Books about Efficiency from Amazon.com

The second edition of Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day follows the best-selling format of the first. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific problem in the digital age and offers step-by-step solutions for various operating systems and reader skill levels. Packed with over 50 new and revised hacks, you'll find out how to deal with the daily onslaught of incoming email, manage multiple computers, get your data on the go, tackle your to-do list faster, and more in this book. The additional and revised hacks involve new product recommendations and better strategies that have come out since the first edition. The second edition also prunes tips from the first edition, based on reader feedback..
Price: $15.71 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This is a book about that wet mass of cell tissue called the brain, and why it's responsible for everything from true love to getting you out of bed in the morning One part science guide, one part self-help concierge, it's grounded in the latest neuroscience, psychology, and nutritional wisdom. The result? An essential guide for the modern brain owner, filled with ready-to-follow advice on everything from eating right to improving your memory.

10 Easy Brain-Enhancing Questions

Q: Turkey is one of the best things to eat if you want to promote sleepiness.
A: False: Turkey may be loaded with tryptophan, the amino acid that can cause drowsiness, but it has no more of it than many other high protein food items like chicken, beef, and soybeans. Plus, eating high protein meals without a corresponding truckload of carbohydrates ensures that tryptophan will never enter the blood-brain barrier.

Q: The REM (for "Rapid Eye Movement") stage of sleep, when the most vivid dreaming usually happens, occurs during the deepest stages of the dream cycle.
A: False: REM sleep actually occurs at the very end of the sleep cycle, when the brain returns to a much lighter stage of sleep.

Q: Contrary to conventional wisdom, memories are not "stored" in the brain as recordings or as discrete "data", but are instead the result of the brain's constant rewiring of neuronal connections.
A: True: There's no static "memory storage" in the brain, but instead a fluid, constantly readapting process of establishing, reinforcing, and fading links between neurons.

Q: Despite huge life changes that temporarily create radical shifts in personal fortune (either good or bad), the brain will always drift back to an inborn "happiness" set point.
A: True: Regardless of whether you win the lotto or suffer catastrophic tragedy, you'll always return to the same chipper or grumpy temperament that sustains throughout your life.

Q: With most traits, heritability (the influence of genetics) decreases through childhood and adolescence, reaching its lowest point in adulthood.
A: False: The reverse is true--genetic links actually get stronger with age (meaning you're more similar to your parents as an adult than as a child), though there is no scientific consensus as to why this is so.

Q: T/F: IQ scores are highly heritable
A: True, page 242

Q: Your brain's energy use is roughly:
a.) 20 watts
b.) 40 watts
c.) 75 watts
A: 20 watts—enough to power a dim light bulb, page 29

Q: Microsleep is a phenomenon that occurs when the brain?
A: Shuts off for a second or two usually due to lack of sleep, page 52

Q: The art of improving memory is called?
A: Mnemonics, page 107

Q: T/F: Chronically sleep-deprived individuals have a greater incidence of obesity?
A: True, page 40
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Price: $14.49 [Notify me when price goes down.]

2006 SHINGO PRIZE for EXCELLENCE in MANUFACTURING RESEARCH

Lean production has been proven unbeatable in organizing production operations, yet the majority of attempts to implement lean end in disappointing results. The critical factor so often overlooked is that lean implementation requires day-to-day, hour-by-hour management practices and skills that leaders in conventional batch-and-queue environments are neither familiar nor comfortable with.

Creating a Lean Culture helps lean leaders succeed in their personal batch-to-lean transformation. It provides a practical guide to implementing the missing links needed to sustain a lean implementation. Mann provides critical guidance on developing and using the key elements of a lean management system, including: leader standard work, visual controls, daily accountability processes, maintaining a process focus, managing key HR issues, and much more. In addition, a questionnaire is included to help assess current management practices andmonitor progress..
Price: $31.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

In 1897, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, in his study of the patterns of wealth and income, observed that the distribution of wealth was predictably unbalanced. He first discovered this pattern in 19th-century England and found it to be the same for every country and time period he studied. Over the years, Pareto's observation has become known as the 80/20 principle.

