Most believe in the labels that they have been given and live a life full of “I can’t do….”, “I’m not good at…”  The reality is that it is almost never too late to acquire a new skill or improve on something that you can already do.  It just takes focused practice.

1. Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.

2. Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That's when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.

3. Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.

4. Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously, however, can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.

5. Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It's also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.

6. Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you'll take on difficult tasks is to ritualize them — build specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.

via Six Keys to Being Excellent at Anything – Tony Schwartz – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review.

Why the iPad Hasn’t Killed Kindle – Newsweek.

This article has a lot of reasons why the iPad hasn’t killed the Kindle…yet.  I read a LOT on eBook devices, and originally I thought the same thing.

In an attempt to travel with less devices, I started reading on the iPad. Yes, it may be a bit heavier, you’ll need to recharge the iPad more often, and there is a bit more eyestrain if you don’t adjust the brightness of the iPad if you are reading in the dark…

Even so, I find the ONLY real benefit to the Kindle and the other eInk eReaders is that they are much easier to read in bright sunlight.  This is because eInk depends on light reflecting off the screen like normal paper–the more light, the better!  In contrast, the iPad screen generates the light that you are seeing, and bright sunlight reflecting off the screen actually overwhelms the light being put out by the device and makes the screen harder to read.

This isn’t a big problem normally as I read mostly indoors, but it can be an issue if you do a lot of reading outdoors at the beach or lounging by the pool.

This article also misses a point.  Actually I think the writer was a bit confused when writing that section of the story.  With Apple iPad you are NOT locked to just Apple’s bookstore.  The fact that the iPad can run Apps means that it can run Amazon Kindle reader, the app for Kobo, etc.

The variety of sources for reading makes it the best eReader available.  I just finished reading a couple of Kindle books on the iPad and it worked well–actually better as the iPad has a touch screen that I could swipe to change pages.

Amazon likely doesn’t care either.  They’re making their money selling eBooks.  The Kindles are only a delivery and consumption mechanism.  If they can increase their eBook revenue stream without producing, selling, or supporting hardware, in my view that’s a big bonus!

Issue:  My iPhone 3GS was working fine prior to upgrading to iOS 4.  Once I did that, I couldn’t connect to the 3G network anymore even though all the apps worked while connecting via wifi.  I tried turning the Airplane Mode on and off, rebooting, etc. etc.  Nothing worked.  It was completely frustrating!

Fix:  YMMV, as I’m on the Fido network in Canada, but this what I did.  I have to do this every time there is an update as well.  I went to Settings/General/Reset/Reset Network Settings  Once I did this, the iPhone restarted, searched for a network, and everything worked again.

If you try this, you’re on your own, but it worked for me.  Good luck!

That said, my saddle developed a squeak that was making me a bit insane.  After looking at where the sound could be coming from, I took matters in to my own hands and tried to squelch the nasty squeak with some lube.  After looking at how the saddle was manufactured, I worked out that the squeak was coming from the tensioning bolt.  If you apply a couple drop of oil to the bolt threads (see diagram)…silence