Don't be too late to personally recognize, and even reward, your company's most effective colleagues. Keeping details about promotions, raises or future projects close to the vest leads to frustration and unexpected exits, writes leadership expert Alaina Love.

Fighter pilots must make quick decisions on limited information, and U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and Chief of Training Systems Hasard Lee has developed a three-part system -- the ACE Helix -- that can help leaders assess situations, use fast-forecasting to choose the best action and build the necessary resilience to execute plans, writes Michael McKinney. "The key to maximizing our mental resources is to focus only on what we have control over, which is the next decision to make," says Lee.

To-do lists are useful tools, but if they are not set up properly, they can ultimately hurt productivity, says author Eduardo Briceno. Focusing on completing tasks rather than learning and improving, overcrowding your list with tasks that aren't time-bound and lumping tasks with different priorities together are among five common to-do list missteps that it's important to forestall, Briceno says.

The typical worker receives 30 emails each day, a Statista study reports, but the ones we send tend not to be inviting or especially helpful. Common errors include poor subject lines, a lack of greeting, huge blocks of text, no call to action (or too many) and a lack of gratitude, writes nonprofit strategic communications executive Joel Schwartzberg.

Studying your audience can go a long way in polishing internal communications and open an opportunity to cater messages by groups, writes Michael DesRochers of PoliteMail Software. In this commentary, DesRochers notes that Tuesday is the best day of the week to get employees' attention, sending messages early in the workday is preferable, and that framing a top executive as the sender will get more attention.

Create psychological safety for your team by clearly outlining what behaviors are acceptable, such as asking questions, making mistakes and sharing challenges, and modeling those actions within the senior leadership team, writes Elizabeth Freedman, a member of the senior leadership team for BTS East. "No matter how many times you champion the importance of psychological safety at your organization, most employees won't trust your commitment until they see you practice those behaviors and create accountability with other executives," Freedman writes.

Experience can be a great teacher and when it comes to financial decisions, experts say it takes decades for the average person to reach the ideal age for making monetary choices. Apparently, the magical ages for money moves are 53 and 54.

Scientists have used recycled plastic to create surfactants, an ingredient used in products such as soap and detergents. Researchers developed a reactor that melts plastic into a wax with short carbon chains capped with oxygen atoms, which can be turned into surfactant when treated with an alkaline solution. Hmmm ... wash yourself with plastic?

SmartBrief's inaugural virtual AI Impact Summit, Sept. 27 to 28, will feature OpenAI's Zack Kass as the opening keynote speaker. The event will explore business, workforce, marketing, tech and other topics, such as how AI is intersecting with reinvented workforce training and a talk by Michael Schmidt, vice chair of the labor and employment department at Cozen O’Conner, on what employers need to know about AI in the workplace. Register here.