Now in 1998, Richard Koch takes a fresh look at the 80/20 principle and finds that the basic imbalance observed by Pareto 100 years ago can be found in almost every aspect of modern life. Whether you're investing in stocks, analyzing company sales, or looking at the performance of a Web site, you'll find that it's usually 20 percent that produces 80 percent of the total result. This means 80 percent of what you do may not count for much. Koch helps you to identify that 20 percent and shows you how you can get more out of your business, and life, for less..
Price: $5.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Powerful yet simple techniques to solve project management's toughest problems. This book teaches companies to drastically cut project development times resulting in early completion within budget and without compromising quality or specifications..
Price: $7.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Larry Wall wrote Perl and he wrote Programming Perl. Better yet, he writes amusingly and well--all of which comes across in this latest edition of the definitive guide to the language

Like Topsy, Perl just grew, and as a result the need for a third edition came about. It's now over 1,000 pages, which it needs to be, as it performs several different duties. First, it's an introduction to the Perl language for those who are new to programming; also, it's a guide for those who are coming from other languages; and, finally, it's a Perl language reference.

Among Larry Wall's other pursuits is being a linguist, and it's perhaps for this reason that Perl is a peculiarly flexible language with many routes to achieving the same ends, as the authors ably demonstrate. It's also extensible in several ways, designed to work with many other languages. Also, as it's largely interpreted, programs written in Perl tend to run unmodified on a variety of platforms--although platform-specific Perl modules and programming practices are also discussed.

A major strength of Programming Perl is the way subject areas are approached from several directions. This constant shift of viewpoint eliminates blind spots in the reader's understanding and provides a pleasing echo of the way Perl itself can take many routes from here to there.

Because the Perl community is both knowledgeable and active, the language covers much more ground here than in the previous edition. Even if you have both previous editions, you'll want this latest version--if only for the new jokes. --Steve Patient, amazon.co.uk.
Price: $21.39 [Notify me when price goes down.]

You're smart. This book can make you smarter Mind Performance Hacks provides real-life tips and tools for overclocking your brain and becoming a better thinker In the increasingly frenetic pace of today's information economy, managing your life requires hacking your brain. With this book, you'll cut through the clutter and tune up your brain intentionally, safely, and productively. Grounded in current research and theory, but offering practical solutions you can apply immediately, Mind Performance Hacks is filled with life hacks that teach you to:

• Use mnemonic tricks to remember numbers, names, dates, and other flotsam you need to recall
• Put down your calculator and perform complex math in your head, with your fingers, or on the back of a napkin
• Spark your creativity with innovative brainstorming methods
• Use effective systems to capture new ideas before they get away
• Communicate in creative new ways-even using artificial languages
• Make better decisions by foreseeing problems and finding surprising solutions
• Improve your mental fitness with cool tricks and games

While the hugely successful Mind Hacks showed you how your brain works, Mind Performance Hacks shows you how to make it work better..
Price: $13.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

With rising energy costs, homeowners are beginning to examine the energy efficiency of their own homes, asking questions about where energy comes from and how much it costs, how to choose new appliances and what options exist for renewable energy.

The Home Energy Diet answers all these questions and more while helping readers take control of their personal energy use and costs so they can save money, live more comfortably and help the environment. Energy auditor Paul Scheckel first explores energy literacy, and then describes how your home uses-and loses-energy you pay for via:

Electricity
Hot water
Heating and air conditioning
Windows, walls and insulation

The Home Energy Diet involves readers in learning about their own homes by: measuring, metering, investigating and considering habits related to household energy use; learning how to quantify energy consumption and cost and making informed decisions about cost-effective improvements and upgrades. The book explores the misunderstood concept of efficiency versus cost by comparing fuel costs and equipment choices, including the possibility of using renewable energy for meeting home energy needs. This authoritative guide makes efficiency fun through personal anecdotes and humorous "tales-from-the-basement" energy misadventures.

Since energy efficiency is an investment that offers returns greater than Wall Street, readers can earn several hundred dollars every year just by following the advice in this book. As a bonus, many of the energy-saving strategies described can make for improved indoor air quality and healthier, more comfortable homes.

Paul Scheckel is an energy auditor who has visited thousands of homes, educating people about energy efficiency, cost-effective improvements and indoor air quality. With a passion for efficiency and renewables, he walks the talk by living in a solar-powered house and driving a car powered by vegetable oil in his home state of Vermont.

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Price: $10.70 [Notify me when price goes down.]