John Hesch

I just bought about $300 worth of programming and computer related books including Ajax hacks, PHP Hacks, MySQL Cookbook, Linux Server Hacks, Linux Cookbook, and some others. Most of the books are published by O’Reilly and while I was browsing the O’Reilly website to download some example code, I stumbled across an offer by O’Reilly for a free 14 day access to their library of electronic books. I think this includes just about all of their best sellers and you can download free chapters and have acces to the example scripts and code.

Jason Womack has a great tip he got from one of his clients called Distraction Evacuation.

I did what I call “Distraction Evacuation” in my office today because I had a few extra minutes. That’s the process I use to eliminate anything in my field of vision that bothers me in any way and interferes with my ability to proceed with what needs to get done. It could be something as simple as a picture I am tired of looking at, or it could be processing the Inbox earlier in the day than I might otherwise. Whatever interferes with my mind’s eye of where I see I need to be, if that makes sense, gets dealt with during “Distraction Evacuation.”

My office gets cluttered so easily and I have a hard time staying focused when I’m surrounded by clutter. I need to take a few minutes each day to straighten up.

All of that data flying at you by e-mail, instant message, cell phone, voice mail and BlackBerry–it could actually be making you dumber.

Dr. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist who’s studied attention deficit disorder for more than a decade, has identified a related disorder he calls attention deficit trait, and he says it’s reaching epidemic proportions in the corporate world.

Unlike attention deficit disorder, or ADD, people aren’t born with ADT. It’s the result, he contends, of the modern workplace, where the constant and relentless chatter coming from our computers, phones and other high-tech devices is diluting our mental powers.

So that explains it

Management Craft: Work/Life Balance

Here’s a few questions to consider about work/life balance:

1. Are you meeting your goals at work? Why/why not?
2. Are you meeting your goals for personal growth? Are you spending adequate quality time with your family and friends? Why/why not?
3. Are you having fun? Why/why not? What is fun?
4. At the end of each week, are you filled with regret about what did not accomplish?
5. Fast forward for a minute. If you were in the hospital, dying, would you be satisfied with how you have spent your time?

Tom Peters lists four new blogs from Business Week that look very interesting.

Marketing: Brand New Day

Venture Capital and Startups: Deal Flow

Tech Innovations and Trends: The Tech Beat

Personal Finance: Well Spent

Management Craft: Tip of the Day - #15

Be Happy for Other People

Do you ever feel envy or jealousy? I think we all do from time to time. I have to fight this myself. Envy and jealousy come from a scarcity mindset, which tells us if they have success/luck/happiness, we won’t (or will have less). We may feel we deserve success more than the other person.

When our mind is preoccupied with being jealous or envious, it is unavailable to make good things happen.

On the flip side, when we can feel genuine happiness for others, we are open to possibility for ourselves.

The more we link other people’s good fortunes to frustrations about our lack of success, the more we hurt our chances for forward movement.

Be happy - really - for other people. In doing so we are able to learn, grow, and be ready for opportunity when it knocks.

Pimki is a PIM (Personal Information Manager) based on Instiki’s Wiki technology.

Here’s an idea, use Gmail as your personal Journal

43 Folders has five fast email productivity tips.

The first one is shut off auto-check or at least set it to every 20 minutes. I’m really bad with this one. Thunderbird checks my email every few minutes and I’m constantly getting interrupted to see what has arrived. I can see where this tip alone would make me more productive.

From John Porcaro on Passionate Careers

Do you come to work every day feeling passionate about what you’re working on? If yes, you’ve done a good job managing your career. If you feel lucky to be doing what you really love, you might feel like you can’t believe you get paid to do what you’re doing. And believe it or not, employers (or even customers) are the ones that benefit the most, since you’re dedicating your most creative, energetic, and focused efforts to doing your job—talk about win-win!

How do you get to that place, where you can’t wait to wake up and get to work, where you have to drag yourself away from your job to get lunch or go home at the end of the day?

I’ve only had one job in my career that I can honestly say I was passionate about. I’m passionate about my Internet projects and activities and so I need to find a way to merge what I’m passionate about and what pays the bills. I suppose that’s the dream of almost everyone but only a few lucky ones ever accomplish this.