Some excel­lent ideas for how Apple is open­ing up the world of books on iPad through it’s recent announcements.

There’s not a lot to add to these other than wow.

This is a great insight into the cre­ator of Instapa­per one of my favour­ite apps on the iPad and the reason it does what it does so eleg­antly. Marco cre­ated it for a need he had and it’s an app he uses every­day, it’s not been made for the users, it’s been made for him­self. If Marco is any­thing like me, his worst and most import­ant cir­itic is him­self. Sat­is­fy­ing that critic is the only way to cre­ate some­thing truly great, which is just what he’s doing.

More on the four day work week from Car­son­i­fied.

If you work every week like you were going on hol­i­day on the Fri­day then you can get all of your work done in four days rather than five. It takes con­cen­tra­tion, ded­ic­a­tion and a zero tol­er­ance approach to dis­trac­tions. The reward is an extra 52 days off a year. Is that worth it to you?

I can’t explain how intrigued I am by the notion of being adapt­able to get the most out of your employ­ees as well as being more inter­ested in enrich­ing heir lives.

(Via Can’t remem­ber. I’ll update when I remem­ber.)

Regard­less of what type of artist you are, per­sonal style is essen­tial if you want to suc­ceed and avoid just being “another per­former” or “another” of anything.

Jorge Quin­teros being your­self. Essen­tially, work out what you want to cre­ate and then cre­ate it in your own way.

Occa­sion­ally you read some­thing that really res­on­ates with you.

Ori­gin­al­ity is occa­sional. Second­hand inspir­a­tion can do won­ders in the hands of crafts­men. But third­hand inspir­a­tion is always slightly blurry around the edges. It lacks focus. Young muses rarely deliver what they prom­ise. Energy gets lost in every cre­at­ive exchange, like a game of Tele­phone. The uni­verse favors entropy.

At the moment I’m try­ing to design my blog. I find myself look­ing at all my favour­ite blog­gers and at my col­lec­tion of screen grabbed web­sites. Instead I should be look­ing at who and what interests me so that the site I design reflects me rather than the people I read.

The com­plaint comes from the fact that a lot of us are sick of the friend or acquaint­ance who gives us less than their full atten­tion. The com­plaint also comes because we’re start­ing to get tired of being that per­son ourselves. Espe­cially when we see the cost is has on our rela­tion­ships with those we care for the most.

Focus isn’t just about doing things. It’s about mak­ing sure it’s on the people it should be.

Shawn hits the nail on the head once again.

Often I find myself wrest­ling with the ten­sion that I have more ideas than time. There are many great things I want to do and build and ship and start, but I just don’t have the time to do them. How­ever, I’m find­ing that the real prob­lem is not my lack of time — it’s my lack of focus.

I think we all struggle with the notion that we don’t have enough time to do all that we want. In real­ity we don’t have the focus to do them. Time is a con­stant that we have no con­trol over, focus and motiv­a­tion come and go, what mat­ters is how we make the most of it when we have it and how we gen­er­ate it when we don’t.

Some excel­lent little quotes from David Airey well worth tak­ing on board. I par­tic­u­larly liked this one.

“Your cor­por­ate cul­ture is not some­thing that can be ‘rolled out’; it is the sum of what indi­vidu­als do on a day-to-day basis. And under­stand­ing why they do what they do.”

As with any cul­ture, a busi­ness one has to grow not be imposed.