. Operating at half capacity may mean working at a loss.

For F.O.B.O. to happen, you have to have multiple options. It is mostly a consequence of our world in which everything seems possible.

To beat FOBO, find the Mostly Fine Decision. This is the outcome you’d be ok with, even if it’s not the absolute best possible one.

• Being nervous and anxious makes us turn our attention inward, thus becoming extremely self-conscious of what we say and how we appear.
• Social anxiety also makes us become increasingly nervous when we notice the subtle audience reactions or the body language of the people who are around us.
• By becoming extremely self-conscious in awkward situations we only overwhelm our minds to the point of becoming unable to focus on one thing (just like we are not fully focused on our conversation while driving, and vice-versa).

When we focus on others during a conversation, we shift our attention outward and become at ease, relatively. Our exaggerated self-consciousness is gone and we become less awkward.

Keeping our mind on the goal and not on the process makes us avoid the self-focus vortex, and it also helps to take a deep breath and lighten up.

... to help you connect with, motivate, and build trust with your employees:

• Send out situational information that is clear and measured about what you are doing about the business, and what employees could do to help.
• Let your employees ask questions: Asking them makes them "feel" heard.
• Tell stories: Stories are a powerful way to make people feel they are part of a shared culture.
• Leverage symbols: Look out for new symbols that can impart the meaning of hope.
• State and restate your vision: A strong and consistent company vision helps your team members feel like they're building something great.

Decisions are a cost-benefit analysis of risking something small for the opportunity to gain something big.

• Good decisions can be: Exercising, meditating for 10 minutes daily, finding the courage and striking up a conversation with someone, applying for jobs that you may or may not get.
• Bad decisions can be: lying or pretending to someone, driving unsafely, sending angry text messages, or staying up late drinking before an important meeting or exam in the morning.

Trade-offs are not something as simple as flipping a coin. Our values guide us towards what we want in life, and it is not the same for all. Example: Buying a house has a trade-off of mortgage for the next ten or more years. This is subjective and depends on what we value in life.

Indecisive people suffer because they don’t know their inner values and what they care about.

While it can feel very satisfying to play tit-for-tat, studies show that revenge is often short-lived.

Revenge can make an incident much harder to overcome. Pay-back ties you to the person and keeps you focused on the mistreatment. It prevents you from moving forward and redirecting your life.

While the desire to "get even" is understandable, doing so is likely to make things worse.

• You could use the feeling of revenge to highlight what you value and prioritize rather than using your energy to dwell on the past. The catalyst lies in channeling the feeling of revenge to something positive.
• Letting go of toxic feelings can make you feel powerful - not by exercising power over someone else, but over yourself.

• The first task for a manager is to be transparent, explaining to the team exactly what is known, and what isn’t known, and not to keep any team member in the dark.

• The second task is to provide hope and a sense of possibility to the employees facing an uncertain future ahead.

Before any word is uttered to the employees, you need to understand your role and channel your leader 'avatar' in a time of crisis, as if preparing for a battle. Your steel nerves will be contagious(!) to your team members. You need to sound convincing, and it’s a good idea to follow the basics, like eating well, plenty of sleep and regular exercise.