Looking forward to seeing you in 2006 for our 6th year of bBlog biz linking. Be safe. The link goes to a Flash game called “Someone keeps stealing my letters,” just for fun.

“Some ineffective development practices have been chosen so often, by so many people, with such predictable, bad results that they deserve to be called ‘classic mistakes.’ Most of the mistakes have a seductive appeal. Do you need to rescue a project that’s behind schedule? Add more people! Do you want to reduce your schedule? Schedule more aggressively! Is one of your key contributors aggravating the rest of the team? Wait until the end of the project to fire him! Do you have a rush project to complete? Take whatever developers are available right now and get started as soon as possible!”

“Lately I’ve been trying a promising new method for managing my time. It’s similar to timeboxing, except that instead of allocating a certain amount of time for a specific activity, I divide my total work time between three different classes of activities.”

“The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn’t always bad? Most people who write about procrastination write about how to cure it. But this is, strictly speaking, impossible. There are an infinite number of things you could be doing. No matter what you work on, you’re not working on everything else. So the question is not how to avoid procrastination, but how to procrastinate well.”

“Making your own decisions. Doing something you love. Spending more time with the family. Participating in the American Dream. Starting a business is awesome. Paperwork. Legal fees. Invoices. More paperwork. Taxes. Starting a business sucks. The Particletree Team is about to incorporate its second business and have come to the conclusion that while everyone seems to be pretty good at giving sage advice about running a business, most fail to get to the specifics on starting one.”

“There are a bunch of blog posts flying around on the subject of flipping companies. Yes, we’ve been here before, 5 years or so ago, and yeah all the same issues remain. The interesting difference this time around is, thanks to the world wide everybody talking to/about/for everybody/everything, there is a ton of material for you, the start up, to absorb in your quest for world domination or just a bigger house.”

We’re taking a short break here at bBlog to spend time with family and friends. Happy holidays, everyone! See you in a few days.

“I don’t feel the need to persuade you that most meetings stink. I am confident that you have passed enough wasted hours in a meeting room to know that painful truth. Sadly, just last week I spent two hours in a confabulation that should have taken 20 minutes. I am in the business of making simple what are complex issues. In that tradition, I have pinpointed two reasons why meetings stink…”

“…a recent issue of BusinessWeek magazine … devoted many pages to listing the corporations and individuals who have been the most generous… To make the list, I would have had to give or pledge more than $120 million from 2001 to 2005 — that’s the amount pledged or given by No. 50 on the list, Analogic founder Bernard Gordon. More impressive, his net worth is estimated at $125 million and it’s believed he has given some $125 million in his lifetime. That’s pretty great!”

“I thought Office Space was making this stuff up. This is an actual email sent to employees at my friend’s company (and when I say friend I mean husband). This is NOT from eBay. eBay’s not lame. Subject: Jeans Day Announcement…”

“Want to know the secret to getting your customers to buy? It’s simple–just ask!”

“Big mergers seldom work. The evidence is overwhelming. Period. So why do we see so damn many of them? One reason, chronicled in the 12 December BusinessWeek, is captured by this article title: ‘FAT MERGER PAYOUTS FOR CEOs: Whose Interest Is Being Served?’ James Kilts peddles Gillette to P&G. And pockets $165,000,000 for offloading this big, well-run company — i.e., no earthly reason to sell, save King Kilts’ Self-interest. Bruce Hammonds dumps MNBA, takes home $102,000,000…”

“Seth Godin is a bestselling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. Godin’s books have been bestsellers around the world and changed the way people think about marketing, change and work. Permission Marketing was an Amazon.com Top 100 bestseller for a year, a Fortune Best Business Book and it spent four months on the Business Week bestseller list. It also appeared on the New York Times business book bestseller list.”

“Well I wasn’t planning on running this until next week but I couldn’t resist. This is a 10 questions interview with Mike Rundle, CDO at 9Rules Network. Right off the bat I have to thank Mike for the treasure trove of information in this 10 questions segment. This interview is a must read for anyone not matter what your area of focus is. So lets get down to what you all are here for.”

“The worst mistake we made at Moreover was to raise too much money. The Bay Area prides itself on the sophistication of its investment structure, but most of the successful Web 2.0 ‘exits’, from a founder perspective, have been non-Bay Area companies or ones that didn’t raise too much cash.”