I regularly draw the ire of my employees when I tell them that email is not work. I’m poorly wording my message, but the intent is clear. Constantly checking for new emails, and responding to them stops one from being productive. Though I’ve known this for a while, someone from Harvard is now backing me up! Dorie Clark of HBR (Harvard Business Review) gives us 5 habits to help us in 2012. Full article here.

The quick hit list (though I recommend reading the full article)

1. Don’t check for new emails more often than every 90 minutes
2. Don’t continue to perform a habit, just because
3. Dispose of things which are no longer adding value
4. Make sure the work you win, is the work you want
5. Keep it simple!

Areas like Silicon Valley and Boston are well known as focal points of innovation and venture funding, making them popular places to start. But Silicon Valley has increasingly approached venture spending in a dramatically different manner, encouraging companies to dive into the market almost immediately.

Rather than perfecting a product over years, these companies will put together a working model and continue to fix and tweak as they speak with prospective clients, often incorporating comments and specific requests. Many take the same approach to business models, going through a process of constant testing and exposure to real-world conditions.

The approach has quickly gained interest beyond Silicon Valley as well, with Harvard Business School requiring students to start their own businesses over the course of the school year and the National Science Foundation developing its N.S.F. Innovation Corps grants on the idea.

“It’s all about how to apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification,” Errol Arkilic, a program manager at the foundation, told the Times. “And that is exactly why this method is the one the N.S.F. selected.”

StartUpSmart notes that the concept has been around for at least three years, but has gained increased visibility with the publishing of The Lean Startup, written by venture investor Eric Ries. The book outlines a few other key ideas behind lean start-ups, including openness to potential ventures in any field and, importantly, the understanding that many such businesses will fail despite their founders’ best efforts.

“Over 70 years, this Valley has developed a culture that does not personalize failure,” Randy Komisar, of venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, told the Times. “If you’re not corrupt, stupid or lazy, we see failure as learning — learn from it, and reapply it.”

While this seems like a positive approach to new businesses, the model still has its opponents. Xconomy’s Jamie Goldstein notes that the companies that have grown fastest after the introduction of their product were those that tackled issues that they were unclear they could solve. The businesses focused on the product with the understanding that a big enough innovation would ultimately find clients.

Like many other technology startups, Zynga attracted higher quality employees by offering a company shares in place of higher wages. However, the company hoped to avoid a situation where early employees wound up with far more in stock than their work merited, so The Journal reports that the company began demanding some employees give up their rights to unvested stock or be fired.

The news source suggests that the practice could open up Zynga to potential lawsuits and also threatens an important foundation of Silicon Valley.

Fortune, however, portrays the practice differently, noting that Zynga makes a habit of offering under-performing employees an opportunity to step down in the company rather than being fired. If they were fired, they would lose the right to unvested stock regardless, but the lower position would not normally merit such compensation. Asking employees to forego their stock options then prevents them from losing their jobs.

Fox Business reports that Zynga is expected to conduct its IPO after Thanksgiving.

Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley in 2004, as Facebook was taking shape as a company. He notes that this period bore little resemblance to the party-filled portrayal in The Social Network, but that the area imposed different kinds of pressures.

“It’s still a little short-term focused in a way that bothers me,” Forbes notes from Zuckerberg’s interview. “There’s people who want to start a company not knowing what they want to do, or just to flip it.”

He argues that the pressure for a fast turnaround from investors forces many companies to avoid the long-term planning that ultimately proves essential.

Instead, Zuckerberg suggests he would prefer to have remained in Boston, another focal point of venture capital with a pool of talented young programmers just as strong as that found in Silicon Valley.

The Associated Press reports that President Obama introduced the third facet of his jobs plan on Friday, October 21, proposing to spend nearly $70 billion on investments in infrastructure, including the creation of a bank designed to support infrastructure development projects.

The bill is intended to help repair crumbling bridges and roadways as well as invest in upgrades to airports and railways, including the development of high-speed rails.

The New York Times reports that Obama’s plan has proven largely unsuccessful so far, with congressional Republicans voting down two proposed measures in the past two weeks: a bill to prevent the layoff of public workers around the country and a bill to implement a new tax on incomes of more than $1 million.

President Obama called out Republicans for their efforts to block his plan, insisting that attempts at negotiation have fallen flat. Republicans, meanwhile, insist that the federal government cannot afford the kind of spending the president has called for.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York produces a monthly Empire State Index of manufacturing activity in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. As an important manufacturing sector, the index provides an important gauge of overall performance.

Thus far in October, the Fed reports that manufacturing activity declined with a rating of minus 8.5, well below the minus 4 projected by the median of a Bloomberg survey of economists. Nonetheless, the figure represents a slight improvement from minus 8.8 in September and some factors of the measure did improve, including bookings and shipments.

“Consumer demand has held up much better than just about anyone could have expected and manufacturers should see orders improve over the near-term as a result,” Russell Price, a senior economist at Ameriprise Financial, told Bloomberg.

Bloomberg also reports that another report from the Federal Reserve found that both industrial production and manufacturing output rose slightly in September, after a somewhat more sluggish August.

Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli projected the industry could shed another 10,000 by the end of 2012 in the face of declining profits. In the first half of 2011, the member firms of the New York Stock Exchange saw pretax profits fall by 10.8 percent, a decline of $12.6 billion from the first half of 2010.

The cuts would increase total job losses in the financial industry since the beginning of 2008 by more than 45 percent, from their current amount of 22,000.

Despite these cuts, wages on Wall Street have actually risen, growing 16 percent over last year to an average $361,330. However, Bloomberg notes that bonuses fell 8 percent last year and look set to continue their decline.

Though many, such as the demonstrators camped out at Occupy Wall Street, might not be too concerned with these losses, DiNapoli notes they could have a serious effect on city and state.

“When we shed jobs, over time, it will have a ripple, negative effect on other parts of our economy,” DiNapoli told Bloomberg.

The survey included hiring managers from nearly 2,700 companies from throughout the U.S. and across all industries. The technology sector led all industries in the survey with 35 percent reporting plans to hire executives, but healthcare, sales, professional services, financial services and leisure/hospitality all saw at least 23 percent of companies reporting similar plans.

"Companies have a perpetual need to attain competent, agile senior leadership. At no time is this more important than during an uncertain economic recovery," Brent Rasmussen, president of CareerBuilder North America, said in a statement.

The survey also covered the characteristics companies are looking for in executives. Roughly 68 percent of these companies either preferred external candidates or placed equal emphasis on internal and external searches. Nearly half – 47 percent – were open to hiring executives without experience in the company's specific industry.

Hiring has picked up somewhat in recent months, with the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicating the U.S. added more than 100,000 jobs in September.

The BLS data suggests that the U.S. actually added 103,000 jobs last month, nearly double the 57,000 jobs added in August. More importantly, there was actually an increase of 137,000 jobs in the private sector, counterbalanced by a 34,000 job loss in government.

The largest gains were seen within professional services and healthcare, followed closely by information technology. The latter additions could come from the end of the strike at Verizon, which accounted for the largest part of job losses in August.

The New York Times notes that the surprising gains provide some positive news for an economy that seems to be on the verge of a double-dip recession. Overall, analysts expected growth of around 55,000 jobs, even less than August.

The news was not entirely positive, however, as the unemployment rate remains unchanged because of 86,000 new entrants to the workforce. In addition, the manufacturing sector lost 13,000 jobs, largely in the crucial durable goods sector.