Anything You Want is a short book by Derek Sivers. Derek started CD Baby and eventually sold it to Disc Makers. CD Baby lets musicians sell their CDs online and grew out of Derek's frustration with trying to find a solution to sell his own CDs over the Internet. Usually when I review a book, I try to give enough information that Productivity501 readers can tell if they should invest in reading it for themselves. This is one of the few books where I feel I can safely say, "just go read it." It is an excellent book and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't learn something from it. It took me a lot longer to review Anything You Want because I couldn't ever find the book in my house. It … [Read more...] about Anything You Want – Book Review
Archives for July 2011
Gojee Recipes
Gojee is a web application that helps you find recipes. You can kind of think of it as a recipe search engine. You tell it what you crave, what you have and what you dislike. I told it I have peanut butter and meat. The results included several Asian recipes with different types of peanut sauces and a bunch of different types of deserts (without meat). When you find a recipe you like, Gojee gives you a link to the original recipe site. It is a nicely designed site and each recipe has a picture for people like me who have a hard time visualizing from a recipe. If you avoid trying new exotic recipes because you don't like buying a bunch of ingredients you don't already have, this is the … [Read more...] about Gojee Recipes
Effective Communication
Yesterday we talked about influence. One of the primary keys to influence is good communication. It doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you can't communicate them in a way that will connect with your audience and bring about change. In this post, we are going to look at three ways to communicate more effectively. 1. Be visual I once ran an IT department for a non-profit with about 200 employees. In the work room we had a large color and a large b&w printer. The cost on the color printer was about $0.15 per page. The cost of the b&w was $0.015 per page. I kept trying to ask people to use the b&w unless they had a compelling reason to print color. When you are … [Read more...] about Effective Communication
Beware of the Linen Cocktail Napkin
Beware of the Linen Cocktail Napkin is a brilliant post by Gretchen over at the Happiness Project. It talks about how we often buy things because of who we want to be instead of who we actually are. It is an excellent read and very worth your time. … [Read more...] about Beware of the Linen Cocktail Napkin
Post at Manilla
I am going to be doing some writing for Manilla.com. My first post on multi-tasking is live so check it out. If you like it, don't forget to click the "Like" or "Tweet" button at the bottom of the page. … [Read more...] about Post at Manilla
Influence
Much of what it takes to do anything in life comes down to influencing human behavior. Solving the technical issues is often the easy part. Getting people to use the solution is what takes the real effort. This is important to recognize because it isn't how we are trained to think. We are trained to think that if you build a better mousetrap, everyone will want one. That is simply not true. Lets say you are trying to solve the problem of sickness in a remote tribe. After visiting it is obvious that sanitation is a big problem. You bring in a work crew, build public toilets and feel like you've accomplished something, but you haven't. You may have solved the technical problem, … [Read more...] about Influence
Digital Signature & Encryption
In the past we've talked about how to scan your signature to help go paperless. In this post, we are going to look at the fundamentals behind sending truly encrypted emails and documents that can be verified with a digital signature. The idea is to show you the concepts so you understand what is going on behind the scenes to make a secure communication channel over email. So why spend the time on this? As we switch to doing more business over the internet, secure communications are going to become much more important. Even if you don't have a use for encryption right now, you probably will over the next 3 to 5 years (if not before). There is a lot of value in understanding why email … [Read more...] about Digital Signature & Encryption
Joplin After Tornado
A few weeks ago my wife and I went to Joplin to help with the cleanup. The the pictures and videos you see don't really convey the level of devastation. Last I heard there were around 150 people who died. Just looking at the destruction, you'd assume that thousands died. From what I understand, FEMA is going to pay for 90% of the cleanup if it is done by early August. The city will be responsible for the remaining 10%. However, volunteer hours count toward the city's portion. So if you are in a position to go help, you'll be helping in more than one way. We spent half our day clearing a bunch of trees from a neighborhood near the hospital that was … [Read more...] about Joplin After Tornado