Do you need to read more but find you don’t have enough time? Welcome to the club. I’ve been falling way behind in my reading, particularly business books, and have found it difficult to catch up.

There are so many good business books being released that it’s impossible to pick the right ones let alone read all of them. So how do you keep abreast of the latest yet still have time for everything else you have to do? You might want to try a book summary service.

Last week I happened to meet Dan Pfister a principle at The Business Source, a Toronto Canada based service that writes summaries of the latest business books. After digging through their web site I realized what a great idea. I know a few people (not me) who used Cliff Notes in college. It was a good way to get the gist of a book (not a great way to study for a test). The Business Source does something similar yet much more elegantly.

Business Source subscribes receive two 5-page summaries (about 2,500 words)each month. These concise yet detailed summaries take between 10 – 30 minutes to read. You get enough detail to come away with a basic understanding of the book’s key concepts. You will know immediately if you want more detail. If so, just click their link Amazon affiliate link and buy the book. If not, then you haven’t used much time and saved yourself $30+.

I read a few of their summaries and found them to be very well written, insightful, and quite entertaining. In fact I was very impressed with the style. The writer gives you a good insight into the book without editorializing or getting in the way. There is really an art to this and their writers very good at it.

The summaries do an excellent job of getting to the mead of a book yet do it in a way that keeps you reading. For example their web site contains a free sample of their review of Freakanomics. A book I have never read, but wanted to. In 20 minutes I had a good understanding of the essential elements of the book and a plan to buy a copy for my collection. Take a look at it and you’ll see what I mean.

Business Source Subscribers receive two summaries of current business books each month plus 24 sets of business tips and 4 audio tracks from prominent business speakers each quarter. The cost is $130 US per year, about the cost of 4 books.

If your time is valuable, but you understand the value of “sharpening you saw,” then you should check out The Business Source

have you ever tried to explain something verbally or written that would be faster and easier with a screen capture or even a short video?  It’s easy to do  with  Jing, the free screen capture and screen recording software from Techsmith.  Here’s a short video that shows you how it works and how to get it.

If you’ve listened to even a little of my training you know I harp about the evils perils of attempting to multitask. You can’t actually do two things at once you can only switch quickly between them, "switchtasking" it’s been called.

I won’t repeat myself here, but I will refer you to an excellent discussion about the subject that took place on the Marketing Online Live podcast a few weeks ago.  This episode has nothing to do with online marketing so if you have no interest in this subject fear not.  This one is all about the most effective use of your time.  It’s only about 12 minutes long so take a few minutes and give a listen.

The program is hosted by Internet marketing guru Paul Colligan and Alex Mandossian who is a leader in the tele-seminar field.  Mandossian is also a productivity expert in his own right with a web site called beproductive.com.  As a deep thinker in the subject he is a big proponent of focusing your limited time and attention on the truly important things, one at a time.

Photo by:lutykuh

Automated message alerts in e-mail software and cell phones interrupt your concentration than you think.  Fortunately you have the ability to disable them.

Earlier this week I promised to show you how to disable the message alert lights and alarms for several popular software tools and smart phones.  This by no means an exhaustive list but it’s a start.

If you have any tricks of your own,  please post a comment or send me an e-mail at bob(at)workloadmaster.com.  I’ll keep adding to this post as I learn more.

Microsoft Outlook (2003 and 2007)

To disable the visual and audible alarm each time an e-mail hits your inbox do this:

1. On the menu bar choose Tools, then Options.
2. In the Options dialog box click the E-mail Options button.
3. In the E-mail Options dialog box click the Advanced E-mail Options button (they bruied this one pretty deep).
4. In the middle of the the Advanced E-mail Options dialog box uncheck the boxes next to Play a Sound and Display a New Mail Desktop Alert.
5. Choose OK, then OK and OK one more time.

