Deliverability
fromFast Company
5 hours agoThis app turns your email inbox into your personal assistant
Extra is a smart email client that uses AI to organize and prioritize emails visually, enhancing user experience and efficiency.
"When you talk to people about breaking them down, they feel like they're going to get flattened. This negative perception of breaking down siloes can impact the organization's ability to solve the siloes in the first place."
I'm always amazed at how easily we give our time to others without thinking, and then are mad later when it was wasted. What exactly did we think was going to happen? That everyone was going to be prepared, productive, and appreciative? Time has become the ultimate luxury-we never have enough of it, and are jealous of those that have it. For too many of us, endless meetings, back-to-back emails, and constant interruptions leave little room for focused, meaningful work.
Sales teams in the United Kingdom operate under intense pressure to balance responsiveness with resource efficiency. Customer expectations have shifted toward immediate engagement, while internal teams must manage increasingly complex pipelines and fragmented communication channels. Within this landscape, technologies designed to automate scheduling and lead engagement are no longer niche curiosities but strategic enablers of workflow efficiency. Systems such as AI Appointment Setter are part of that broader shift, representing tools that can reduce manual burden and streamline early-stage interactions between sales teams and potential clients.
While some workers are being mandated to return to the office, a growing majority of workers now say they want to "microshift" their workday. Unlike hybrid or remote schedules, in which you work remotely some or all of the time, microshifting is about making small adjustments to your start times, breaks and hours rather than adhering to a rigid nine-to-five schedule.
Well, our guest today argues that the best way is by moving to a more project-driven model of work, up and down the organization from the corporate level to individual teams. He wants us to both ruthlessly prioritize as well as stay fluid so that we're identifying strategic goals, assembling teams to go after them, evaluating as we go, and then either continuing, shifting, or disbanding based on our outcomes.
Rebecca Hinds has studied office meetings and collaboration efforts for more than 15 years and most recently she's seen how AI can make corporate get-togethers better - or worsen existing problems. In a study commissioned by Read.AI, Hinds found that AI, when correctly implemented, can encourage more participation by women and lower-level employees. At the same time, it can actually hurt hybrid meetings, with in-room participants speaking up much more than remote attendees. AI could make meetings much worse.
The union is great, don't get me wrong, but one side effect of having it is that there are massive, sometimes arbitrary and annoyingly vague, lines around what I can and cannot do in my role. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, if most of the time the things I'm not allowed to do are required to be done by managers. Managers who are overworked, undertrained, and underpaid, and so don't have the time or brain space to address things I bring to them.
Your office should be a haven of focus, a place where great ideas are born, and tasks are completed. Instead, it often becomes a museum of outdated technology. The space meant for clarity is cluttered with items that silently sabotage your focus. This article will shed light on the common culprits hiding in plain sight, explaining how they disrupt your workflow and what to do about them. Prepare to look at your desk with a fresh, discerning eye.