Here are some brief thoughts on what I've been reading.

279 Days to Overnight Success. There are a lot of how to make money on the Internet books out there, but this really combines the best of all worlds. Chris Guillebeau outlines a project that is intensely do-able. Be consistent, be honest, and don't promise things before you're sure you can deliver.

This is also a great guide to changing existing habits or creating new ones.

Stingray Shuffle. Mitch turned me onto the works of Tim Dorsey. Dorsey's hero, Serge Storms, is a wacky hobbyist-slash-sleuth-slash-homicidal maniac. Everything I've read is hysterical, fun and downright enjoyable. I'm not even going to bother summarizing the plot for you; just go grab some Dorsey and unwind.

The Art of Racing in the Rain. I'm in the middle of this on audiobook. JB recommended it to me when we decided we were getting a dog, and she talked me into trying the audiobook (which is great, because I can listen to it while I'm walking Rufus). I love the narration, I love that I don't need light or to pause to read it, and I love the book.

Narrated by a dog on the eve of his euthanizing, the novel is about Enzo's family, from living with Denny – a race car driver known for his ability to drive in the rain – to Denny's meeting his wife Eve and having their daughter Zoe, to Eve's brain cancer and more.

Garth Stein's Enzo is convinced that dogs are closer to humans than chimps are, and he puts up a good argument.

Do the Work. Steven Pressfield, an accomplished novelist, screenwriter, and probably something else, too, wrote this outline to completing a project. It walks you through the outlining process, the self-doubt, the crash when something goes horribly wrong, and the push to ship your product. This is a quick, easy read, and I highly recommend it, even if you don't have a major project on tap.

An Object of Beauty. Steve Martin is best known as a comic actor, and a really good one at that. But he's a great literary novelist, too, and this Manhattan art-world story focused on our protagonist, Lacey Yeager, is a great read.

We meet Lacey in art school, and follow her through her first job at Sotheby's, at a private gallery, and then into gallery ownership.

Your turn: What are you reading these days?

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I'm pacing a little short, and by a little, I mean a little. We are 3 weeks into the new year (the first time I weighed myself was Jan. 1, not Dec. 31), and I'm down 4.6 pounds, which is 1.5 pounds per week or .219 pounds per day over 12 days.

I've made a big life change this week. For a lot of people, getting a dog means more activity, since they're getting off the couch and going for a walk, or they're going outside and getting some fresh air instead of hitting the snooze button. For me, the process of getting Rufus adapted to his new environment means less activity; I tend to make my workouts adjacent to my workday (immediately before or immediately after work, since I work at a gym), and in an effort to have him doing his business in appropriate locations, I've been going in as late as I can muster and coming home as soon after work as I can. So, no workouts this past week – I'm doing it all with nutrition. Yes, I realize I could come home, let him out, and go back, but it seems really ridiculous to me, since I'm already there all day (I tend to forgo a lunch break, since I'm snacking throughout my shift anyway).

This week, I'm scheduling some workouts for my workday. I'm actually having people cover parts of my shifts two days so that I can get some exercise. I'll also get back to some quick at-home workouts, now that we have a safe area designated for Rufus and he's good with it.

Onward.

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Try our video maker at Animoto.

We're announcing a new addition to our family.

Rufus is a 2-year-old black lab rescued on Wednesday from the CNY SPCA. He was there about a month – his family lost their home, and couldn't keep him.

We know he had a chocolate brother who was put down, but other than that, most of his history is stuff we're piecing together. This morning on our walk he stopped and whined when he saw a little girl getting into a car. Later in our walk we saw two girls on a sled (I'm guessing about 3 and 5), so I'm guessing there was at least one child around.

He came to us already housebroken and already with some good habits.

We're doing obedience school; we've already been to a class without him, and I like the methods we're learning.

I'd brought up the idea of a dog a while ago with JB. I grew up with cats, and JB didn't have animals growing up – her mom was too worried she'd wind up doing all the work.

