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Musings of 3 July 2014

9 DEADLY leadership mistakes according to Peter Economy. I see #2 and #4 far too many times than it can be healthy for an organisation. The rest of the list doesn't seem to merit any importance, at least where I work. Is it any wonder our organisations are failing their stakeholders?

You have to check out Marty Neumeier's The 46 Rules of Genius. It's simple and eloquent. "I think you can’t learn the rules until you break them. Somehow you have to test them a little to see which are true and work for you."

Ebooks v Paper: Which do our brains prefer? Research is forcing us to rethink how we respond to the written word. — "There is some evidence that reading on screen can result in less comprehension and even affect sleep patterns. But the research here is complex and inconclusive and, in any case, it is actually doing something far more interesting than telling us which medium is superior. It’s making us think more about what it means to read." I love my KIndle but I still find great comfort with a physical book, a bookmark, and a pencil.

Daniel Pink gives some good advice in a commencement address: START LIVING LIFE. I recommend the two books of Dan's that I've read: A Whole New Mind - reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend - and Drive, in which he examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action.

A delightful piece on the lessons learned by the world's richest man, Warren Buffett .I particularly liked the ones about the inner and outer scorecards, how he always money so that he could do his own thing, and how his father's experience in the 1952 elections "branded three principles even deeper into his son: that allies are essential; that commitments are so sacred that by nature they should be rare; and that grandstanding rarely gets anything done." Definitely a book worth reading.

So, what we say we want to read and what we actually read are very different things, according to the Atlantic.

Computer metaphors are invading our language. I'm guilty of frequently using the word, reboot. And on a writing-related note, Stephen Pinker, best selling author shares his thoughts on Writing in the 21st Century.  It's got a lot to do with psychology.

Take a look inside an amazon.com warehouse. On a related note, Harvard Business Review has an article called Mastering the Intermediaries in the June 2014 issue...bottom line: platforms are important for global success.

Some facts about chocolate. Not sure about it's impact on population growth, though.

All it takes is 3 seconds to throw you off.

It's Ramadan and the University of Southern California says fasting helps repair the immune system, John Durant says fasting can help fight infections, and in Antifragile, Nassim N. Taleb says "In medicine, we are discovering the healing powers of fasting, as the avoidance of the hormonal rushes that come with the ingestion of food. Hormones convey information to the different parts of our system, and too much of them confuses our biology"

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