"Business-Minded" and other more meaningful alternatives to the word "workaholic"

There's been much buzz out there about a recent blog post by Jason Calacanis. Specifically on his original comment: "Fire people who are not workaholics.... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. go work at the post office or stabucks if you want balance in your life. For realz."

Techcrunch seized this post and offered some friendly criticism, suggesting Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life. 37 signals took the interesting counter-perspective of firing the so-called workaholics.

This caused Calacanis to attempt to clarify his position: "My work *is* my life..."

What this all may boil down to is that the term 'workaholic' is not a compliment. Don't use it as a positive attribute, ever.

The common thread to all the banter really revolves around the desire to work with talented interesting people who have their own quirky way of living their lives while simultaneously being so interested in their work that it tends to be in their thoughts throughout the day. Better terms for this might be:

• Entrepreneurial
  
• Business-minded
  
• Problem solvers
  
• Strategic thinkers
• Innovators
• Results-oriented

Seek these types of people over workaholics, and you will hopefully assemble an effective team. The real challenge for business leaders at that point will be to walk the walk and be sure to avoid old-school workplace paradigms that will drive these free spirits away.

70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding

via digg: "Smashing Magazine does it again with a superb list of little CSS tips & tricks to increase your productivity."

This is an excellent compilation of many of the tips and tricks posted to digg, but all rolled up in a nicely organized package with plenty of source-links to expand on the techniques outlined. There's definitely a buzz around what's to be considered "Best Practices" when it comes to CSS design and development. I see a strong opportunity out there for the development of a tool or app that puts a ui on top of these practices, making it easier to replicate across multiple projects.

read more | digg story

Freeverse Offers Us A Chance To "Think"

"Freeverse today announced the first official release of Think, a streamlined application to shift your workflow from overwhelming to under-control with just the flick of a mouse. Think allows users to "illuminate" any Mac OS X application they'd like, blocking distractions from other windows and applications, so that they can focus on the task at hand. Since many work projects require multiple applications, Think also allows guest applications to be temporarily brought forward, and when no longer needed, quickly hides them away. Think is available as a free Universal Binary for Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later."



This is a nifty utility, it basically turns any application into a Writeroom-style environment, by blacking out anything that's not part of the app in focus. It's most noticable in apps that you may not use in full screen mode, or those without a lot of palettes.