I adore reading. I love buying books, I love owning books, I love looking at books. I’ve been a bookworm since I started reading.

Every year I add a lot of new books to my shelf. Here’s the synopsis of those that I bought, read, borrowed and enjoyed in 2009.

Body and Mind Health:

The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

• A great inspirational read about making your dreams come to fruition. Time can sometimes be short, and you have to make the most of it.

8 Weeks to Optimum Health – Dr. Andrew Weil

• I wish I would not just read books like this, but take the time to follow through on what the author recommends… maybe this is a 2010 project.

The Four Agreements – Don Miguel

• This has become a go-to guidebook of mine. I have little scraps of paper with the four agreements in various places as a quick reminder, too. A great way to get through difficult problems or regain control over situations where you feel a bit lost.

Knowledge, Business, Learning:

Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

• I am a long-time fan of Gladwell’s writing, and this was no exception. Fantastic!

Tribes – Seth Godin

• Another installment in the Godin school of marketing wisdom. Liked the theory, and although the book is short, it felt too long.

Climate Wars – Gwynne Dyer

• This probably shouldn’t have made the list because I never made it to the end. The set-up of the book is interesting – part prediction, part real-time facts it creatively shows what could happen if we (the human race) doesn’t make some drastic changes. Not sure I buy into it all, though.

Life-Hacking:

The 4-Hour Workweek – Tim Ferriss

• I really enjoy Tim Ferriss’s take on life, how to work, and generally just how to get things done. I don’t know if I could go to the extreme to minimize hours of work for maximum time off, but it sounds appealing…

I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Ramit Sethi

• This is definitely a book for the millennial set. The info in here is great – I’m putting it to use already. Get your finances in order!

Who’s Your City – Richard Florida

• A good read if you are curious about the freedom to choose where we live, and why that is such an important choice for today’s generation.

Novels and lighter reads:

Jpod – Douglas Coupland

• Coupland, a Canadian author has a way with capturing the millennial generation, and particularly with this book, he highlights the generational gap in a hilariously twisted but intriguing story line.

Lullabies for Little Criminals – Heather O’Neill

• This novel is heart-wrenching. Set in Montreal, you see life through the eyes of a little girl, on the verge of growing up faster than she should have to. A new favourite of mine, for sure.

Bright Shiny Morning – James Frey

• James Frey has a unique writing style popularized by his infamous (due to Oprah) book, “A Million Little Pieces”, and this is another installment of great creative writing that interweaves numerous story lines together to paint a real, gritty portrait of LA.

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

• I love to read books before I see the movie, and this is no exception. I read this and loved this and I can’t wait to see the movie when it is released on DVD in 2010. Don’t forget the tissues!

The Picture of Dorian Grey – Oscar Wilde

• I read this after seeing a live production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. I fell in love with his wit and charismatic style, and Dorian Grey was no exception. The imagery, setting and context were all extremely enjoyable.

Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

• This was something I’ve been trying to read for a long time. I finally sat down and got through it only to find out that it is one of the most beautiful love stories of all time!

“If you wait for a better time to create, better than this very moment, if you wait until you feel settled, divinely inspired, perfectly centered, unburdened of your usual worries, or free of your own skin, forget about it. You will still be waiting tomorrow …wondering how you did such an excellent job of disappointing yourself.”

- Eric Massel

‘Productivity Tips’ from WriteaLot: “Start with the vision by creating the book cover or the poster for your work.”

Ira Glass on Storytelling: Learn to live with the gap between greatness and your own work for as long as possible (paraphrased)

Although I am not very clean or organized, I try and get my act together on Sunday night. The following habits make the week run smoothly with less fuss and running around.

1. Make the bed with fresh sheets

Who knows what the week will throw at me? And should something bad happen, I know a nice clean bed is waiting for me. I’ll be spending 320 + hours in bed during the week and I don’t want to feel wrapped in last week’s dirt.

