I am not big on New Year’s Resolutions. Generally, I believe that if you realize you want or need to make a change in your life or behavior, you need to do it at the time your realize it. Why wait?

However, the beginning of a new year is an awfully convenient time to evaluate where you are and figure out where you want to go and how you want to get there.

So in the spirit of convenience and the need for a topic to write about, here is my list of Home Office Resolutions in no particular order!

1. I resolve to shower and get dressed most days before I go to the home office.
2. I resolve to exercise 1-4 times a week or when it is convenient. (Whichever comes first)
3. I resolve to be genuinely interested in my job and be very disciplined in my performance of it.
4. I resolve to put my family first and keep the door to my home office closed when I am not supposed to be in it.
5. I resolve to be funny. Okay, at least I resolve to be funnier… that shouldn’t be too hard considering my starting point.

Happy 2007! Good luck with your resolutions. Feel free to share yours in the comments section.

Many people think that if you want to get ahead you need to make yourself indispensable. This sounds logical and intuitive, but it is wrong.

Being indispensable is a fine way to gain job security, but this is not the same as getting ahead and job security is never permanent no matter how indispensable you are. Eventually some person, some technology, or plain bad luck will disrupt the status quo and your job security will disappear.

The truth is that if you make yourself indispensable, you can’t take a vacation without being bothered. If you are indispensable, you can’t get promoted because it would be too inconvenient to backfill your position. If you are indispensable, you will continue to be stuck doing the same job, the same tasks, until that job ceases to exist.

You don’t want to be indispensable.

This does not mean you shouldn’t do a good job. You need to do a good job. You should be doing a great job. But don’t be the only one that can do that job. Be a leader. Be dynamic. Teach others to do the job as well as you. If the job is too hard for others to do, then find ways to make it simpler. Create processes, procedures and tools that make your job so simple a hamster could do it. Make yourself obsolete.

As you become obsolete, expand your job to include other difficult tasks. Become great at doing those tasks. Find ways to make doing those tasks simple. Teach others to do them. Make yourself obsolete.

Make yourself obsolete. Make yourself obsolete, again and again.

Soon you will find that you are not great at doing tasks. You are great at solving problems. You are great at seeing the big picture and breaking it down into simple components. You will not be indispensable in your job because you are an expert at finding ways other people can do your job easier and cheaper.

You can be promoted and you can get ahead because you are not indispensable in your current job and the next job is always harder. Until you start doing it…

A new report was unveiled today that found that U.S. mothers do not get enough sleep!

Um… did they really need a study to figure this out? Have the sponsors of this study not met any mothers before?

Well, upon further investigation, it appears that the study was sponsored by a pharmaceutical company that wants to encourage sleepless mothers to talk to doctors about prescription sleep aids. And guess what? That paraceutical company happens to sell prescription sleep aids!

They have a website called Sleepless Moms with tips on how to get more/better sleep, but none of the tips really address the societal reasons mothers are pulled in so many directions that they don’t have time to sleep.

What strategies do you use to balance work and life and still have enough time to get a good night’s sleep? Leave a comment and share your experiences.

I just finished a fantastic book by Bill Bryson that was written a couple of years ago. (What can I say, I am a little behind on my reading list.)

In A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bryson takes on the enormous task of explaining the entire universe and our attempts at understanding it in an entertaining and easily accessible manner. Remarkably he succeeds.

This book is fascinating and hysterical at the same time. Bryson uses nickel and dime words to explain complex scientific observations and theories. He touches on a vast range of scientific topics from the beginning of the universe, to biology, geography, and black holes.

Some of the most engrossing and comical aspects of the book are descriptions of the scientists and their centuries long quest to uncover the mysteries of nature. The drama, eccentricities, stolen ideas, and feuds are simply unbelievable.

It struck me while reading this how little we really know and how recently we uncovered what we do know. The book was written in 2004 and already some of the items discussed have been turned on their heads.

The scope of this book is too broad to get terribly deep or completely accurate about any one topic, but that is not why one reads this book. This book is a written by a layman for laymen and it is a great place to get an extraordinarily entertaining overview of nearly everything.