How to Give Instructions offers advice on, well, giving instructions.
Book Discussion: Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made to Stick” is an overview of Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, which I think is an amazing book.  This post is followed by a 6-part “Sticky Ideas Workshop” exploring the book’s themes more closely.
Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 1): Simple
The lifehack.org User’s Guide explains the different features of the site and how the site gets written.  I wrote this for two reasons: 1) to try to build up some interest in the community aspects of the site (forums, howto wiki, etc.) and 2) to make the point that we are several different people who write for lifehack.org.  I often get comments when I contradict something another writer has said, saying “But you just said…!” For some reason, it’s hard for people to get that, like a magazine, a website might be written by many different people, not all of whom agree on everything.
Sticky Ideas Workshop (Part 2): Unexpected
Five Productivity Ideas I’m Not Buying (Yet?) was an attempt to stir the pot a little by attacking (though somewhat mildly, if I say so myself) some dearly-held productivity concepts like mind mapping, the power of positive thinking, etc.

This week I’ve been continuing the “Sticky Ideas Workshop” and also trying to get some back-to-school posts up, which will be my focus until the end of the month.

The posts this week were:

• Lead, Follow, and Get Out of the Way, a meditation on leaders and leadership, and
• How to Get Started with Google Reader, an introduction to using Google Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds.

I’m pretty happy with the positive response both have gotten — lots of comments, trackbacks, and diggs which tells me that what I’m writing is reaching people. Coming up, a follow-up to the Google Reader article, a piece on writing research papers, another on note-taking, and a few other things I’m still working out.

Stay tuned…

Nowaday, of course, the Web is all two-point-oh! and your Grandma Skypes you and you can actually podcast in front of a live video audience and web conferencing has, no doubt, gotten much better. We’re all 21st century and stuff, now. But I think it would do us all well to remember that, just a few short years ago, the world was a very different place, where you could barely even make out the voices of your ex-KGB coders in Bulgaria, let alone work out what they ere talking about.

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