2. Auto-time the coffee machine

My coffee machine has a programmable timer. At 7am, it automatically shoots out delicious smelling coffee. Crawling out of bed is a little less painful. Treat yourself to one if you don’t have it!

3. Cut up ingredients

I cut up onions and grate cheese and store them in the fridge. Ready to grab after work to make dinner. Could also do the same with carrots and celery sticks.

4. Prepare 5 days worth of clothes, including socks + underpants.

I wish I had one of those amazing closets like Cher in Clueless, where all the outfits are computerized. Alas, my closet is a bit of a jumble EXCEPT I try to have 5 work-type outfits for the week ahead. Makes the morning less frantic and decreases the likelihood that I’ll show up to work wearing a dirty old sweater and fishnets.

How do you spend your Sunday nights? How do you make your week work for you?

Today’s discovery: the 40/30/30 rule, courtesy of lifehacker.com

“when you prepare for anything in life, only 40% of the preparation is physical….Thirty percent of preparation is technical skill and experience, and the second thirty percent is the willingness to take risks.” (Trent Hamm)

30 percent is taking risks? Wow! I would have rated it much less, about 10%, which is probably why I am sitting on my couch in an old t-shirt on a Friday night.

60% of success is mental, according to this percentage breakdown. That sits better with me than the claims of New Thought people a la The Secret that success is a matter of positive thoughts. I agree that mental attitude is important, but it is not the whole banana. 60/40 sounds a bit closer to reality.

At the 99percent blog (hey, that sounds like my blog, doesn’t it?), Michael Schwalbe writes: “Ultimately, it’s the ones who barrel through the discomfort, are resilient in the face of failure, and master the last 30% of taking risk who reach the highest levels of performance.”

Some really holy saints were risk takers. I am thinking of Joan of Arc, Mother Teresa, Gandhi and my recent love, St Francis. They were resilient, persistent and willing to put up with a fair amount of the world’s bullshit in order to succeed in their Divine calling.

It seems crass to apply measurement to spiritual success. The epistles talk about running a race and keeping the faith. Certainly, it’s a risk even to place oneself in the contest!

Long, I suspected comfort zones created interior stalemate, and now there is some proof. I will try taking more risks when I work on my nanowrimo tonight, although I might start with 5% more risk, rather than 30%….

live from fatty boomsticks central: While eating a glazed donut this morning, I realized that giving up sweets/fatty foods is not a realistic goal for me. It would be far more effective for me to exercise more and get my butt moving than diet. That way, I can eat whatever I want (sort of) and this will motivate me to exercise. Let’s see how it works out.

http://www.shapecollage.com/

To try pdf reader: Sumatra

I want to go to The Center for Book Arts

And take an Anti-gravity yoga class and a zumba class

And see the Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the Whitney

I want to walk from the bottom of Manhattan to the top. According to Google, it would take a couple of hours.

And the Tim Burton thing at MoMa.

And see that movie “An Education”

And buy Jeff Yamaguchi’s book, 52 projects and do one project.

And to have written another 20,000 words on my nanowrimo.org project. I plan on making the next couple of nights late ones.

and paint a pair of shoes.

Are you tired of hammering the butt of your ketchup bottle with your hand just to pop its remaining contents into your plate? Yeah, it really is irritating and stressful to the hands (not to mention ineffective). Now I would like to share a simple hack on how to pop out the contents of a ketchup bottle easily for you to be able to focus on your food and not on the ketchup.
So here it goes…

First you have to open the bottle and hold it upside down pointed towards your plate (or any target). Make sure that you are holding onto the bottle tight or the next step might cause trouble.

After this, you have to do a thrusting motion with the bottle towards the target as strong as you can and then jerk the bottle in the opposite direction very very quickly. You might need to do this twice or thrice depending on the viscosity of the ketchup but it sure is more effective than hammering the ketchup bottle’s butt. Why?…

*Warning: explicit Physics concepts may not be suitable for young audiences, parental guidance is advised.

