I read a lot.

I have a reading list of blogs and other websites in Feedly that I read throughout the day, every day.It includes everything from traditional news through to cartoons.

Often I find something that I want to share on this blog. I
quite often share links here to other articles, but I always try do it in the
context of providing my own commentary and thoughts on the content. What I’m
getting at is that sharing links on here is not a quick, one-click process,
because I don’t want this blog to be merely a long list of links to other
people’s content. I’m much too egotistical for that.

Anyway, the result of all this is that over time I build up
a handful of flagged articles that I’ve been intending to share but never got
around to doing so.

This is the first of what may become a semi-regular feature,
where I spew those forth with (in the interests of time) only a sentence or two of comment instead of the full-blown article I was originally planning. Enjoy!

• Three Communication
  Strategies for Building Strong Relationships from Far Away
  Working in a ROWE is great, but is not without its
  challenges. Communication is by no means impossible, but can certainly suffer
  when the face-to-face aspect it lost: particularly with a team that’s become
  subconsciously reliant on bumping into people in the hallways. This article
  lays out some strategies for addressing that.
   
• Why
  Resource Management is Better from a Dedicated PM
  Another post from the excellent Brad
  Egeland, this one talks about why a dedicated project manager is better
  than using somebody with another role (like a lead designer) to occasionally
  manage projects as the need arises.
   
• Fluency
  with Excel and Word are Key to Getting a Higher-Paying Job
  I wanted to link to this article because it surprised me. Higher-paying
  compared to what? Isn’t fluency with office applications a prerequisite for getting any
  job? Maybe “fluency” is the key word here, and a basic understanding is a prerequisite
  and those with more advanced skills will find more opportunities to progress up
  the corporate ladder, but the article doesn’t really say that. This is the
  knowledge economy here, people! We don’t make things anymore, unless of course
  you count spreadsheets. Get on board!
   
• How to Put an End
  to Workload Paralysis
  I absolutely suffer with this. As the author notes about herself, “there seems
  to be a tipping point for me when I go from being really busy to so-busy-I’m-paralyzed-and-can’t-do-anything.”
  The four steps to fighting this paralysis are not rocket science, but of course
  nor should they be, and it’s well worth a read if, like me, you’re an
  occasional sufferer. At least you now know you’re not the only one.