Link Roundup #1

New blog feature! I read a lot of cool things, and then they vanish into the Internet aether. I have decided to steal (from many) the habit of collecting these links into a weekly roundup, if only for my own benefit. For this first iteration, here's everything I read this week that was even vaguely interesting:
  • Managing Programmer Productivity - Which always makes me wonder: if it's not that complicated, why is it apparently so damn hard for any place to do? 
  • Stopping the Enterprise Death Spiral with Mob Programming -  Great piece despite the title. In my experience, the difficulty ends up being in convincing people that individual productivity is not the be-all, even to give a different approach a try. As a follow-on, another (short) post about Mob Programming Benefits.
  • Starting a Community of Practice Using the Learning Canvas - We have used elements of this along with Lean Coffee in our Scrum Master community of practice meetings, and I think we should get back to doing that. It's great for keeping focus. 
  • Mint 18.3 review -  I've never heard of Mint, but I am interested in learning more about Linux. 
  • Daniel Pink RTed this list of book recommendations. I added a couple of them to my wish list.
  • An open-source alternative to Evernote. I am an inconsistent Evernote user, mainly because I find the organization and search system clumsy (or it was a while ago), so I want to check this out.
  • A bit of brilliance from Esther Darby on the things we don't notice, and don't notice that we don't notice -- I'm working on my mindfulness post!
  • Unravel Your Year - I am suuuuuuper skeptical about this stuff. However, I am planning to dedicate 2018 to a more experimental, action-based stance than I have had in 2017, and that means being willing to read and try things that don't fit my easy inclinations. I'm going to take a look at this, and I will blog further about it if it seems worthwhile.  
  • Ten Keys to Happier Living - Happy Melly is one of my current top reads; I didn't realize they had a podcast, too. I am keenly interested right now in practical work in this area, so this made for an interesting listen.

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