…Because as you thrust the ketchup bottle, the ketchup moves in the same velocity (speed and direction) as the bottle. At the moment you jerk the bottle in the opposite direction, the Law of Inertia comes in. The ketchup cannot react quickly to the jerk and it will retain its speed and direction (which is towards the plate). This causes the ketchup to detach from the bottle and dive straight into your plate.

On the other hand, tapping/ hammering the butt of the ketchup bottle does not help a lot because…

…In tapping/ hammering the butt, you apply a Force directed towards the ketchup that settled at the bottom of the bottle. Via Newton’s Law of Action-Reaction, the ketcup applies the same amount of force but directed towards the opposite direction (which is towards you or your hand). This, obviously does not help in popping it out. haha.

Bon Appetit!

OrEv.

I have started a new blog: Adventure Capitalist.

The implication for this is that this blog will get even more of a software development & software project management focus (with the occasional gadget talk).
The more entrepreneurship and life hack related content on the other hand will move over to the new blog.

The new blog will be focused more on my entrepreneurial pursuits and interests, while at the same time covering life hacks/lifestyle design and travel – it will basically be a diary of thoughts, experiences and ideas as I strive to find greater freedom in my own life, and by freedom I mean freedom in the sense of doing more of the things I want to do (money is a means to that, but definitely not an ends).

Official Secrets is the survival handbook for 21st century life – how to balance your work, life, children, hobbies, career, second career and your household budget.

I’m a working mother, with two daughters, a full-time job, a published book and ‘a slate of interesting projects in development’ in film and television.

People often ask me how I do it all. I’m not entirely sure myself, but hope that writing this blog will help to uncover the Official Secrets of finding your path, Getting Things Done and living the life that you want.

If you’ve discovered any interesting ‘life hacks’ that work for you, please let me know!

But first of all, you need to know what you want. When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up to be a writer.  For me, that meant sitting on a deckchair in the garden with a portable typewriter on my lap like Enid Blyton, creating stories about adventure, danger and lashings of hot buttered toast.

This hasn’t quite happened yet. Although I do have a laptop now, I seldom have the chance to sit in the garden.  (I live in Ireland!  It rains a lot!)  The hot buttered toast has been much more successful.

Grab a pencil and a notebook – this is where our story begins.

As I sit in my office on an overcast day, it’s a little hard to get motivated.  I’ve learned from experience that I just have to stop piddling around and do something to get me back on track–>a mission reminder.  As in, why am I here and what should I be doing with this amazing gift we call life?  For those of you who are fortunate enough to work for social services agencies, this may be as easy as calling or visiting a client.  For the rest of us, it may take a little more work.

Here’s some of the activities that have helped provide me with a “Mission Reminder” when I need to get renewed and unstuck:

1) Call up your favorite client and ask them what is the single most valuable thing you’ve done for them. I promise that you’ll be glowing when they are done.

2) Review past success.  If you are in PR, this can be published articles, photos from a special event or even autographed photos of your hero(s). A little back patting can go a long way on a day when you’ve lost focus.

3) Go to the library or the nearest bookstore and pick up a book or magazine that you’ve never read before.  Find something that amazes or delights you and act on it.

4) Take a dear friend or a family member to lunch for no reason. Discuss hopes and dreams.

5) Create a Twine that allows you to track all the cool things that you stumble across on a daily basis that may have nothing to do with your work, but are strangely seductive just the same. Visit often.

6) Create a personal mission statement.  It doesn’t have to be cool or long or even use big words.  It just has to reflect what you want to accomplish in your life.

It’s really easy to get consumed by a massive “to do” list and OPP (other people’s priorities), so when you feel yourself slipping under the onslaught, take a moment to remind yourself about your life purpose. I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

Advice from Kate

“To motivate yourself to achieve a goal, give a friend $50 and tell them to donate $10 to your least favorite political cause every time you fail to do it”

I am seriously thinking of doing this.

My causes would be Priests for Life and the Westboro Baptist Church.

(not linking because I don’t like them.)