I am not ruling out any future posts, but don’t hold your breath for them. I have went back to writing about my true passion in life, technology. If you like the link/post style of this blog and you love technology I encourage you to check out my technology blog called The Brooks Review.

If you have paid for a Kindle subscription now would be a good time to go ahead and cancel that, there probably will be no new content for quite a while.

Thank you for your readership and thoughts through this adventure.

–Ben

“The iPad was naturally passed around amongst the partygoers. Many people interacted with it during the evening, and I lost track of who had it at any given time. And therein lies a fundamental problem. My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.”

I could not agree more so be sure to read that whole post to get the entire picture. We need better security when we show / share these devices with others.

via The Brooks Review.

We need a better way of working. It’s not about generating short-term, superficial productivity gains by using fear as a motivator and then squeezing people to their limits. Rather, it depends on helping leaders to understand that more is not always better, and that rest, renewal, reflection, and a long-term perspective are also critical to fueling value that lasts.

A must read.

via Harvard Business Review.

Via Unclutterer

via Line Thirteen.

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

and:

Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making. Not least, it ties up junior officers — referred to as PowerPoint Rangers — in the daily preparation of slides, be it for a Joint Staff meeting in Washington or for a platoon leader’s pre-mission combat briefing in a remote pocket of Afghanistan.

Could not agree more. If you want or need to use PowerPoint I recommend you use Keynote instead and then limit yourself to 4 words per slide. Important take away points should be all you need on slides. (though images and maps and charts are mostly fine).

via NYTimes.com.

The minimalism trend has had certain elements that leave some readers with a bad taste in their mouths: elements of hype and salesmanship, elements of obsession, elements of one-upsmanship, a focus on aesthetics, a focus on possessions to the point of obsession.

Leo goes on to say:

I have to confess I’m as guilty of these things as anyone else, so please don’t take this as an attack on anyone. If anything, it’s simply me, holding up a mirror and giving myself a close inspection.

I have been incredibly frustrated of late with the obsession of minimalism. I use some of their concepts to improve my financial life and my happiness. However I do not think that it is all that great of an idea. Over the past few months Leo and other bloggers have really been rubbing me the wrong way – they seem to be obsessed with minimalism.

On the surface this should not effect me or you, but it really does. They are pushing us to change to a new way of life (whether they mean to or not, when you have 100,000 subscribers you influence people no matter what you mean to do). My problem with them pushing this is that minimalism has a lot of hidden costs.

Sure you make money selling extra stuff you have, but you also have to buy things that will last for quite a while. You have to rent / borrow things. I hate borrowing things, it means that you now owe someone else a favor. I hate the feeling of owing someone anything, it is not a stress free mindset.

I link to this post because it seems that Leo is starting to realize that bloggers may be taking this minimalism concept too far. And they are taking it too far.

via Zen Habits.

Can you say “CrackBerry” and “iPhoneaddiction?” And can you add on “Bye-bye any notion of work-life balance” just for good measure? One in three people is basically sacrificing their entire life (in a small, but nonetheless meaningful) way to their employer, which really is pushing the “live to work” saying to its limits. While it's understandable that the recession has strained companies to the point that they'd prefer staff not to take too much leave–particularly as we begin to move into a better economic climate–which explains one of these figures, one in four people are still worried about job security to the degree that they're permanently reachable online.

Take a step back people. I did, and it really makes a difference.

via Fast Company.