Plan • Do • Reflect

I’m taking the week off. You know what to do.

• Take a moment
• Reflect back on your week
• Celebrate your accomplishments
• Ponder what you've learned
• Think about the people who've crossed your path
• Send a ‘thank-you’ note

Join Our Book Club!

It's not too late to join our virtual book club — we start reading next week! A book club is a great way to read a significant book that you might not otherwise had the stamina to stick with on your own. And what could be easier than an online club? Our pace is slow but steady — on average we are only reading about 20 pages per week. 

Our first book is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Tom Peters believes this to be one of the most important books in the last 25 years. See my blog announcement for full details about the club.

How to Participate

1. Buy the Book!
2. Join the LinkedIn Group where we’ll be holding our online discussions.
3. Download the Reading Schedule.
4. Start reading along with us the week of September 1.

How the club works: We’re using a private LinkedIn group to host our online conversations. Every Monday morning I’ll start a new ‘discussion’ with a few questions relating to the latest chapter(s) in progress. Anyone in the group can comment, ask further questions, explore, and discuss using the LinkedIn discussion features.

Creative Corner

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

— Steve Jobs

Have a great weekend. Since Monday is a holiday in the US and Canada, I'll see you back here on Tuesday morning.