2011 was an interesting year at work for me; I learned a lot about working with a team, and for the first time I've been placed in a management role. Reading Nate Green's post about his dog, patience and real problems confirmed for me that not only would a dog provide companionship (and yes, I know, "baby practice"), but also, for both of us, we'd learn to do things like go outside first thing instead of turning on our computers; we'd actually start going for those after-dinner walks we've been talking about.

It would be good for our physical health and our mental and emotional health.

We went to one rescue and had a lousy customer service experience. We waited a few days and went to the SPCA, expecting to meet a beagle or some terrier mix. Instead, Rufus found us. We took him out for a walk, and we were gone nearly an hour.

He weighs in at 75 pounds, so he's big enough to play with, run with, and to be a substantial cuddler.

A few things we've noticed in the few days he's been home:

Honesty. On Friday, his second full day home, we were both working late. Rufus had spent most of Thursday plugged up from his new food, and so when I got out of work I rushed home, hoping he hadn't loosened up in his crate and spent the day having to sit in it.

Well, he'd loosened up. But what he did was he figured out how to get out of his crate – not by opening the door, but by collapsing one of the walls by unhooking it. He knocked over the trash barrel, and he pooped in the house, but he did it in a very easy-to-clean-up spot and didn't track it anywhere.

When I walked in the door, the first thing I saw was the trash. He was waiting for me about three feet away, and we went outside briefly and then came back in to survey the damage. He knew he'd done something improper, and for the next few hours, he sulked with his head on the floor between his paws.

Simplicity. When we agreed to adopt Rufus, we picked up a bunch of stuff. You know, beds, collars, that kind of stuff. We also picked up some stuffed toys, a tug rope, a rubber ball, and a big bone with some meat-type stuff on it.

He might be adjusting to being neutered and to a new home all in the same week, but he wanted no part of the toys or the bones. I grabbed two simple rawhide bones ($2 each) on my trip to the grocery store, and he loves them. Won't put them down. In fact, he took one with him when we went out this morning, and he's been heading right to his crate to grab a bone instead of hanging out in the living room.

I'm sure we're going to keep learning from him.

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This is where we get into the nitty gritty of how to be an effective emailer. We'll look specifically at 4 common scenarios that many people don't think about, but that don't require a lot of experience or pre-planning.

1. Reply vs. Reply All. Many times, someone will need to email a bunch of people (such as a whole department), and require a response from each individual.

A lot of times, the whole list doesn't need to read each response.

When you click "reply," you are replying only to the sender. When you click "reply all," you are replying to everybody on the list. You can double-check who you are replying to by looking at the "To" and "CC" fields.

Consider this common scenario.

It's Monday morning, and your boss is wondering how your team is going to be motivated to reach its goals this week. S/he emails everybody for one goal, and one way you're going to reach that goal.

Within 5 minutes, one of your co-workers, with whom you're friendly, replies to everybody with a great answer. You click "reply all" and call her a brown-noser and maybe make a snarky comment, which she would appreciate because she's your friend.

But because you clicked "reply all," everybody on your team, including your boss, thinks you're holding that person's answer against her.

Instead of sharing a joke with a friend, you've created the appearance of a rift on your team, and now everybody gets assigned to team building exercises that take up the next three Saturdays, and people really start to not like you because they were going to get in some time with their children.

Not so effective, right?

Action: Check the "To" and "CC" fields when sending an email, so you know who is going to receive the email.

2. Use an accurate and effective subject. Many people get a lot of email, like hundreds of messages a day. In an effort to manage that email, a lot of people have created systems that are effective for them. The two things that people base these systems on, for the most part, are the sender (that's you) and the subject field.

If you're sending an email message about a time off request, include that information in the subject line. If you're hoping to go on vacation in August, "August time off request" is a great subject line; "Sand castles and Frisbees" is a terrible one.

