Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

On the trail to learning

You may not have noticed it since I 'pre-wrote' some posts here that went live automatically, but last week I was on a 200-mile horse trek with my son and a bunch of other folks. It was an awesome learning experience, with no phone, no email, no electricity, etc.

There was pletny of time to work hard, reflect, enjoy the scenery, and recharge on that trip. There was also a ton of new things to learn.

I had the chance to share a few insights from that trip in this month's "Rapid Fire Learning" roundup at Joyful Jubilant Learning (JJL). Click through to JJL find out what I learned, and please share your top 5 learnings for June in the comments of that post.

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Yapta gets more amazing

Yapta (Your Amazing Personal Travel Assistant) which I reviewed in the past, is launching some new capabilities today. To refresh your memory, the things Yapta is best at are:

  1. helping you track airfare prices to get the best deal (you get alerts when the price drops) and
  2. helping you get money back from the airlines if the price drops after you buy your tickets (again, they alert you and provide instructions for how to get a refund or a voucher from the airline)

I've been using this for a while and, thanks to "best" #2, I've gotten several hundred dollars back form United when my airfare dropped on one of my family's vacation trips.

What's new today?

In the past, you had to use a browser add-on to get Yapta's functionality, which meant you used a bunch of other web sites to search for flights and used the add-on to "tag" the trips you want to watch.

Now, they've unified several capabilities into a web experience that doesn't require a browser add-on. You can, through their web site:

  • quickly search for the cheapest flights based on your saved preference profile,
  • start tracking price fluctuations for a number of routes and flight combinations all at once (great for planning trips that are a good distance in the future), and
  • get alerts via email when fares drop or fall below a "target" price that you can configure.

After you purchase your ticket, the site will alert you when you're elegibile for a travel credit from the airline. That's how I got my vouchers from United - and it was dirt simple, since I followed the instructions Yapta included in their email.

They've also added some other convenience features like storing your frequent flier numbers, information on your unused tickets, and information on your travel credits.

There's much more than I've described here - check it out yourself -- for free -- at Yapta today.

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Review: Divide or Conquer

Management books typically aren't riveting. This one grabbed me from the start.

It's Diana McLain Smith's "Divide or Conquer," and the thing that grabbed me were the stories / case studies presented in the book. The first "meaty" one analyzes the "Steve Jobs and John Sculley days" of Apple, and does a phenomenal job of breaking down the dynamics, dysfunctions, errors, and blind spots that caused all kinds of turmoil at Apple, ultimately ending in Steve Jobs being removed from his job.

The interesting thing about this case study and some of the others in the book is that Jobs and Sculley were friends in the beginning, but parted with bitterness and frustration. This kind of thing happens all the time in business and personal relationships, and this book seeks to help us understand why and suggests ways to prevent it from happening.

I see dead people

The first key is to be able to recognize the signs when things are on the wrong path. Smith provides some great models, examples, and techniques to help you here. More importantly, she provides some tools to help you push the reset button and try to get things on a healthier trajectory.

Brilliant stuff, and very practical.

Not navel gazing

A lot of books about improving communications and relationships seem very touchy-feely and don't seem like things that would work in the world I live in. This book's not like that. Sure, there are plenty of things about feelings and emotions, but the approach is a bit more logical / clinical than I usually see in these sorts of books. I really like it because it deals with people's egos and insecurities, but in a way that seeks to find out what's going on behind the actions, and provides suggestions for how to improve and change the situation, rather than just getting better at sucking it up.

In short, this is an excellent book if you are trying to improve the dynamics of your relationships - particularly work relationships where you are dealing with lots of egos, turf wars, and things of that sort.

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"You wouldn't like me when I'm unproductive..."

I read an awesome post by Tim Ferriss (author of The 4-Hour Workweek), on Time Management Guru-itis: Mark Hurst vs. David Allen and Tim Ferriss. It's quite an interesting analysis, and I think it is pretty accurate and insightful.

One of the interesting differences in Tim's dealio is that it's very much about how you feel as you live your life - not just how productive you are. As Tim puts it:

"Is responding to all inquiries on a moment's notice really success? I would argue it is a reactive mode that precludes life, at least the type of life I want to have."

I must admit, this is one of the things I often struggle with. Getting my balance slider bar set to the right setting is tricky. Why? Well, the optimum setting for balance can vary depending on the demands (or lack thereof) stemming from work, personal life, etc. There is the flip side, as well, in which you "impose" a balance setting on your life, then make your activities fit that setting.

Ferriss and David Allen (of GTD fame) both offer methods to impose your own balance setting, but they have completely different approaches for how to get there. I've learned tips, techniques, and philosophies from both of them, and I think they have both impacted my thinking far more than I ever expected.

Check out Tim's analysis and join the conversation (and thanks to Matt for pointing the article out today).

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