Author of the upcoming book The Power of Less Leo Babauta offers a companion ebook that's free to download now. Thriving on Less—Simplifying in a Tough Economy tells you how to do just that. The 27-page PDF describes advice garnered from Babauta's own journey from clutter, debt, and scarcity to a simpler, frugal lifestyle that focuses on the essentials and cuts away the extras. Like Babauta's popular Zen Habits blog, this book offers calm, peaceful straight talk that makes the super-busy and overwhelmed think "I want to live like that." Looks like a great preview of what's to come in his print volume, which gets released this week. Think Babauta's approach is possible in today's world or too idealistic? Let us know what you think in the comments.

At some point, anyone who's interested in personal growth and productivity has to ask him or herself: What the heck am I doing with my life, anyway? It's a big scary question, one that's easily avoided by checking out the coolest new Firefox extension instead. But if you've decided to tackle the beast, reader William Mize recommends a free ebook entitled What Do You Want to Do With Your Life?. The 136 page PDF is a workbook for creating your life plan. Mize says:

Read More »

We already told you that Dymock's had added downloadable audio books and ebooks to their website in November, and now it has launched its promised ebook reader, the iLiad.
iLiad is about the size of an A5 piece of paper, and weighs in at 389 grams. It has 128mb of memory available to be used, and you can add memory capacity in the form of compact flash or MMC card.You can also read from USB devices.
You can upload books to the iLiad from a computer wirelessly, via USB cable or from a memory card. You can make notes on docuements using its stylus.
It supports a range of formats - PDF, HTML, TXT, JPG, BMP, PNG  and PRC (Mobipocket - the format used for ebooks in the Dymocks store).
I haven't gotten to see an iLiad yet, but they've got them on display at the George Street store in Sydney. They're also selling them on their online store.
The SMH points out that the $899 iLiad failed to gain market share when it was launched in the US about a year ago. But probably the most high profile ebook reader currently on the market, Amazon's Kindle, is unlikely to be sold here.
Unlike  the Kindle, iLiad doesn't allow you to use 'always on' wireless to buy books on the go. The SMH story quoted Dymocks as saying iLiad's internet connectivity is mainly for uploading software updates.
And if the $900 pricetag doesn't phase you, you probably won't mind paying an extra $90 for the leather carry case either.

Stop procrastinating and improve your time management skills with free ebook Time Management for Creative People. Blogger and author Mark McGuinness rolled a series of time management articles into a short (32 page) ebook. Even if you don't consider yourself a creative person, the ebook is chocked full of useful tips.

I will offer some suggestions for keeping the tide of external demands at bay and helping you to develop a truly creative routine and rhythm to your working day. I won't offer you a rigid system or any 'best practice' nonsense - just some principles and suggestions for you to try out and adapt as you see fit.

I would describe the book as an adaptation of GTD coupled with tips to help improve your time management and focused attention skills.