The next step, of course, is making your message match your subject line, so if you write terrifically effective subject lines but then write your messages about something else entirely (making your subject line inaccurate), all of your emails are going to become low priority, because the reader isn't going to trust that your high-priority subject line has anything to do with the message (see also: The Boy Who Cried Wolf).

Action: After you write your message, double-check to make sure your subject line is still accurate.

3. Stick to one subject. In addition to making sure your message and subject line are in agreement, make sure you (a) don't go off on a tangent and (b) you stick to just one subject in your email. If you have multiple subjects in an email message, one or more will get lost in a conversation thread.

4. Other tips for success. Here are some other tips for successful emails.

- Keep emails short. We don't read on the screen, we skim. Don't put too much extraneous information in your email message, or something will be missed.

- If you require an action, like signing up for an account or posting your results on an office Intranet, find a prominent place in your email for a phrase like "Action Item: Post your results to Intranet." Bold it if you like. Include a deadline. If it's "today," assume people will think you mean by close of business, so be specific.

- Some emails obviously require a response ("We're having an office luncheon, please email your order"). Some don't ("I hope you read this article and find it useful for your job"). If you need a response, include a note that you need a response. Include a phrase like "response requested," or "please respond." Include a deadline.

What did I miss? What else is required for effective email?

« Part 1: Anatomy of an email

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All email messages have six basic fields you should be aware of. Some email clients (that's email programs in lay terms) hide some of the fields, but it should be pretty easy to get them to show in case you'd like to use them. These fields are From, To, CC, BCC, Subject, and Message.

Let's take a look at what each field does and why it's important.

1. The "From" field. This is the email address the message you are writing is coming from. In most cases, this is your primary email address. For those people who have multiple email addresses on the same client, it's important to choose the email address you wish it to come from (for example, personal or work).

In some cases, an incorrect "from" field will put replies in the wrong place for you, creating an inefficient work flow, and in other cases, you're giving people access to an email address you may not want them to have (for example, giving work clients your personal address).

2. The "To" field. This should be your primary recipient list. Even if you're replying to an email, you should ALWAYS check this field to make sure the person you want to read the email is the ONLY person (or people, you get what I'm saying) in the field. Not double-checking this field could mean you send an email to the wrong person, or it could mean that the person you meant to complain about to a friend is actually on the email.

Making a mistake there might be "cute" once at work, or it could get you fired with cause.

3. The "CC" field. For those of us old enough to remember putting carbon paper in our typewriters, CC means "carbon copy." The person or people listed in this field are meant as secondary recipients. For example, if you send a message to someone in another department and CC your boss, your boss is likely to file that as a piece of information you want them to have, though s/he isn't likely to give it a priority.

The person in the "To" field can see the name and email address of the person in the "CC" field, and vice-versa.

4. The "BCC" field. "BCC" means "blind carbon copy." This means you're sending a copy of the message to someone, and NOT disclosing that you're sending it along to the person in the "To" field. The best and most common use of this is to hide people's email addresses from each other on a mailing list.

Another common use is the "I need to tell you something and the person I'm corresponding with doesn't need to know about it." For example, if I, as someone in middle management, have a team member under me whose angry emails I need to respond to, I might add my boss as a BCC on my return emails so he knows what's going on, in case the problem escalates.

5. The "Subject" field. Simply put, this is what the message is about. It's a way for the recipient to file the email, to prioritize it among the other emails s/he receives, and to be able to follow the conversation thread through several messages over time. If your subject field is "Time off request," your boss is more likely to look at it and figure out when you need time off than if your subject field is "My cat is sick," even if that's your reason for requesting time off. Be effective, and be accurate.

6. The "Message" field. This is your email message. We'll get into this more in Part 2, but keep your email message about a single topic (the topic in the subject field), and make sure you mention any action items that are required, whether you desire a response, and what deadline you need the response or action on.

Part 2: Tips for Success (and Failure) »

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There's a lot in this talk. It's about chemicals and food and saving the environment by tricking your taste buds into thinking that the watermelon grown in some guy's back yard down the street is tuna transported from the Pacific Ocean 2500 miles inland.

