This book, by Robert K. Cooper, was on the library's newly arrived shelf. It's pretty good, although if you read biz books a lot, there's a lot you'll want to skim. Still, the principles he talks about are good to think on. The subtitle of the book is "the five keys to surpassing everyone's expectations." These keys are: 1. Direction, not motion 2. Focus, not time 3. Capacity, not conformity 4. Energy, not effort 5. Impact, not intentions Each key has three or four supporting chapters that talk about subprinciples. Some things that I identified with from key one is that a) "good and great are the enemies of possible," a quote Cooper attributes to his grandfather. It's pretty self-explanatory though. The other thing is he talks about "what's automatic, accelerates." Basically, if you can put effort into something until it becomes automatic, you've won the battle. So focus resources on issues and behaviors that will eventually
Via les boyz at Signal v. Noise, here's a list of the best web 2.0 software from 2005, from Dan Hinchcliffe. Now, I've never been particularly technophilic but I am an avid user of backpack, and the stuff just fits the way I work. I can't help it. Now, as long as you don't ask me how they code it, I will do just fine.