Steven Robbins here. Welcome to the Get It Done Guys quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

Today's topic is using email and blog posting as an excuse to get work done for a change.

The quick and dirty tip is to use your replies as a way to write finished pieces that can be reused for work.

Take it from someone who's writing a book.

Putting together complete sentences is work.

You need subjects and predicates and adjectives and adverbs,

and don't get me started on capitalization and punctuation.

It's so much to keep track of.

I thank my lucky stars that Grammar Girl watches over me with her

red pen. Actually, track changes in Microsoft Word. Gently negotiating agreement between my subjects

and my verbs. As hard as it can be at times, writing pervades our work life. We write

memos, reports, and letters. We write announcements, solicitations, complaints, invitations, blog entries, resolutions, apologies, and summaries. But it can be hard to get

started writing, and hard to concentrate on writing well when we're alone in an office with nothing

for company but a really big bag of M&Ms. Listener Steve Wardell wrote in with a brilliant idea.

Why not use email and blog posts as an excuse to do the writing you need for work?

Blogging can give energy to writing.

You can use blog posts to spur on writing entire speeches, white papers, or reports.

If you're writing on a certain topic, say, add copy extolling the joys of comfy chairs. Find some horrid

flaming blogger who takes an opposite point of view, like a Pilates trainer or someone who advocates

running daily. Browse their blog until you find a particularly heinous post that gets your

blood boiling, and then respond. But respond intelligently, coherently, and using complete sentences.

In fact, use the emotional energy to drive you and trigger writing your masterpiece.

...