When you step back though, you realize that being a big deal (however that is defined for you) might not be such a big deal. Is becoming the top expert in your industry worth it if you end up divorced because of it? Is being a Twitter celebrity as cool as it seems if you lose your day job because you spend so much time on Twitter? How about if you end up in the hospital because you haven’t focused on your health while pursuing becoming a big deal?

In this incredibly powerful TEDx speech, Scott Stratten uses personal life experiences to explore this in-depth. This is a “must-watch” speech and one that I have shared with anyone that will listen.

What are your thoughts?  How do you create a balance in your life?

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Have you ever taken the time to break down time and realize how valuable time really is, even down to a millisecond? This Tungle video, produced by my friend Scott Stratten, breaks down time by providing powerful examples that will cause you to look at time in a new light after watching it.

If you can’t view this video, you can watch it over here.

A powerful underlying concept, eh? “Stop wasting time on things you can’t control, and focus on the things you can.”

Now, if I didn’t tell you earlier that the video was created for Tungle or if you didn’t watch the last couple seconds of the video, you would’ve thought it was just a motivational and inspirational video. One of thousands available across the internet.

But, go deeper than that and realize what Tungle and Scott Stratten have done by publishing this video. They have created emotionally compelling content based around the subject of time, the very issue that Tungle helps us to manage.

If you’ve never heard of Tungle, they are:

“…a calendar accelerator that let’s you easily schedule meetings and share with people inside or outside your business, even if you use different calendars. Tungle is not a calendar – it integrates with your current calendar, giving you the flexibility and control to connect, collaborate and get more done.”

Instead of a video about how to use their service, Tungle has created a video that illicit emotion thus causing you to want to share the video with your social graph. Think you’d have the same feeling if it was a video about how great Tungle is and how much time their tool will save you? Probably not.

The 71 videos that Tungle currently has uploaded to their YouTube channel, they have received a total of 83,428 views. Of those 83,000+ views, the above video has 25,132 views or 30% of all views and it has only been live for 2 weeks, as of this writing.

Looking for the underlying lesson here? Find ways to create compelling content that don’t just pimp your product. Tell a story, illicit emotion and give your community a reason to share your content.

Oh, and if you haven’t tried Tungle yet, go try it because not only does the tool rock, they’re team is pretty awesome, too. I f you want some more info about Tungle, I interviewed Tungle’s CEO Marc Gingras earlier this year.

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In most companies meetings are broken. You and I both know it. We organize and attend meetings that take too long, are unstructured, involve too much rambling and not enough follow-up. We meet for the sake of meeting, not out of necessity. We allow individuals to hijack the meeting so it takes twice as long as it is supposed to. For the few minutes per day that we’re not in meetings, we’re being consistently interrupted. Yet, we’re still expected to complete all of our work on time even if we spend the majority of our life in meetings.

Does this sound like a conversation you might have had recently with a co-worker?

I know this has happened to me. I know that I’ve been both the culprit and victim of broken meetings. But, lately, I have become increasingly restrictive of how easy I’ll agree to a meeting without questioning the need to meet and the length of time required. Too often, as I’m sure you’ve experience, hour long meetings are scheduled because it sounds like a nice, round number.

Meetings don’t have to be the source of this much frustration. Meetings don’t have to zap your team’s productivity. Meetings don’t have to suck!

Now, this isn’t to say that meetings aren’t necessary. They are very much needed, when they’re structured, are respectful of your time, involve follow-up, and aren’t just a meeting to meet about the last meeting you had.

If you’re stuck in an organization that enjoys meeting just to meet, how can you fix it? How can you regain back your precious time?

Merlin Mann has come to the rescue once again. A few years ago he began preaching from tall mountains on how each of us could regain control on our inboxes with his, now famous, Inbox Zero speech. Now Merlin wants to help you fix broken meetings so that they return to be useful allocations of your time.

Merlin recently publicly rolled out this new presentation during a session at Twitter HQ. The entire presentation is a little more than an hour long but is worth every minute of your time.

In case you missed it during the presentation, Merlin shares 10 patterns for improving meetings.

10 Patterns to Improve Meetings

1. Purpose
2. Agenda
3. Grazing
4. Edges
5. Guests
6. Timekeeper
7. No Ratholes
8. Focus
9. Follow-Up
10. Consistency

What are your thoughts about broken meetings? Did you find a nugget or two of actionable information that you can take back to your organization and implement?

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Photo Credit: Kevin Lawyer

I have been fascinated with Zappos for the past few years because of their focus on doing right by their customers and team members which has translated into an amazing company culture and a strong base of super-fans and repeat customers. I’ve also had the opportunity to hang out with Tony since we share a lot of the same friends and he has also been gracious enough to host several awesome parties during many of the big conferences that take place in Las Vegas.

