What is a successful life? my selection of books

Most important question of all time. What is the best way to live our only life? I am trying here to summarize some of the most important books on the subject for me (I am open to suggestion as well) and some of their key messages.

What Is the Good Life? - Luc Ferry

This is one of my only book near my bed in my bedroom at all time. I always need to re-read one or two paragraph of it. This book explains how the different philosophies in the history tried to answer this question. From Stoicism, Nietzsche, Freud and Christians, Luc Ferry is giving us a philosophic course and stay clear and simple at the same time. This is a must.

Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

A novel about the meaning of life. The main character is Alexis Zorba. Zorba plays the santuri, has had a family and many lovers, has fought in the Balkan Wars, has lived and loved-his knowledge is rooted in love, suffering, sweat, and blood. He is a simple but deep man who lives life without shame, bares himself, has no guile or guise, and lives every moment fully. I wish i could sing, dance and enjoy life as Zorba.

Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar

Quick and simple book that summarize the last scientific studies on happiness. A bit repetitive and fuzzy but still a good read. Useful to get practical daily advice to become happier.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey

Super famous book from Covey. Everybody know this one. There is a reason why it is successful though. Practical steps to have a successful life.

Minimalist Windows Desktop

I wrote about this in the past. I don’t like cluttered Desktop. I don’t understand why windows users tuning their desktop are tyring to copy the Mac interface (way too cluttered for me).

The best way to have a clean Windows desktop (without files and icons everywhere) is to remove the possibility to get anything in it. That way, it stays simple all the time.

The best way to avoid a behavior (cluttering the desktop) is to design a desktop that cannot be cluttered. (see this blog post on this general topic: Willpower is overrated).

coming back to the main topic.

Here is my requirement:
- Minimal CPU and memory utilization. My PC needs to be lightning fast.
- Simple and clean environment (no distraction) and *impossible to clutter it*
- Possibility to let message or Post-it in the background

I found this very good blog post about windows explorer replacement: Five best destop customization tools

I was able to do this with those tiny and free applications:

1) Emerge Desktop - is a replacement windows "shell". It replaces the windows explorer. Part. Super lean, simple and flexible. You can remove everything from your desktop (task bars, icons, everything!).
2) Launchy – I need a way to launch quickly my applications. This is done with Launchy.
3) Vistaswitcher - Because I removed everything from my desktop, I need a way to switch between application more efficiently than with the normal Windows tools. Vistaswitcher is the best tool for this.
4) BGinfo – Possibility to add text on your backround image. 0 CPU utilization when it is done. Completely transparent. Just amazing.

Here is a screen capture (yes, there is nothing to see that is the main goal).

How to deal with online communities?

I have to admit, I am still not using a lot Facebook and Twitter. I think I understand now that I could use those tools to build and manage my online communities a lot better.

In the future, I guess our online brand will be critical for both our personal life and professional life. We need to manage them. One issue I have is the separation between those online identities. I don't want my regular employer to know that I am blogging about the Wii or anything else. I don't want anybody to look at my family pictures unless they are very close friends and so on.

Let's start from my need:

- Use some tools to keep in touch with my close friends and manage my personal brand with them
- Spend more time on the Kitesurfing community (and some other forums)
- Develop the community around the Zhorba blog
- Create my professional online brand

A complete list of tools possible:
- I would prefer to have one tool as a dashboard for everything else

Possibilities:  Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Mail, Mailing-list, Forum, Linkedin, friendfeed, su.pr, thwirl, seesmic, flock

For a dashboard, there are 3 possibilities: Seesmic, Tweetdeck and Flock. I am biased for Seesmic as I am following Loic Le Meur for quite some time. But even if Seesmic has tons of fancy features, Flock seems to me more universal. I can update my blogs, forum, tweeter and so  on with just one interface.

And now for each need its process:

- Use some tools to keep in touch with my close friends and manage my personal brand with them

Solution: Use Facebook only in Flock and gmail on Flock. My personal blog is automotically published in Facebook.

- Spend more time on the Kitesurfing community

Solution: Have a page that summarize all the forums activity on Flock

- Develop the community around the Zhorba blog

Solution: Create a twitter account for Zhorba - Use Twitter/su.pr to develop my blog

- Create my professional online brand

Solution: Use Linkedin

Use Flock as the dashboard for everything.

Some good reference:
"Tribes" from Seth Godin
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/twitter-apps-ratings-reviews/
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/facebook-not-replace-twitter/
http://yukaichou.com/social-media/start-settle-fall-love-twitter/
http://www.jamessenior.com/post/Facebook-ate-my-blog-content.aspx

A good example of community online:
http://www.communityofsweden.com/