{"id":816,"date":"2010-04-16T12:00:05","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T10:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/?p=816"},"modified":"2010-04-23T00:11:09","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T22:11:09","slug":"absolutely-intercultural-107-work-life-balance-absolutely-awful-email-advice-sebastian-dorok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/?p=816","title":{"rendered":"absolutely intercultural 107 +++ work-life balance +++ absolutely awful +++ Email advice +++ Sebastian Dorok +++"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-816-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/podcast\/absolutely_intercultural_show_107.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/podcast\/absolutely_intercultural_show_107.mp3\">http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/podcast\/absolutely_intercultural_show_107.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mail.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-1009\" title=\"mail\" src=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/mail.gif\" alt=\"\" width=\"128\" height=\"128\" \/><\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m back in good old Germany! I had a great time in Australia and made a number of intercultural experiences, as you were able hear over my last four episodes. However, now my everyday life has got me back, which is a bit of a shame, and as a consequence our category \u201cabsolutely down-under\u201d has come to an end. I hope you enjoyed the stories and that I was able to give you a bit of an insight into cultural matters in Australia.<\/p>\n<p><strong>absolutely balanced<\/strong><br \/>\nIn different countries people have different ways of <a title=\"work life balance\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Work_life_balance\" target=\"_blank\">balancing their private lives and their work lives<\/a>. To give you an example, our friend Mohamed in Aswan in Egypt is a very <a title=\"Hall's Time Orientations\" href=\"http:\/\/www.tamas.com\/samples\/source-docs\/Hofstede_Hall.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">polychronic<\/a> person and does not separate his private life from his work life at all. When my wife and I walk past the office of our friend on an ordinary work day he will insist that we come in, even if he is in the middle of a meeting and he will interrupt the meeting for half an hour, send out his business partners in order to have a cup of tea and biscuits with us while the others all happily wait until the meeting resumes after we have left. If, however, during this time Mohamed\u2019s wife happens to stroll by with his delightful three-year old nephew this will easily add another half hour to the interruption of the meeting. Everybody in the office, including the business partners, seems to enjoy these social life interruptions in their work time, only my wife and I, both very monochronic, find it terribly hard to accept that important work is interrupted by private life. We cannot even enjoy the hospitality because according to our values and beliefs work comes first and private life has to wait, so we would prefer to meet Mohamed after his work, perhaps in a cafe. Recently, we had some friends from England over and we talked about how much private life and informality would be acceptable in our Northern European work places. I asked Elaine how she makes sure that her work life does not take over her private time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>absolutely awful<\/strong><br \/>\nFor some odd reason we almost have a bad conscience when we feel too comfortable at work and fear that if we get too relaxed this would seem inappropriate and unprofessional.<br \/>\nWell, personally I must admit, that I have one factor in my work place that really makes sure that I never feel absolutely comfortable \u2013 With shame, I am talking about my overflowing inbox \u2013 and in particular the sheer abundance of messages that I need to get through every day. However, I am in good company as many professionals nowadays suffer because of <a title=\"Email-related Stress\" href=\"http:\/\/citeseerx.ist.psu.edu\/viewdoc\/download?doi=10.1.1.83.9750&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf\" target=\"_blank\">email-related stress<\/a>. Let us hear what people most dislike about this form of communication which is still relatively new but has quickly risen to the top of the list in work communication, even though everybody seems to complain about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>absolutely correct<\/strong><br \/>\nThe lack of personal touch, the problem with dozens of SPAM mails, long response time, misunderstandings because of short-hand style, <a title=\"email etiquette\" href=\"http:\/\/www.emailreplies.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">no subject lines or missing attachments<\/a>, a lack of clear structure, or in some cases simply too many messages in your inbox after a short absence. So, as all complain about this phenomenon, in a round-table discussion with Master students we thought about strategies to improve the situation<br \/>\nIn our next category I spoke with some students and asked them what they can\u2019t stand receiving an e-mail message. I was surprised to\u00a0hear\u00a0about\u00a0all that\u00a0can happen if you don`t have a correct e-mail address.<\/p>\n<p><strong>absolutely hands-on<\/strong><br \/>\nIn third category you will hear <a title=\"Sebastian Dorok\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dorok.info\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Sebastian Dorok<\/a>, an Apple Distinguished Educator and teacher of English and music at a highschool in Germany. Sebastian talks about his own experiences as a teacher and gives concrete insights into his podcasting project with young students.<\/p>\n<p><strong>absolutely correct part 2<\/strong><br \/>\nIn our last category we will return to our students from <a title=\"RheinAhrCampus, Remagen\" href=\"http:\/\/www.rheinahrcampus.de\/Internationales.13.0.html\" target=\"_blank\">RheinAhrCampus<\/a>, who now give us some advice how to write a good e-mail message.<\/p>\n<p>So, the next time you\u2019ll write an e-mail message to your friends, you familiy or to your colleagues, you know what you have to do.<br \/>\nThe next show will be hosted by<a title=\"Anne Fox\" href=\"http:\/\/eduspaces.net\/annef\/\" target=\"_blank\"> Anne Fox<\/a> in Denmark on 30. of April<\/p>\n<p>Until then \u2013<br \/>\nBleiben Sie absolut interkulturell!<\/p>\n<p>The host of this show is: <a title=\"Laurent Borgmann\" href=\"http:\/\/www.laurent-borgmann.de\/\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Laurent Borgmann<\/a><br \/>\nEditor: Dino Nogarole<\/p>\n<div><span><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/poddownico.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/> <a title=\"Download the show\" href=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/podcast\/absolutely_intercultural_show_107.mp3\" target=\"_blank\">Download<\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/podfeedico.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/absolutely-intercultural\" target=\"_blank\">Podcast-Feed<\/a><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/podaboico.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"20\" height=\"20\" \/> <a href=\"http:\/\/phobos.apple.com\/WebObjects\/MZStore.woa\/wa\/viewPodcast?id=137617215&amp;s\" target=\"_blank\">iTunes-Abo<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m back in good old Germany! I had a great time in Australia and made a number of intercultural experiences, as you were able hear over my last four episodes. However, now my everyday life has got me back, which is a bit of a shame, and as a consequence our category \u201cabsolutely down-under\u201d has &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/?p=816\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;absolutely intercultural 107 +++ work-life balance +++ absolutely awful +++ Email advice +++ Sebastian Dorok +++&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21,7,5,525,13,325,321,329,338,339,81,526,6,320,11,12,997,340,73,528,8,363,527],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podcast","tag-absolutely-intercultural","tag-communication","tag-culture","tag-e-mail","tag-education","tag-elmar-laurent-borgmann","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-fachhochschule-koblenz","tag-fh-koblenz","tag-germany","tag-highlight","tag-intercultural","tag-international","tag-language","tag-lifelong-learning","tag-podcast","tag-remagen","tag-rheinahrcampus","tag-round-table","tag-students","tag-subject-line","tag-work-life-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1021,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/1021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.absolutely-intercultural.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}