All of this built up anticipation to read the behind-the-scenes story on Zappos and this book doesn’t disappoint. I shot a video review to share my thoughts on the book.

If you can’t view this video, you can head over to my YouTube channel.

Have you read Delivering Happiness(affiliate link) yet? Thoughts?

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Recently I came across a compilation of interviews that Will Smith has given over the years that The Mind Guru put together. It is by far one of the most inspirational videos I have ever seen.

If you can’t view this video, you can head over to YouTube to watch it..

I have watched this video over and over again, each time pulling out quotes that meant something to me. My favorite?

Make sure you take the 10 minutes out of your day TODAY to watch this video. It is my hope that you find this video as motivating as I have found it.

One way that I have taken a deeper and deeper interest in, especially over the past year or so, has been the visualization of data and information. Taking complex data sets of a large source of information on a given subject and being able to transform that into an infographic or other visual enables us to consume that information in an easier format that we’re able to make more sense of quicker.

I have found that I learn much quicker when I review infographics, charts or other images. I also tend to learn quicker with video hence why you may have noticed that in a majority of my posts here there is a photo, video and/or graphic. I appreciate (and am envious) of the data visualization work done by friends such as Brian Solis and David Armano.

Recently David McCandless spoke at a TED event about the beauty of data visualization and how it may be the best way to navigate complex datasets and the influx of information.

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I really enjoyed Rework and found myself making lots of highlights inside of it to go back and reference. It also provided a nice jolt of motivation and gave me some ideas for my current and future business endeavors. This is the type of book that I will be passing on to a couple folks that may be in a rut lately and/or who are getting ready to launch new businesses.

For more of my thoughts on the book, here’s a quick video.

Have you read Rework yet? What were your thoughts of it?

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The one gift that we’re all born with is that of choice. Each of us decides, as an individual, what choices we will make. We have influencers and life experiences that may weigh in on those choices but we’re still given the power to make the final decision.

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com, discusses the difference between gifts and choices during a commencement speech at Princeton University.  During this speech he suggests, as highlighted by Princeton in the description on their YouTube channel, that “one’s character is reflected not in the gifts one is endowed with at birth but rather by the choices one makes over the course of a lifetime.”

You may be quick to jump and say that it is our experiences that make us who we are. I would agree with you. But, it isn’t just the experience that makes us who we are, it is the choices that we made as a result of those experiences that make us who we are and put us into our next situations.

Watch Jeff Bezos’ speech and see what your thoughts are about the difference between gifts and choices.

If you would like a full transcript of the speech, you can grab it from Princeton’s website.

What say you?  Do you think it is the gifts you were born with or the choices you’ve made that define who you are?

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Right about this point you’re probably nodding your head up and down admitting that you’re experiencing this same issue.  It’s not surprising because the modern workplace has become addicted to meetings and other forms of interruptions.

This is a consistent issue for me even though my team tries to run as lean as possible and reduce the number of meetings and miscellaneous interruptions we have. However, when I’m not traveling, a normal week will have 40-60 meetings appear on my calendar. One of the reasons for this is because we’re a fast-growing company with big ambitions and a lot of moving projects that require our attention while the other part is that we have weekly status calls with each of our clients and I lead the majority of these calls.

As more meetings and interruptions have continued to find their way into my work day, I’ve learned to block out time on my calendar that is marked “DO NOT SCHEDULE!”  This allows me to schedule blocks of time to get work done instead of only small windows of time.

With how often I travel, I’ve also learned how to be productive from anywhere and how to leverage any time available even if it is only 15 minutes.  This has lead me to become very good at getting work done with short pockets of time in between meetings and at home.  Even if I have a day without a lot of meetings, I have found that I am more productive on projects when I’m workshifting because I find that I can focus more because it’s just me, my laptop and some great music.

Just as I was thinking about this while sitting on my couch doing work on a Sunday afternoon, I came across an interview with Jason Fried,co-author of Rework (affiliate link) and Founder of 37Signals where he addresses exactly this issue. Jason describes some of the tactics that his team uses at the 37Signals office and offers some tactical advice that you could implement into your office.

Have you broken your company of their addiction to meetings and other interruptions? If so, what were the tactics you used?

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First up is a video review by Chris Brogan:

Next, here are a few other reviews that you may find interesting:

• Tim Peter – Facebook Marketing by Justin R. Levy (Book Review of the Week-ish)
• Valley PR Blog – Book Review: Facebook Marketing
• Deidre Breakenridge – Book Review: Facebook Marketing
• iMedia Connection – 6 Beach Books for Marketers
• Get Social PR – Facebook Marketing 9-Part Series

If you’ve written up a review of Facebook Marketing, please let me know in the comments.  I will keep this post updated with more reviews as I find them.

If you have already read Facebook Marketing, would you mind leaving a rating and review over on Amazon?

Most importantly, thank YOU for all of your support since the book launch!

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