Ebook readers -The Amazon Kindle

Two days before the end of the decade, I was pondering on how I would like to step into the second decade of the millennium.  I tell you now the decision I made was not a game-changer by any means.  It simply split a smile across this gadget-geeks mug.  As you can tell from the title (or the picture) I ordered myself a Kindle.

Am I a happy camper after dishing out considerable coin for the gadget?  Yes.

I find the layout of the Kindle to be rather intuitive.  I'd say it took me about 10 minutes exploring all the buttons and functions, before I was a fully-fledged master ninja on the Kindle (I've never been one to read manuals. I like to figure out things for myself.)

I'm not going to go into the details of the Kindle.  There are a number of reviews out there that do a great job of this.  For example, www.cnet.com or http://www.crunchgear.com

Working as an executive and communication coach, I find that I am constantly browsing bookstore shelves, both online and in the real-world, for new material and insights to build into my practice.  This means that I am quite voracious when it comes to reading.  (I personally define 'voracious' as digesting one book a week).

As you can imagine, simply over a year I have an entire forest worth of pulp on my bookshelves.  Of course these books do not collect much dust, because I am constantly referring to them for their stored knowledge.  Regardless of this fact, I still have a helluva lot of books crowding my shelves.

The Kindle has helped to tame this over-population of 'literature'.  Within this one simple, elegant unit I can now carry my entire library with me.  I don't have to sit in my home office pulling down books to put together a workshop or a white paper, I can literally be anywhere.

If you are a coach yourself, you must find that you have downtime between meetings with clients.  I generally have four to five meetings a day, and they are rarely back-to-back.  A majority of that downtime I am either sitting in my car or at one of a dozen favorite cafes.  I now simply pull out the Kindle and start reading, making notes and merging thoughts. Down-time is now much more productive-time.

The Kindle is simply my 'other' cool-tool!