January 2010
9 posts
3 tags
#4 - Connect!: A Guide to a New Way of Working
I don’t remember how I found Connect!: A Guide to a New Way of Working by Anne Truitt Zelenka on Amazon.com but the combination of the $2.03 price tag (no longer available) and it being a Web Worker Daily production made me interested. I’ve for the past 20 years been thinking, practising and experimenting with new ways of working thanks to emerging technology.
In 1995 I sent the first...
4 tags
The Age of Unrest
I recently read the fantastic book The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. They hypothesize that American history can be divided into cycles of history - roughly 80-100 years (the length of a man’s life). The current cycle started around WWII and will end within the next 5-10 years to make way for a new cycle. Every cycle is divided into four turnings. The fourth turning (2005 -...
#3 - The Greatest Trade Ever
The Greatest Trade Ever by Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman was the perfect follow up on Too Big to Fail that I enjoyed reading in a palapa in Mexico in December last year. It’s a much faster read that ties well into Too Big to Fail. The book chronicles John Paulson and a few other maverick trader’s sub-prime mortgage trades that made them millions and in Paulson’s...
1 tag
#2 - The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work
The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton - the celebrated contemporary philosopher and writer - is a fantastic book about work. His language is eloquent, thoughtful and elaborate, his mind fresh like a spring morning.
I’ve to share my favorite paragraph that so well describes a very common sentiment about work and career:
We are diluted in gigantic intangible collective...
#1 - The Monk and The Riddle
My first book - out of the promised 101 - was The Monk and The Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living. It’s a wonderful pseudo philosophical book about finding your professional passion. It’s written by a Silicon Valley veteran, making it even more relevant for me as a reader. The perfect feel-good, Saturday afternoon book.
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The Energizing Urban Hoods
The article about entrepreneurship in Detroit in the New York Times was inspiring and started a number of new thoughts. The first thing that came to mind was all the passionate people behind these new small businesses. It’s just fantastic that despite all the negative economic news that is peddled across the major media outlets there are still people who just rise up through the ashes to...
"Call Me"
Is there anything as annoying as getting a voice mail with the single message “call me”? I understand that AT&T is doing backflips as a message like that could result in record-breaking phone tag sessions. But for any person of normal intelligence and sanity it spells lunacy.
Most activities (scheduling meetings, getting feedback, accessing reports et cetera) that used to demand...
4 tags
2010 Resolution: 101 Books
What kind of douche lists reading as his 2010 resolution? A real resolution should be about losing weight, gaining muscles, making money or getting promoted. Big time events that that are visible, competitively macho and can be bragged about at social gatherings and in (sports) bars.
I’ll tell you why, punk:
Reading is one of the most egocentric and yet altruistic activity in the world....