When Anne Zelenka asked if I would review her new book for this blog, of course I said "yes." Anne blogs at Web Worker Daily.
As I read Anne's book, Connect! A Guide to a New Way of Working, I began to get excited about it. The book is that rare combination that both instructs and affirms.
"At last, somebody finally gets what working online is really all about," kept running through my head as I read it. The Internet has changed traditional business smarts, and this book acknowledges and embraces that change.
The book introduces the idea that traditional work was "busy" (meaning structured, monitored, regular hours, and so on), while web work is "bursty" (meaning that web workers tend to work in spurts with irregular hours). While I had never thought about my work style in these terms, I can see that I have indeed moved from the "busy" corporate style to the "bursty" web working style without even thinking about it.
Connect! is so full of ideas, information, and links to even more information that I actually had to fight the urge to get up and type all of the URLs that the book provides into my browser. The book is packed with additional references! (I'll have to go through the book a second time to capture all of that additional information.)
Whether you telecommute or own your own business, if your work is based on the web, then this is the book that you've been waiting for. Unlike many books about working online, this is not (nor does it claim to be) advice for using the Internet to make money. 
I find that refreshing.
Instead, Connect! is full of ideas. Chapter titles such as "Burst Your Productivity," "Connect, Communicate, and Collaborate," and "Explode Your Career" give you just a hint of the type of information that this book provides.
"Burst Your Productivity" includes lots of ideas for working effectively in an online environment. One of the resources that it provides is a table with over a dozen online productivity tools for managing such tasks as:
- Tracking goals
- Making To-do lists
- Calendars
- Reminders
- Relationships
For those of you who work online (or are thinking about working online) and want to learn how to work more effectively, I definitely recommend Connect!
What about you? Is your business based on the web? Have you read this book? What do you think?
Leave a comment and let us know.
What an excellent review, Laura! This is probably the first time a book review really makes me curious about the book itself. I'd almost rush to buy it if there weren't already 20 other books waiting for me on my bookshelves. I think someone should start publishing such books online, based on a subscription fee or something. LOL. These days I rarely leave the PC.
Posted by: Mihaela Lica | January 10, 2008 6:14 PM | Permalink to Comment