"When an engineer becomes a lead or a manager, they create a professional satisfaction gap. They’ve observed this gap long before they became a lead with the question: “What does my boss do all day? I see him running around like something is on fire, but… what does he actually do?” The question gets personal when the now freshly minted manager begins to understand that life as a lead is an endless list of little things that collectively keep you busy, but, in aggregate, don’t feel much like progress.

The positive feedback an engineer receives in the Zone is the sensation that you literally performed magic. From the complete problem set in your mind combined with your weapons-grade focus, you build a thing that you immediately recognize as disproportionately valuable. And you see this value instantaneously - that’s the high.

I believe that leads and managers are forever chasing the high associated with the Zone, but rarely achieve them because their job responsibilities are in direct contradiction to the requirements to achieve it. We often lack the time to have the intimate knowledge of a problem space because we rarely have 10-15 minutes free to consider it."

"The greatest things you make and do are the ones that get your full attention. It’s helpful to take an inventory of what you’re doing and then ask yourself where you’re spending your best attention. You can fill your time, but you have to spend your attention. How you spend it is probably a better measure of priority than anything else."

"We’re addicted quick fixes, top ten lists, and four-hour work weeks, but the truth is - if it wasn’t hard, everyone would be doing it and a hard thing is never done by reading a list or a book or an article about doing it. A hard thing is done by figuring out how to start."

"When it became clear to me that I was no longer able to use Things as my task manager, Omnifocus kept coming to me as I searched for a replacement. I wrote it off as too expensive and more than I needed."

Seth Godin argues for a two device solution. It frees you up to actually get work done.

Ryan Irelan at Happy Cog writes about the challenges of working remotely and how he handles everything.

"It’s different if someone asks for my help. That I’m happy to give. But I’m done with evangelism for any of my enthusiasms...

I’m far too busy just taking care of my own business."

Rands does a masterful interview with Instapaper founder Marco Arment.

"These habits are designed to create unexpected moments with Signal. Each moment with Signal is a moment that you’re killing the Noise and they exist so you remember what it feels like to care rather than just do."

Tim Ferriss talks about riding the highs and lows of the startup cycle.

Shawn Blanc tells you everything you'd need to know about using OmniFocus.

Good advice from Joel on how to just get things done.

"It takes 10,000 hours of focused practice to develop world-class mastery. If you want that, you must say yes to the focus and isolation of your work, banning distractions."

"...leaving your starry-eyed customers with the nauseatingly misguided impression that their “distraction” originates from anyplace but their own busted-ass brain is really not “helping.” Not on any level. It is, literally, harmful."

"In my experience, most people don’t schedule their work. They schedule the interruptions that prevent their work from happening. In the case of a business like ours, what clients pay us to make and do happens in the cracks between meetings, or worse, after business hours."

Merlin Mann talking about meeting culture and how to avoid it while also making sure you're having good meetings.

"Because, during those happy times you were fortunate enough to find yourself engaged with something that you cared intensely about, you probably started asking a really different sort of question."

"Every once in a while, someone posts an article on getting things done and managing your time on Hacker News. I know because I keep track of them. I immediately think, 'recovering procrastinator'."

Alex Payne's tips on productivity and health at a startup.

Michael Lopp's ideas about running a meeting.

"I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely."

"The solution is to develop new alarms. This can be a tricky business, because while the alarms that prevent you from overspending are so basic that they may even be in our DNA, the ones that prevent you from making bad investments have to be learned, and are sometimes fairly counterintuitive."

A great talk about the power of time and the thoughts associated with it. Tremendous illustrations that accompany the talk.

A great article from "A List Apart" that explains some of the ways in which you can create habit fields when working from home.

Jeff Atwood details his experience with working remotely on Stack Overflow. Full of some tips and tricks.

Merlin Mann gives a great talk about time and attention in the business world. The talk was largely a riff since the slides didn't work.