Is Giving the Secret to Getting Ahead – The New York Times Magazine profile Wharton professor Adam Grant and his new book Give and Take.

The message sounds terrific: Feel good about your work, and get more of it done, and bask in the appreciation of all the people you help along the way. Nice guys can finish first! (Now there’s research to prove it.) But I couldn’t help wondering, as I watched Grant race through his marathon day (even one of his mentors admitted, “He can be exhausting”), about the cost of all this other-directedness. If you are devoted to being available to everyone, all the time, how do you relax? How can you access the kind of creativity that comes from not being on task every waking moment? How do you make time for the more important relationships in your life?

“Fifty Percent Of ‘The Tipping Point Is Wrong” – Fast Company profiles another Wharton professor, Jonah Berger, pits him against Gladwell, connects him to Chip Heath (his academic advisor at Stanford) and passed judgment on his new book Contagious.

Ever since he’d read Gladwell’s opus, he says, “I wanted to write what I’ll call”–he catches himself–“I won’t call it a better version of The Tipping Point, but a more research-focused version of The Tipping Point.” Plus, he had recently turned 30. “This is going to make me sound like an asshole,” he says, “but you read the business section of the paper, you read about these people doing startups, people who are famous playing sports and they’re, like, 28 and they’re gazillionaires and you’re sitting there going, ‘I’m working just as hard as these people. Like, what am I doing wrong?'”

Tim Ferriss’ 4-Hour Reality Check – Inc. Magazine finds Tim on a mini retirement in Bali and puts him on the front cover.

Ferriss’s fans tend to cherry-pick techniques from his work, something he encourages.