Seth's riff on late August complacency in the workplace isn't too different from my earlier thoughts on snow days, but he did a much better job turning the idea into a strong call to action for his readers.

As I write this, you have exactly one week worth of business days until Labor Day, when most vacations are over and your colleagues/partners/customers/prospects are all back at work and more attentive.

What will you do with that week? How will you use it to "accelerate through the curve" that represents the end of the vacation season, and set up a really big September?

I saw this example of focusing on income-producing activities in Verne Harnish's excellent weekly newsletter, and had to share. What are you doing to ensure that the majority of your time at work is spent on externally-focused, revenue-producing work?

Dramatically Increase Income-Producing Activities -- Alex Lopez with Sydney-based Quantify Corporation uses a simple technique to double his income-producing activities. He divides his to-do list into two columns. Column one is labeled "Non-income Producing Activities" (Red) and Column two is labeled "Income Producing Activities" (Green). He then forces himself to place a to-do item in one of the two columns. When he first started, his non-income producing activities outnumbered his income-producing activities by a two to one ratio. Over time, he's been able to flip that ratio. This is an excellent exercise for ALL of us to follow. As Quantify Corporation's tagline says "If you can't measure it, you can't control it."