What I'm taking from it today, though, is that your eyes can't always be trusted. You need to take in all the available information via all your available senses, and you need to process it through your brain, and then you can decide if you really have what you think you have.

Be careful, though, to not put yourself through an endless data processing loop. Make a decision, but make it a good one.

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This year I set a goal of getting to 145 pounds by March 1. That's 15.4 pounds in 60 days, or just under 2 pounds per week.

That's sustainable, and while I could probably drop that 15 pounds more quickly, I want to be able to maintain this year, and still be under 150 at year's end.

Here are some things I'm going to do (other than checking in on the blog occasionally):

• Lose fat, not muscle. This means resistance training mixed with some heavy lifting and high-intensity interval training (HIIT). I think it would be really easy to do a lot of cardio and burn off the weight, but I feel pretty strong and I want to maintain that, perhaps grow it. In that sense, if I don't hit 145 pounds but I get down to 11-12% body fat, cool (I'm probably around 20-22% now).

• Use trackers. I have a DietMinder, and I'm using it. I also love FitDay, which counts my nutrients for me.

• Live a little. Repeat after me: Diets. Don't. Work. You can get on a diet for a little while, but the second you feel like you're "cheating" or you hit your goal, all the results you achieved go out the window. I could pretty easily lose those 15 pounds in 2-3 weeks using a strict low-carb (under 15g or so a day) and high water consumption diet. But you know what? With a goal of 2 pounds a week, I'm going to be able to drink wine (dry red), eat chocolate (moderate amounts of dark), and enjoy the heck out of a Super Bowl party (unless it's a Giants-Broncos thing, then I can't enjoy it at all).

• Try new exercises in my workouts. Know what kicked my butt during my first workout of the year? One-legged deadlifts with a 20-pound dumbbell. I've never incorporated them before, and 10 each leg – done immediately following some one-legged jumping rope (hopping rope?), which was also a first for me – had my quads burning like they haven't in a long time.

• Have people I can check in with. Someone actually asked me yesterday if I could check in with him, call him "fatty" and be mean about it until he gets his act in gear. Done. And Ben, even if I don't comment on every entry, I'm watching you, pal. And there will be a dinner party at some point.

OK, I showed you mine. Show me yours.

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Why are so many people, then, unremarkable in their public lives?

We interact with a lot of people most days, either at businesses we patronize or at our places of business, where we work with other people and see (hopefully) lots of customers.

Many of them do just enough to get by at their jobs, and complain a lot as customers, either about little things or about their jobs or families or whatever.

It generally comes down to people saying or acting out, "I didn't sign up for this shit, and if I did, it's only because I need to eat."

You know what? That describes a lot of us.

There's this pearl of wisdom out there that says, "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

That's only true if you allow it to make you stronger. If you make a conscious effort to grow from it, to learn the lesson the thing that doesn't kill you is trying to teach you.

Here's what the true story is. You're stuck with whatever you're stuck with it. You can opt out and push through the consequences (maybe it's quitting your job, selling a bunch of crap you don't need, and going out in search of your true calling), or you can be awesome with what you have while you have it.

All it takes is for you to flip a switch internally and decide to be amazing at it.

Do you dislike your job? You probably have three options (that don't involve quitting):
(1) Be lazy until they decide to fire you (by the way, someone else worked really hard to make the money they're paying out to you, so think about that when you consider this road).
(2) Do just enough to not get fired. Which will make you more miserable because you're going to stay stuck in that same lousy job, probably without anything more than minimal raises.
(3) Rock it. Just make up your mind to be amazing at this job while you have it, and either someone else is going to hire you because they see you're awesome, or you'll get promoted into a position you like better.

If your cat repeatedly can't make it to the litter box, clean up that poop and love your cat like it's the best thing that ever happened to you.

