When your business is a "job in disguise" and feels like a hamster wheel it's time to get smarter. How to have financial security, freedom and fulfilment ... without being so stupidly busy. When people find out you run your own business you know what they'll ask: "How's it going? Are you busy?" Somehow, "busy" has come to mean "successful." But you didn't wake up this morning thinking "my main aim today is to be as busy as possible!" You don't have your business "to be busy" ... so why DO you work so hard? We all have our businesses for the same reason. The same three reasons actually - to have financial security, freedom and fulfilment - the 3Fs. But these aren't the outcomes for most small businesses. Instead, the common experience feels like you're on a hamster wheel, where the hours are long and the rewards mediocre. Self-esteem is threatened and life, love and relationships impacted. This book explains why this happens and how to approach work in a smarter way, to have a better business with less busyness and more certain results, so you can get back to living and loving life again. How, by climbing off the hamster wheel and escaping The Busyness Delusion, you can take the easier, more certain route to turn your own business into one that does give you all 3Fs. It covers: Why the hustle method is seductive but flawed, and how to use a smarter approach Why most self-employed people unwittingly choose the hardest way to earn, and what the easier options are. How to overcome the biggest obstacle to a smarter business and better life. What financial security really means and how to achieve it quicker and more easily. How to get better results by applying a simple model of how the brain works to give you more control. How to eliminate your competition to make it easier to get better results. Providing a new framework, illustrated in clear diagrams and told through a compelling story, this book reveals why copying others creates the hamster wheel effect, and precisely what to do to have a business and life you deserve. "This book nails the problem with most small businesses. The solutions are time-tested principles, for the first time pulled together in an original and enjoyable way that's easy to understand and implement." Dan Sager

Why do some companies prosper while others fail? Despite great amounts of research, many of the studies that claim to pin down the secret of success are based in pseudoscience. THE HALO EFFECT is the outcome of that pseudoscience, a myth that Philip Rosenzweig masterfully debunks in THE HALO EFFECT. THE HALO EFFECT highlights the tendency of experts to point to the high financial performance of a successful company and then spread its golden glow to all of the company's attributes - clear strategy, strong values, and brilliant leadership. But in fact, as Rosenzweig clearly illustrates, the experts are not just wrong, but deluded. Rosenzweig suggests a more accurate way to think about leading a company, a robust and clearheaded approach that can save any business from ultimate failure.

"Rest is such a valuable book. If work is our national religion, Pang is the philosopher reintegrating our bifurcated selves."---Arianna Huffington, New York Times Book Review Overwork is the new normal. Rest is something to do when the important things are done—but they are never done. Looking at different forms of rest, from sleep to vacation, Silicon Valley futurist and business consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang dispels the myth that the harder we work the better the outcome. He combines rigorous scientific research with a rich array of examples of writers, painters, and thinkers—from Darwin to Stephen King—to challenge our tendency to see work and relaxation as antithetical. "Deliberate rest," as Pang calls it, is the true key to productivity, and will give us more energy, sharper ideas, and a better life. Rest offers a roadmap to rediscovering the importance of rest in our lives, and a convincing argument that we need to relax more if we actually want to get more done.

Delusion is the story of a farm boy left with no choice but to flee his confusing and dysfunctional family and strike out on his own. All he needed was space, time to think, a chance to clear the dross of his life from his mind. The independence he sought and the free life he craved was so close he could taste it, then the girl came along. Riding a trail bike in Coringup National Park, black gown flowing behind her and, from what he could see, intricate designs painted on her neck and her face. He wasn’t to know it at the time, but that was the moment an ethereal, mystical, persuasive new force took a hold on his life. If he’d had just a little more fire in his belly, a little more steel in his spine, was less of a fantasist and dreamer, the bizarre beauty who appeared out of nowhere may not have taken over his life quite as easily as she did. But from the moment he stumbled across her his unmaking had begun. And he could do nothing to stop it, like she’d gone inside his head and controlled him. Even when she rebirthed him and renamed him as Draigh, the Dragon, her Protector, he missed his chance to put a stop to her theatrics and nonsense. The question is, had he known what a train wreck she was going to make of his life, could he have done anything about it? Guilty, the foreman had droned over and over to each accusation, spoken with a malevolence he could taste. And yet he’d done none of it, not that anyone cared. It was her, Arachne, who created the trail of carnage left strewn in their wake. Why would they want to blame him? Right from the outset he was against taking GranJude’s little yellow car. GranJude was in Summerland and would be back soon and would need it, but Arachne prevailed and that was the key to what happened, the beginning of the end. Once he slid behind the wheel and headed north from Coringup there was no turning back. He was Draigh now, Draigh the Dragon, Arachne’s companion and protector and dupe, riding with an exotic who reckoned she owned him and probably did. She knew every thought he was having, she pushed him to corners he didn’t want to go. Never mind her clear rules of distance and non-engagement, when a bloke’s stricken it’s too easy to be swept up in the flurry and be carried along. Stricken or smitten, he could never be sure. Arachne, the Weaver of Webs, the writer of Scripts. Love-hate, no doubt about it. He wanted her and needed her, he didn’t want her and didn’t need her. But it was like she was him, it was like he was her. Oh, the places she led him. The people whose lives they impacted and meshed with. And yet, whatever she was doing, whatever she was plotting, he knew none of it. Like helping a geriatric bank robber finance his simple daughter’s wedding and his overdue retirement. Like witnessing her own death in a previous time. Helping the beautiful but melancholic Levis Bretherland dispose of his demons and burdens and possessions. Loving Pet Picolla. Bringing new dimensions to the mundane lives of Fatarse and Shortarse The Dwarf.