Lotus Notes (R6/6.5)

1. In your Mail database, select File then Preferences and finally User Preference
2. Click the Mail icon and choose General.
3. Under when “New Mail Arrives”, uncheck  the option Play a sound, Show a popup and Show an icon in system tray.
4. Choose OK

Blackberry

This one’s a little trickier because there are so many different models. I’ll share the ones I know and if you have information about others please share it.

Depending upon your model you have two options.  If you have the Clock application,  open it then press the menu key and roll down to Enter Bedside Mode.

A more elegant (and complicated) solution is to create a new profile or modify an existing one. To keep this simple here’s how to modify your Normal theme:

Tour/Curve/Bold

1. In the Home Screen choose the Sounds icon. It will show your current theme in parenthesis “( )”. In most cases it will be the Normal theme. If you’re not in the Normal theme select from the menu. After Normal is selected roll down to Set Ring Tones and Alerts and select it.
2. In the Phone menu select Messages to reveal  a list of all e-mail addresses active on the phone.  Select an e-mail address then roll down to LED and change the option to Off. Do this for each e-mail address on the phone.
3. Press the escape key twice to return to the Home Screen

Pearl

1. In the Home Screen select the Profiles icon.
2. Roll down to  Advanced at the bottom and select it.
3. Roll down to the Normal theme and press the menu key and select Edit.
4. The next screen displays a list of each e-mail address active on the phone. Roll down to the  first e-mail address and select it.
5. Roll down to Repeat Notification and change the option to None. Press the Escape key.
   
6. Do this ofor each e-mail address on the phone (if applicable).
7. When finished press the Escape key twice to return to the Home Screen.

Please share any similar tips for other devices.

It wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without a post about gratitude. I saw a speaker the other day who said that scientific studies about happiness revealed that the the key is gratitude. I think she’s right. If we focus our energy on the good things in our lives then we use less on the not so good.

Enough with that. Here’s a video of Conan with comedian Louis CK. It’s very funny and a little crude, but he makes a good point about gratitude.

So now kick back, relax and enjoy your holiday.

– Bob

My wife and I have discussed joining Weight Watchers for the past several months.  She’s in great shape and doesn’t need it, but I love to eat and it was time for some moderation.

We signed up over the weekend and I began to use Weight Watchers’ online tracking program.  You use it to plug in everything you eat as well as activity levels.  It then shows you in graphic detail how well you’re doing.  After two days of spartan eating (I did slip in a little wine) I thought I was doing great. When I plugged every last painful detail into their system, that wasn’t the case.  Yikes, I have some changes to make.

But the act of tracking everything has caused me to pay closer attention to every little thing that I shove into my face.  It’s made me realize that it adds up.  Duh…really?  I know that intellectually, but to receive feedback I was able to understand it emotionally.  It was a big leap.

Count Your Minutes as Carefully as Your Calories

The same thing happens with our time. It’s so easy to allow little distractions, unnecessary phone calls, web surfing, Facebook, schmoozing, and dozens of other things pull us away…even for only a few minutes at a time.  These little guilty pleasures add up quickly, just like the empty calories from candy grabbed on the fly.

I’ve been on a quest this week to find new ideas and thoughts about keeping things simple.  I found some pretty cool stuff when searching the net so I thought I’d share a few of the good ones with you.  These are in no particular order.

Marketing blogger Andy Sernovitz kept it simple with a great illustration of the value of keeping it simple.

Unclutterer is a blog about what it says.  It can often be thought provoking as in this recent post about over commitment.  Be sure to read the comments…they’re as valuable as the post.  Click here to visit the post.

Here’s an interesting slide show about simplicity from, digital  media consultant, Bobby Rettew’s blog.  He is very creative and does some pretty clever stuff, this included.  Check it out.

I bumped into these posts from 2006 (way back when) on The Laws of Simplicity by  John Maeda.  His minimalistic blog is very well done and the laws give the reader a lot to chew on.

Here’s one more from a site I pop in on several times a month called Zenhabits – Simple Productivity. If nothing else the photograph of the feet at the top of the page is very well done, it alone is worth the the to visit the site.

If you have any good resources about keeping things simple please share them in the comments.