If your stupid sister drags you to the gym at 5:00 every morning because she has to be at work at 7 even though you don't have to be at work until 10, make her catch up to you in the workouts.

You want to know what else? If you make up your mind to do amazing at the thing you dislike the most, your level of awesome will only increase in the things you enjoy.

If your resolve nothing else for 2012, do that. Go. Be amazing.

[photo credit]

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I also, as some of you know, am involved in several local non-profits.

Here's what I'm doing to keep sane and get more productive.

Tools

Workflowy. Workflowy is an online to-do list that comes to me as a suggestion from Phil. I've never really been one for to-do lists (just like I keep my shopping list in my head), but I've been using Workflowy for a week now and I love it. I keep a browser tab on it at all times, and I use it for everything from long-term projects to an editorial calendar. It has a simple hierarchical structure so you can include details, you can mark either parts or the whole complete, tag things you need to get done today or make a higher priority, and you get an email each morning letting you know where you are.

Dropbox. I've been using Dropbox for a couple of years, since I began using multiple devices (laptop, netbook, smart phone, iPod). It's a virtual hard drive, with public sharing capabilities. It syncs when you're online, but if you're not online you can still edit items that have already been synced on the device you're using. Also, it's free, until you need more than 2GB of space.

Google. I figured you didn't need a link. Google docs, Google calendar and Google groups have been a big help across the board, primarily because of the ability to share and group-edit.

Habits

Facebook. I dumped the game apps from Facebook, which means no more Scrabble or Words With Friends until I get the other stuff straightened out. That means I won't be checking to see if my opponents have played their moves. And in fact, I'm only opening Facebook when I want to check on the pages I administer.

Email. I've set up a work email filter, so that I'm only checking work emails when I am in a position to get work done. That's saving me a lot more time than I expected.

Wellness. This should be a no-brainer, but it's so often overlooked. If you eat well, get enough sleep, get a massage occasionally, get some exercise and some fresh air, you'll be sharp, quick, and alert. You'll get your stuff done, and you'll have energy beyond that.

Skip artificial borders. And by that, I'm really talking dates. I've already published my New Year's post. I don't feel the need to wait until a new year, or a new month, or a new week to start something new. Just start it. The sooner you do, the sooner you'll be happy you did.

What are your favorite tools and habits for productivity?

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And unlike previous years, I'm writing this on December 16, not December 31. Primarily because it's on my mind and I'm making changes now instead of waiting two weeks until the calendar changes.

2011 was the year of patience for me. I'm sure that there were other things going on (heck, I've lost a bunch of weight and gained a bunch of muscle, as well as learned a helluva lot about nutrition and fitness), but most nights I came home complaining about someone or some event that was really trying my patience, even if I didn't use that word.

I've always considered myself a fairly patient person. But I say yes a lot, and I do a lot for a lot of people. I invest a lot of time and energy in things other than myself, and I keep to a fairly tight schedule and require excellence around me if I'm going to do the things I say I'll do.

And I got to a point this year when 3 minutes' deviation in my planned schedule threw me into a rage, and misused turn signals set me off.

So here I'm writing at the end of the year. I've removed some of the distractions, I've taken more time to breathe, and I'm learning to go with the flow a little more.

I'm also not taking on as much, so maybe someone's losing from my gains, but I feel like I've got something new on my resume in this whole patience thing.

Looking ahead to 2012, I think it's going to be a year of more faces and fewer avatars. I'm looking forward to seeing more people in person, playing Scrabble in cafes instead of on Facebook, eating breakfast with people instead of tweeting about what I ate, and in general being more present in people's lives, even if I'm less present in their Twitter streams (no, I'm not quitting Twitter; not even close).

Toward that end, anybody interested in starting a regular breakfast thing? A few people at a cafe or diner at 6am some morning each week? Or maybe 7:30 on a weekend morning?

So, whether it's Dec. 16 or Dec. 31 or March 2, tak a right guide-willy waught and let me know what's up with you in the new year.

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