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Blogs and Discussions Best Picks for October

While the citizens of the United States of America prepared to elect their next president, the blogosphere discussed issues on authentic leadership and what it took to handle the responsibility required of a position such as the President of the United States.

With the release of Seth Godin’s newest book, “Tribes,” which talks about powerful and influential leadership, bloggers had much to say about what leaders must be made of. According to Harvard Business Publishing, Management Issues, and Slow Leadership, leaders of today need to have an inspiring and useful vision, personal commitment to solving and fixing problems, and they must empower the people around them to do the same. Interestingly, many bloggers also placed a strong emphasis on the ability to powerfully communicate these ideas to other people.

The current economic situation has been blamed for causing income loss, extended working hours and intense stress in workplaces all over the world. Personal development took a look at how to rise above the mess, by redesigning your life to achieve the balance necessary to ride through the financial storm. ZenHabits advocates “creating space” and allowing a dose of variety in work and life activities to keep things interesting. Dumb Little Man outlines a plan akin to an architect’s approach for life redesign, starting from a “blueprint,” to an “action,” leading to “maintaining” the life you want to lead.

The old adage “you get to keep every dollar you save” comes to mind when looking at the various money-saving initiatives of some of the blogosphere’s most popular bloggers. In “I Will Teach You To Be Rich,” writer Rami Sethi gives valuable tips on how to save $1,000 in 30 days. This, he says, is in response to the many readers who wanted to find out more on how to grow their bank accounts without dabbling in investment.

Our Top Five Career Effectiveness Picks

All Things Workplace

More Annoying Language In The Workplace

Harvard Business Publishing

An Astonishing Lack Of Urgency (And What You Can Do About It)
Obama’s Authentic Leadership — And Yours

Management Issues

Two Faces Of leadership
When Going Gets Tough, Spend More On Training

Slow Leadership

We Need More Heresy, And We Need It Now!

Our Top Five Personal Effectiveness Picks

Dumb Little Man

Can You Really Redesign Your Own Life?

Enhance Life

Overworked & Overwhelmed? Achieving Life Balance Amidst Chaos

Slow Down Fast

Are You Focusing On The Message? (What The 2008 Presidential Election Can Teach Us About Living On The Offense)

Zenhabits

How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work And Life

The Simple Dollar

Dealing With Personal Disappointment And Tragedy

Our Top Five Personal Productivity Picks

Litemind

Einstein’s Secret To Amazing Problem Solving (And 10 Specific Ways You Can Use It)

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Announcing The Save $1,000 In 30 Days Challenge

The Positivity Blog

How To Understand: 8 Timeless Thoughts From The Last 2500 Years

How To Save The World

What Makes Us “Us”

Lifehacker

How To Present Yourself Powerfully, Part 1

Our Top Five Online Discussions Picks

Do It Tomorrow Yahoo Group

Think On Paper
Members discussed how they recorded their thoughts and created their task lists. While it was agreed that traditional pen-and-paper methods are still effective, members also pointed out that software programs like Evernote are excellent tools for recording and organising notes. The modern software tries to give users the same flexibility paper has. In this thread, Mark Forster, author of the book “Do It Tomorrow,”wrote that in order to apply the DIT system, one needs only a page-a-day dairy (or software that has a similar set up) to track and complete all outstanding tasks for the day.

The David Allen Company Forums

GTD Hits My New Reality
A member of the forum explained how David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) system was not helping him handle the overwhelming work at the office. Fellow members gave their opinions on their use of contexts to organise tasks. They argued that sedentary jobs do not benefit from using context categories (note: context categories help workers see tasks that are relevant to their situation and conceal those that are not). This is because when one’s computer, internet access, phone and filing systems are generally within one’s reach, GTD’s proposed contexts are irrelevant.

In a situation where work is overwhelming, GTD should serve to demonstrate to superiors that the work load and expectations cannot be sustained. In this case, the boss can either seek more help or reduce expectations. Should the superior fail to do so, the only other option is to part ways.

Work.Life.Creativity. Forums

Do You Use A “Not-To-Do” List?
Sprung from an interesting idea that appeared in Timothy Ferriss’ “The Four Hour Work Week,” members discussed the viability of a “Not-To-Do-List.” The response was mixed. Some clearly felt that it was a good way to manage interruptions (by putting them on a list to be dealt with at a later time), and one respondent felt that it formed a major part of a personal mantra dedicated to not compromising on certain things. However, one member saw the “Not-To-Do List” as a form of lifestyle micromanagement and felt that creating one only gives a person more opportunities to fail.

Get Organized Now

The Essential Importance Of Filing
The thread began with the unfortunate experience of a member who spent nearly 50 hours looking for a stock certificate. This could have been avoided if there were effective file systems for important documents. Some solutions centred on creating special storage places for important documents and temporarily important documents (wedding invitations, for example). Other members contributed ideas on their own filing systems, where they created a new folder for every new category of documents, even if this means just storing a single sheet. The most important take away from the discussion was a fundamental concept about filing: that filing is about retrieval, not storage.

Another discussion on filing at the Work.Life.Creativity Forums mentioned a popular filing method called the “Noguchi Filing System.” This uses a “most recently and frequently used” concept to manage files instead of alphabetical ordering and was found to be very effective as well.

Stephen R Covey’s Community

7 Habits Movies
One of the most effective ways of teaching a lesson is through story. Members in Covey’s highly acclaimed “The Community” shared their thoughts on movies that taught the lessons of Stephen Covey’s seven habits. Some of the ones compiled were “October Sky,” “The Pursuit of Happyness,” “Coach Carter,” “Dead Poets Society,” “What Dreams May Come,” “Babel” and even “The Muppet Song.” All of these movies discuss the importance of the seven habits, either in part or in whole, as fundamental principles of life.

Author: Adrian Koh

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Life Design Wiki: Do It Tomorrow (DIT); GTD - Getting Things Done; Life Design; New Habits; Perseverance; Tasks and Actions