TheselfobsessedSoul

A Minute to Think by Juliet Funt Meet the powerful guide that will help you regain control in your overloaded, caffeinated, inbox-worshiping work day. An efficiency expert explains how to liberate your talent, reduce waste, and help teams do more meaningful work by incorporating strategic pauses—what she calls "white space"—into your workdays and personal life. The American workforce is burnt out—ever busy—constantly on call. Creativity and innovation wither before the false god of busyness, and family time is constantly interrupted by the siren call of our smart phones. We’re relentlessly behind the curve, dousing fires everywhere and our 2 a.m. insomnia provides the only unscheduled thinking time of the day.  But activity and productivity are not the same, and confusing them is costing companies millions of dollars annually in wasted time. What we need is white space—short periods of open, unscheduled time that, when inserted back into our days, change the very nature of wo...

Labor is hot. Look for the union label in the pages of a best-selling novel lately, and you might find it.  Last fall, Jess Walter published “ The Cold Millions ,” a terrific story about union organizers in Spokane, Wash., in the early 20th century.  And now comes mega-seller Kristin Hannah with “ The Four Winds ,” an emotional novel about efforts to organize migrant workers in California during the Depression.  Admittedly, literary fiction is not the surest bellwether of American cultural attitudes. But with income inequality soaring even as union membership plummets, Walter and Hannah are leading readers back to an era when desperate workers linked arms to fight for their income, their honor, their very lives. “ The Four Winds ” begins in northwestern Texas in 1921. Elsa Wolcott is the eldest daughter in a middle-class family that treats her like an ugly heirloom. Her unloving parents keep Elsa cloistered in her room reading, insisting she’s too weak to endure any socia...

  The Little Mornings, by C M Albrecht is a murder mystery with 262 absolutely absorbing pages. We have three main characters here – the grandfather, an alcoholic of questionable character, a slightly off balance woman (Angie) and an impressionable young man (Darcy) who becomes mixed up in a whirlwind of events. Murder, thievery and lies keep the unsteady relationship between Darcy and Angie on edge. Keeping a secret is no easy task, especially when someone else pops into the scene with inside knowledge to the truth. Darcy, unable to control the events, becomes another person entirely from the one we knew in the first few pages of the book. Perhaps because I am a writer, and this book has to do with the publishing industry, I am partial to the theme. Grandfather’s description of a writer’s methods to reach their creative dreams had me laughing out loud – because it was so true. As were the frustrated, aspiring writers and the over worked publishers. I felt the book was very realist...