Scott Berkun released a new book recently entitled Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds. It’s a collection of essays some of which were from his blog. He made it available for download for free for 48 hours; with the only catch being you’ll have to sign up to his monthly mailing list. Upon finding out about it, I went ahead and downloaded a copy. There’s still 15 hours and some more minutes to go and download.
For starters, I like the title of the book. Mindfire. I can so tie it up to one of my favorite quotes (yes, just because it has the words mind and fire in it): “The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” – Plutarch. I read the first essay this morning. It was something I’ve already read from his blog but didn’t mind rereading because it was one of the posts I liked from his blog. Cult of Busy. I remember how I set my chat status to “Busy” by default. Initially, I didn’t get what that status was for. Wasn’t everyone supposed to be working on what they’re supposed to be working on ergo busy should be the default? Are those who are on “Available for chat” idle? As I went along, available or busy didn’t make any difference. If folks had something to ask, they just went right ahead. Anyway, I’ve digressed.
Back to the essay… I like how the it echoes (much nicely) my disdain for being busy as an ideal state. Say, dudes A and B were working on the same stuff. A slacks off, works carelessly, and then does overtime for rework and to compensate. B works efficiently finishing the task ahead of time, giving him time to go over some tech blogs that he follows. From some perspective, A would probably appear busy while B is slacking off; and A might even get rewarded, while B goes unrewarded and gets more tasks dumped onto him. Sucks.
Taxi has arrived. Got to cut this short. But do check out Scott Berkun’s writing. This post does not do him justice.
testkeis 
Thanks! 😀