Nick’s Book Blog

Doing a little research and found an article that pointed these out: Sort: Eliminate what is not needed. Set in order. Organize what remains. Shine. Clean work area. Standardize. Schedule cleaning and maintenance. Sustain. Make lean thinking a way of life. This is from the book Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth by Womack and Jones.

If you're coming to visit from Lifehack, welcome and have a look around. I have to say I haven't been keeping up very well here because I've gotten very busy with work and family. However, I'm planning on remodeling and moving to a new site because I've outgrown the book theme. Nick's Book Blog is simply a collection of notes from my reading over the past year or two. My reading typically is through the prism of association management, which is what I do for a living, although I am very much interested in social networks and web 2.0 trends. I think these things are so interesting because they are related to community, which is what associations have been doing for along time. Anyhow, stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by...

Hey all, I found this website on TechCrunch that association peeps need to know about. It's called ConFabb , a site that claims it's the biggest database EVAR of conferences. Anyhoo, I'm beginning to think about a new direction for NBB that would bring me more into a true association blog space. I started this blog focusing on my business reading. It has been a great learning opportunity, but now that I'm back headlong in association management, I need to refocus my energies. For my faithful readers (all like, four of you or something), throw your feedback out to me . Thanks.

From what I can tell, the impetus for this book was that the folks who wrote it, Jeff De Cagna , David Gammel , Jamie Notter , Mickie Rops and Amy Smith , were “concerned by the instinctively conservative approach to organizational stewardship that far too many association executives and volunteers continue to pursue in the early years of the 21 st century.” I took notes throughout the book, and now I realize they are far too extensive to make a very good book review. And I am definitely the choir that this book is preaching to. However, I really, really liked the problems these folks addressed and they pretty much slaughtered and butchered several sacred cows. This book is not extensive narrative or heavily footnoted, but it is based on the collective experience of 5 people who together have worked with many different organizations, and the collective themes will be familiar to anyone in the field. On a meta level, this book takes observations of what’s happening in the

Okay, I've reached the height of laziness. I'll explain later. My excuse is that I'm on the road. I came back to BYU for a homecoming reunion since I'm the treasurer of an alumni chapter (very easy job, since we have no money). And of course we trashed UNLV at the game! Also, I've wrapped a bunch of work into the trip out west so I'm doing Utah, Idaho, Arizona and possibly Nevada if I get time. Here is a picture of campus. The Y is on the mountain, and they light it up at special occasions such as homecoming. The reason why there is only a Y is that they started to put BYU up there and they ran out of money or something. So now it's just the Y and that's what we call the school for shorthand. Okay, so now to the lazy part. I brought a jillion books with me and I'm trying to plow through them and send them back media mail. I read the book Never Eat Alone , by Keith Ferrazzi. The book treats the topic of networking, and does it really very well--and re

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