This weekend, think about your field and find something that excites you that you could share with someone who isn't in your field. Help someone outside of your area of expertise understand what it is that you love about what you do.

It may just be my memories of being read to by my dad or of reading to my girls, but there's something pretty special about hearing a book.

There was a light rain. I hadn’t thought I would be standing outside so I hadn’t brought an umbrella. That’s ok. Apple had rented umbrellas for everyone in line. I missed the pile of umbrellas as I headed to the back of the line but I noticed that most people in line had the exact same type of umbrella so I asked the guy in front of me and he said there was a stack of them up front. An Apple employee overheard our conversation and handed me his and headed up to the front of the line to get another one for himself.

I love days like today. We don’t get to do much real-time publishing in the book world. We don’t have much in the way of breaking news that meets the constraints of writing, editing, and publishing books. It takes me back to my days in radio news or in writing for and editing web sites. [...]

There’s nothing wrong with big book stores that stock everything – I spend plenty of time in physical and online bookstores that stock tens of thousands of titles. But there is something special about a store which is constrained and carries books carefully chosen by the people who work in this actual store.

It’s like the classic quadrants from Covey’s Seven Habits where you divide your tasks on one axis as being important or not and on another as being urgent or not, we spend way too much of our time on tasks that are urgent but not important.

How do you start your week? Do you hit the ground running excited by all of the opportunities that wait for you or do you drag your feet at the prospects of another Monday?

Apple’s ads don’t say “Urban Spoon runs on your iPhone. It can find you nearby restaurants.” They would say something like, “Say you’re hungry and want to know what’s nearby that you might enjoy.” Their ad starts with your desire and gives you a solution instead of saying here’s an app and here’s what it does.

During my twenties and thirties I worked on and off as a radio DJ. I worked in everything from Smooth Jazz to Progressive Rock. I worked in Urban Contemporary, Oldies, and Soft Rock. Every time I looked for a new job I would hear the same thing. “You sound good, but we’re and you sound really .”

Buddy is three weeks behind. But it’s a different sort of behind. He has three weeks worth of business lined up and each day he does a day’s worth of work and then goes home.