Review of Daniel Pink's Drive

I am interested in motivation and drive in general. Who isn't? Getting up and going and convincing other people to do the same is a bit of a holy grail.
I have read a number of books on this theme so far. The main one is Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Yes I did look up the spelling of that). In it the author talks about that state we get into some times when we are learning something, carrying out a task that interests us intently. An example used is a man looking at his collection of rocks - geology is his thing. He starts nice and early and before he realises it the light has faded because its evening time. We have all been there at some time (just maybe not with rocks on our kitchen table), and we want to be there again. We are usually at our best in this flow state. Producing the most, being the most creative and generally just maximising what it means to be ourselves.
So one of the main themes in this book (Drive) is maximising this flow state as a way to improve the quality of our lives. To this end I am going to start monitoring how often during the day I am in a flow state. I am pretty much in control of my own time at the moment, so there is nothing to stop me doing the things that give me the biggest flow hit. I am going to put together an Android app which asks me on a few random occasions during the day if I am in flow or not. Tracking this over time should give me an idea of whether or not I am increasing the time spent in flow.
Flow for me will probably come from learning new stuff. Particularly programming tasks. We will see how that goes.
The other thing that Pink reckons improves the quality of our lives is control over what we do, when we do it and how we do it. Again I have nobody to blame but myself on this one. If I am not steering my one man boat in the correct direction, its my own fault.
If you want to grab a copy of this book it is available here.
There was not really anything new in this for me. I had even heard of variations of most of the stories used to illustrate his points, however it was still worth reading. I find that even if a book does not break new ground for you, if it reinforces some important points - and this book does - then it is worth the read.

Review of Seth Godin's We are all weird

I like Seth Godin's work. He has been putting useful ideas in my inbox for a few years now and although not everything he says applies to me directly, he rarely wastes the few minutes it takes to read what he has to say.
He started publishing books under his own label recently as part of the Domino project. This is a way of taking power back off the booksellers (apparently), although there are so many of them going bust these days I am not sure if they have all that much power left.
The Domino Project is run in conjunction with Amazon. I know who I think has the power in book selling :) To be fair to Amazon though, traditional booksellers did rather ask to be iTuned, so to speak.
Domino books are generally short and to the point. The physical books are beautifully produced - this does not happen often in the business and productivity category. Most books of this sort have template graphics on the front and chip bag pages. Dominoes do not.
So down to his most recent offering. We are all weird. I am inclined to agree. I for one have always considered myself a bit off centre, but having read this it may be more correct to say that there is no centre really any more. Well certainly not for most people. The interesting ones especially.
The premise of the book is that everything is based on a bell curve - the normal curve. The peak used to be tall and almost everyone clustered around it. Now it is flattening out. More people have 'strange' hobbies. And this is partially because they are realising that these hobbies are not that strange at all. Once you can find a cohort - crocheting molecular structures onto pillow cases seems like the most normal thing in the world. (I just made that up, but I want one already).
The internet is partially to thank for all this magnanimity. Once a weirdo has found a few more to blipple fight with. Blippling does not seem all that odd. Even if it's not your thing. Yet.
So overall I like the book. Think its worth a read (all of the Dominoes I have so far have been too) and worth the money. These books are short, but I think too many books 'are cut with crap' to fill up what the publishers think goes to make up a decent volume of paper to charge for. Maybe our divorce from how much paper volume we are getting for our euro is down to the web. We normally don't even bother to look at the pp number, so the mild surprise that this is a slim book is brief once we get into it.
Finishing a book with a cool idea in it is much more satisfying that struggling though an overly long one with a similarly weighted idea in it.
Life is just too short for filler. You will find the kindle edition here.

Mountain biking in Ticknock wood

Here is a link to map of my cycle in Ticknock today. Great spin. Fair play to Coillte on setting this up. A great resource so close to the city. Managed not to injure myself. Already looking forward to the next trip.

Responses from the councillors

Even though yesterday was a public holiday I got email responses from 2 of the members of the Celbridge Committee last night. They have their meeting today (happens every couple of months roughly) so the timing is perfect.
Responders were:
1. Frank O'Rourke(FF). They are getting a lot of flack at the moment, but he has impressed me so far. Now if the paths really do get swept... Here is a link to Frank O'Rourke's details on the KCC site.
2. Senan Griffin (FG). He gave me his mobile number and told me he would raise the issue at today's meeting. And here are Senan Griffin's details.

I have never contacted a councillor before, so maybe I should not be surprised, but this is a hell of a lot better than just moaning about a problem (and fixing the punctures).

Members of Kildare County Council

As part of being more useful, I have decided that I am going to get more politically involved. Writing to representatives, finding out who they are. That sort of thing. To that end here is a list of the members of the Celbridge Area Committee of Kildare County Council:

I have written to each of them to see if I can get the cycle paths in Celbridge swept - lots of glass on them at the moment. Not exactly life changing stuff, but I will be interested to see how they respond.

Here is a link to the Celbridge Area meeting agendas for this year. They post minutes too, but only last years are available so far.

Mountain biking and Coillte

I heard that there is a new mountain biking trail in the Dublin mountains. I looked at the Coillte website and could not find any reference to it. I sent them an email at about half ten on a Tuesday. They answered ten minutes later. Impressive service. Going to give the track a try this Saturday:
Here's the details.

Celbridge Cycle paths

Our local cycle paths have a lot of glass on them. I am not sure where it comes from, but it does not go anywhere except into my tyres :-)
I have written to the council - last week, the transport section directly - 2 days ago and just now a member of the council. Lots of silence coming back so far. Only response was one section telling me that they had forwarded this to another section.
More punctures on the way I think.

Stickk.com

I have just read the excellent book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Thaler and Sunstein. Lots of useful information in there. One thing that is immediately useful though is their reference to a website called stickk.com. It's a site to help you achieve your goals by putting your money on the line. An old idea, but implemented well on the web. I have not picked a goal yet (or more importantly decided how much to risk!), but I will get one done before the beginning of next week. Not procrastination, just want to pick something useful from the number of things that I want to do.
Stickk.com

No TV for January

I have been wasting too much time watching mindless telly lately. I broke the subject gently with my wife last weekend. Afterall me taking a break from the box and her still watching is not a runner. I am not sitting upstairs in a chilly bedroom while she watches desperate housewives. She was pretty happy with it, but then I told her that the ban extended to the weekend too. We will see how that bit goes, but I am off to bed now. We have just had our first TV free day. Did not miss it at all. I finished a good book and we had a good chat. Will see how we get on as the week progresses.
This can't do us any harm.