If your company’s goal is to become fast, responsive, and agile, more efficiency is not the answer--you need more slack. Why is it that today’s superefficient organizations are ailing? Tom DeMarco, a leading management consultant to both Fortune 500 and up-and-coming companies, reveals a counterintuitive principle that explains why efficiency efforts can slow a company down. That principle is the value of slack, the degree of freedom in a company that allows it to change. Implementing slack could be as simple as adding an assistant to a department and letting high-priced talent spend less time at the photocopier and more time making key decisions, or it could mean designing workloads that allow people room to think, innovate, and reinvent themselves. It means embracing risk, eliminating fear, and knowing when to go slow. Slack allows for change, fosters creativity, promotes quality, and, above all, produces growth. With an approach that works for new- and old-economy companies alike, this revolutionary handbook debunks commonly held assumptions about real-world management, and gives you and your company a brand-new model for achieving and maintaining true effectiveness.

How you give matters. Discover philanthropic strategies for creating transformational change. Whether you regularly donate to charity, run a small family foundation, or are responsible for millions of dollars in grants, you are a philanthropist. Delusional Altruism: Why Philanthropists Fail To Achieve Change and What They Can Do To Transform Giving looks at how you can create transformational change. It reminds us that how we give is as important as the amount we give. The author describes common practices that hinder transformational change and explains how to avoid them, ensuring that your gifts help create the impact you seek. Delusional Altruism—a set of all-too-common errors in philanthropic strategy—can derail a program of giving and result in a loss of efficiency and effectiveness. This book asks philanthropists and charitable organizations to consider whether they have fallen under the spell of Delusional Altruism. Are you cutting out impactful giving in order to save money or avoid uncertainty? Is your philanthropic approach unnecessarily restricted by traditional thinking? This book will help you answer these questions and determine how you can achieve better outcomes through the process of Transformational Giving. Ask questions that spur learning and fuel innovation Believe that investment in yourself and your operation is important Increase the speed of your actions to increase the impact of your giving Give in ways that create lasting, sustainable change Follow strategies to make your philanthropy unstoppable Although enhanced opportunities for philanthropic giving are on the horizon, changes to philanthropic practice are needed to prevent this philanthropy boom from becoming under-leveraged. Implementing updated approaches now can lead to positive change for the future. Read Delusional Altruism to learn how you can transform reality with strategic giving.

In an increasingly frenetic world too many leaders have lost sight of the simple yet profound wisdom associated with practical action, otherwise known as phronesis. Phronesis is an ancient Greek word associated with good judgement and good character. At its core, it is about the ability to discern how best to act. Practical wisdom involves acting thoughtfully and virtuously and encouraging others to do the same. Stephen Tierney describes virtue, thought and action – which coalesce in effective leadership – as the Way of Being, Way of Knowing and Way of Doing. Each of the three Ways consist of a number of elements termed the Basics. The Ways of Being: Purpose & Introspection The Ways of Knowing: Specialism & Strategy The Ways of Doing: Implementation, Networking, Guardianship & Expertise Structuring the book around these eight Basics, readers will be challenged and supported to explore each of the Basics from a theoretical perspective and then provided with real world examples of how they were applied by Stephen in his own career in educational leadership. In writing Leadership: Being, Knowing, Doing, Stephen seeks to help leaders explore their own capabilities and potential. Leadership can be learnt. The three Ways with their constituent Basics represent a mirror to help leaders reflect upon and improve their practice. In turn, current leaders are called upon to accept the responsibility to grow the leaders of the future.