DCO Weekend Reader - 8/8/2008
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion.
This week I’m pleased to have two great lists of book recommendations, and some other recommendations via post comments. When I first started this feature, the four sections of the Weekend Reader were written somewhat on the fly, and the section on Books I thought would be the hardest to consistently have good content for. On the contrary, with the popularity of the Leadership and Excellence topic, and the number of blogs dedicated to it, I’m pleased to so far be able to find good information on recommended books.
Leadership
- Kevin offers 5 ways to incorporate learning into your work and your life. He offers up 5 questions to ask ourselves to positively navigate learning opportunities.
- I recently found Steve Pavlina’s blog on Personal Development. I haven’t read it enough to recommend it yet, but if the following list of interesting posts I found upon signing up are any indication, this will be one blog whose posts I will look forward to: Making sense of having lots of different interests (this is me and I love the positive spin on this), Steve’s brief overview of The purpose of Life, and equating habit change to chess.
- Since it’s such an important quality of being a leader, you will want to read this article on Soul Shelter with numerous tips on how to stay stressed. (Yes, that is sarcasm…)
Thought-Provokers
- Are you a PITA? No, not an animal lover, a Pain in the Arse! Following the philosophy that all of us are someone’s problem, take this test to find out exactly what kind of PITA you are.
- The Leading Blog asks: Can you Lead with Kindness? In answer to that question, they recommend a new book called Leading with Kindness. Based on the excepts they provide, I’m adding this book to my reading list (I really need to get to the bookstore). And before you starting thinking I’m going all warm and fuzzy, leading with kindness may not be exactly what you think. As pointed out in the post, you can be hard-nosed and kind.
For Fun
Nothing popped up on the radar screen this week, so I’m reaching into my bag of tricks for something fun. Ask 500 People bills itself as “public opinion polls for the world”. Basically, anyone can submit a question (with answers) to the site. Site visitors vote on the questions they like, and the current active question is closed once 500 people cast their votes. Questions can range from the absurd (”How famous you are?”) to the sublime (”Have you ever written to spammers asking them if spamming is a good way to make a living?”).
Questions can be yes/no, multiple choice (including pictures), and 1 to 5 scale. If you register with the site, you can create and ask your own questions. This would all just be an interesting social web experiment until you find the section that gives you the ability to embed the questions you create on your own website. Digging a little further, you find the section on using Ask 500 People as low-cost market research. Paid questions are asked on a private network. If you are looking for a low cost way to get wide demographic opinions on any business question involving “people who use the Internet”, you may want to consider this service.
Check out this site at your own risk. It can be a serious time-waster. You have been warned.
Books
- An overview of the best Leadership books to be published in August.
- Going one better, a list of the best Leadership books ever!
- In commenting on a recent post, Carol had some great recommendations.
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