Organize IT

I’m going to be a little cheeky and promote my new post on Part-Time Wage Slave (for those wondering what PTWS is, check out my previous update). In it I take a detailed look at work/life balance, rethinking quite what it means, what it stands for and whether it has any validity in the 21st century. We all want work/life balance but why? Though statically the workplace is improving, employees feel more and more alienated by it. Please do check it out and leave your thoughts. Hopefully, it will also give you a taster of the sort of direction (both in content and quality) that I want to go in at PTWS.

As you may have guessed by my extended absence over the lady couple of months, I have been taking a break from Organize IT. It turned out to be a refreshing change not having to deal with doing a regular post or contend with the daily maintenance cycle that a three year old blog has….

I’ve been a bit busy these past few weeks getting the blog updated for 2010, so I thought I’d do one big post to share with you all what’s been happening. Firstly, you may have noticed it now has a new design. Gone is the sunflower theme which had absolutely nothing to do with the topic of the blog, and in its place is something a little more fitting (well I think so anyway). I wanted to avoid spending countless hours doing my own re-design so I bought a custom theme, and then ended up spending countless hours tweaking that instead (don’t ask). Anyways, I like it and I hope you do too. Share your feedback!

A book written by a developmental molecular biologist that offers several principles for surviving and thriving at work, home and school? In Brain Rules, John Medina, brings together the volumes of research on how the brain works and uses it as a basis for presenting twelves principles on how to make the most of your grey matter. Sounds like an odd but intriguing mix right? I’ve wanted to read Brain Rules for a long while and after being repeatedly disappointed by the inability of UK bookstores to stock it, I finally bought it online. But was it worth it?

Last week I read a very intriguing post on Zen Habits covering seven productivity tips for people that hate GTD. It was a great read (it’s nice to see these sorts of productivity posts still pop up there) though it garnered a lot of interest for several remarks that were included by the author, Jonathan Mead. It certainly got me thinking about some of the points, so I’ve decided to write my own response piece. I’d be keen to hear your own take on some of the points made.