Malcom Gladwell’s latest book has been out for a couple of months now, and I’ve got to tell you that it’s great. He has a really easy to read writing style. He mixes ideas with stories so seamlessly that really build and support his conclusions.

One important part of the book is having 10,000 hours of any activity to become truely proficiant at it. It doesn’t matter if it is writing programs and designing software all throughout software like Bill Gates, or if it is playing night after night nonstop in seedy establisments like the Beatles did.

Getting in that many hours would mean that whatever you wanted to completely master would have to be something that you absolutly loved doing. It would have to be a complete passion of yours.

Malcom Gladwell is very good at making things interesting, even if they normally wouldn’t be appealing to you he is great at crafting his words together.

This is a great book and I highly reccommend it; however I do believe that his previous two books Blink and The Tipping Point were better reads overall. They had more information that could be applied to life situations. In this book there are a lot of moments that will make you think “Oh, that’s cool.”

I haven’t been dissappointed by any of Malcolm’s books yet, and this one certainly lived up. I would also reccommend the audio versions of his books, you can load them up on your ipod and listen to them. Being read by the author, they have the inflections and dramatizations added to them percicly where Gladwell wanted to emphisize.

Pick up either Blink or Tipping Point first, and then don’t let this one go by.

I thought it might be nice to organize the books that Katie and I own or have talked about here on Aridni.  I’ve started to put together the Aridni Library -click here to check it out- there are still some books that need to go in.  And I’d like to get them linked up to relevant posts later on.

So this is a starting point for that process.  I hope it will become a helpful resource for you as it gets developed more and more.  Pretty soon we’re going to need to get a librarian on staff!!

I recently finished reading ‘The Art of Deception – Controlling the Human Element of Security’ which is a book written by Kevin Mitnick. In case you haven’t heard of Mitnick before, he is the most famous social engineer ever.

Social Engineering is basically using the social skills of influence and persuasion to get whatever the the persuader wants. It relies heavily on the reliance and exploitation of basic human trust. It’s quite similar to being a conman, only usually it’s done against a company rather than an individual.

Mitnick talks about various workarounds in security systems that can be bypassed by anyone using the correct lexicon who sounds like they know what they are talking about. He explains different methods of attack and ways to get a hold of information using different scenarios.

A good portion of the book is about shielding your company from attacks from social engineers and possible policies that you might want to employ. This portion of the book is done very well and I would recommend checking it out, espicially if you have never heard of social engineering before.

The net worth is struggling to maintain itself these days, and to be honest, I’m not thinking about money to the point of obsession like I used to. Instead, I’m experiencing the things that I haven’t been able to do since college:

learning how to cook
writing a book

My husband is doing something he’s always wanted to do:

earning a master’s degree

While my co-personal finance bloggers experience rapid growth this year, we’re setting different goals for ourselves that involve personal development and enrichment. I work part time until May, which is the coolest feeling I have ever experiencing about work. Working 9 to 5+++ was the most miserable experience I have ever had.

Now I don’t have to worry about what the boss thinks or if I’ll lose my job or how to spend my messily vacation days. I have total freedom for myself, which no one else in my office experiences. Sure I get paid less. But at some point, we have to ask ourselves what matters most: lots of money or lots of freedom.

I read a fantastic book that illustrated the way I was feeling:
The Anti 9-to-5 : Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube

I suggest that anyone feeling frustrated with work take a glance. It has some fantastic strategies for reflecting on what makes you happiest and determining how to obtain the best situation for your working self. The fact that it’s targeted to women is something pretty much only relevant in the title. The rest is easily male or female.

Nearly every modern business and finance book quotes the theory of Napoleon Hill. His most popular book is “Think and Grow Rich” and naturally, I had to snag the book to see Napoleon Hill’s wisdom for myself.

The most important thing illustrated so far is that money doesn’t make happiness. Money is only a piece of your happiness formula.

The 12 things which constitute happiness:

1. a positive mental attitude
2. sound physical health
3. harmony in human relationships
4. freedom from fear
5. the hope of future achievement
6. the capacity for applied faith
7. willingness to share one’s blessings with others
8. to be engaged in the labor of love
9. an open mind on all subjects toward all people
10. complete self discipline
11. wisdom with which to understand people
12. financial security

It turns out your people-pleasing work ethic may not get you ahead. You’re not taking any risks to make the company—and you—any better. Kate White, author of Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do is already teaching me a few useful strategies… and I just started the book.

This subsection really stood out in my mind:

Never Appear at the Mercy of Your Time

Because it’s important to a good girl to be perceived as a hard worker, she never minds (in fact she likes it) if someone catches her looking a little frantic: riffling through papers, dashing down the hall with her hair flying, lugging home a huge pile of work on Friday afternoon. Begin in overdrive, she believes, shows everyone that she not only has lots to do but is getting it done.

Though it’s import to be perceived as energetic, acting frazzled or short on time actually creates the impression that you aren’t under control, and that calamity is waiting just around the corner to ambush you. It makes bosses reluctant to turn more responsibility over to you and it makes co-workers and subordinates as anxious as passengers on a bumpy 747.

Anyone else seen him/herself doing this same thing in the past?