A likes B too much and B leaves. C and D like each other and think no one knows, they do. C and E like each other and gang up against F. I leaves when G is promoted. H is great at their job which makes J and K jealous. No one likes L. M is letting their team down and causing resentment. N watches, always watches. O hates P and everyone knows, including P. Q is ambitious and “deserves more”. R is too good to listen to anyone. S is exceptional, S is loved by everyone, S is fantastic, S loves their job, S resigns. T is for trying. U thinks they are a god, they are not. V takes chances, gets things done and never asks for anything. W works hard but always fails, everyone loves W. X works hard and is quiet, reliable, loyal, dedicated and great at their job, everyone forgets about X. Y always needs to be first, Z just is.
Evernote is my second brain now. I use it to store all kinds of things – meeting notes, useful blogs and other sites, goals, every book I have read in the past 10 years.. and more recently, I’ve been using it for blogging.
I use Evernote to keep a growing list of blog topic ideas, but I also sometime use it to actually write the blog posts. Sometimes I start one.. and then leave it alone for a bit and writing “offline” gives me a better user experience sometimes.
The Problem
Once I have written the post, I then open up WordPress and copy and paste it into a new post. This works nearly perfectly. Formatting like bullets, bold, links, etc are all retained. There is, however, one huge problem – paragraphs are not spaced properly when your post is published. This naturally will depend on your theme and the css you use, but here’s how it looks on my own site:
The reason for this issue is that Evernote uses the “div” tag around each paragraph instead of “p”. Again – this may work perfectly on your wordpress site if the theme has been set up correctly, but I know a number of people who have experienced this same issue and so I thought I’d document the solution.
If you like paying taxes raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
With all this austerity going on around us, television news channels and some newspapers have produced various “special reports” trying to explain what it all means. They’ve been pretty good at explaining complex macroeconomics concepts, but they never quite got to the basics in my view. So here it is.
Governments have two ways to raise money- transaction fees and confiscation.
Journaling is a technique used for personal development and self-improvement. It involves keeping a daily diary / journal to record your thoughts and feelings about your life at that particular moment in time.
These are not necessarily “dear diary” moments, but they can be. The main point is that it provides an opportunity to let rip. To get all those thoughts out of your head – both negative and positive. It provides an opportunity for self-reflection and personal growth. It has been proven to reduce stress. It helps with problem solving – sometimes when you write the problem out, you start to see the solutions that may have otherwise been blocked. Its said to enhance intuition in that you can start to better understand how you handle particular types of problems or recognize trends in events or relationships. And the list of benefits go on and on.
There’s been this series of intersecting ideas coming at me lately centered around business strategy and the planning time-horizon.
- Recently, Evernote announced that their latest round of funding was not an exit strategy for its founders but a foundation for building a “100 year company”
- I read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh that describes how Zappos was built and their philosophy to business.
- I’ve been revisiting Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins
- We’ve reenergized our own focus on culture and values at my company with great effect
Normally, my business planning horizon is 6 months, 12 months, 2 years and 5 years. I have a solid plan for the next 6 months and 12 months and then have a vision and top line goals for 2 years and 5 years out. I’ve always worked this way. It allows me to stay agile in the short term but set course for what I have always considered to be a long-term horizon.
Over the Christmas break, I was talking to a few people about the books I read and how much I believe in personal development / success-oriented books. I was asked about my favourites and the most influential ones, but was also asked an interesting question – “If I were one of your employees, which books would you recommend to me?“.
This was a great question and I thought about it briefly and came up with the following list – mainly around topics that don’t seem to get taught anywhere yet are so essential to a successful career.
Time Management and Goal Setting
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey – if you have to read one book on becoming a more organised and effective person, this is it.
Getting Things Done by David Allen – this books takes becoming organised to the next level – it requires a bit more discipline but will raise your game that much more again.
Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy – this is a very easy read but has a powerful message.. if you want a “first step” book towards personal development, then perhaps this is it.
The world is moving to the cloud and so securing your accounts and personal data is more important than ever. In fact, it is essential. The step in this process is to make sure that your passwords are “strong”.
The Wikipedia definition of a strong password is:
Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password in resisting guessing and brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability
The problem is that most people are generally terrible at picking passwords – certainly at picking “unpredictable” passwords.
So here’s my approach for selecting passwords for people that I am sure will help you too.
I read a few tweets recently referencing the new UK Dominos Pizza iPad app and as its Friday, I’m hungry and we have nothing else in the fridge, I thought I’d give it a go.
First impressions are really positive. The app has a recently nice interface – clear, simple to use with strong signposts that help walk you through he ordering process.
The wordpress iPad app is nice, but does not provide a pleasant environment for writing blogs in my opinion. And so when I read about a new app called DraftCraft designed for doing nothing else but writing.. I thought I’d download it and give it a go. In fact, I am writing this review using the app now which seemed the most appropriate method to test it.
Just write
First impressions are positive. It really provides you with a nice clean UI in which you don’t need to think about issues like HTML, templates, etc. The idea is the you just focus on writing.
There’s only basic formatting options – partly down to a limitation with the iPad itself I suppose, but this isn’t a bad thing really as sometimes you can a bit too much time messing around with the layout.
It’s Thanksgiving and I want to deviate a little from my normal topics to give thanks to someone who has recently made a real impact on my life.
In 1994, I dropped about 30lbs in weight very quickly and unexpectedly. This combined with some very shaky hands and a rapid heart beat made it pretty obvious to get some medical attention. I went to my primary GP who spent several weeks performing a variety of tests. When the results were in, I was invited back to discuss them with him.
“You have diabetes”, he told me.
“Are you sure”? I asked.
“Absolutely, no doubt. You’ll need to adjust your diet and I’ll refer you to an endocrinologist who will advise you on your treatment moving forward” he said.
I had to wait six weeks to see the endocrinologist. During that time, I educated myself on diabetes. Changed my diet. Prepared for my new life as a diabetic.
