“One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.”
—Sigmund Freud

My brother forwarded the above image to me. I wish I knew where it originated so I could give proper credit, but Google failed me.  Click here to see a larger version … and to find out what everyone else is saying about your excessive use of social media.

That may sound counter intuitive, but it’s step 1 of Darren Hardy’s 12-step program “for changing those behaviors that block our creative juices and stifle our potential.” A good read — and I’m looking forward to the other 11 steps.

Takeaway for marketers: What three things can you stop doing in 2009 to make yourself more productive?

The Sunday Times printed this article the other day claiming that “two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea.” Just the sort of article that makes the corporate communications people over at Google say, “aw, jeez.”

Tech IT Easy deconstructs the article and contends that “this dicking around with guestimations and numerology is … pretty stupid and totally counter-productive.” Just the sort of article that makes the corporate communications people over at Google ask, “what percentage of outlets who ran the first story are gonna pick up that story?”

Check ’em both out. Geeky-good reading.

PTTES = post-travel traumatic email syndrome.

After five days in Las Vegas, during which I had my BlackBerry but not my computer, I log on this morning to find 314 unread messages in my main email account and 727 in my secondary account.

Ahhh, it’s good to be back. Sorta.