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Every athlete has one, whether for an individual or team sport, from little kids on the sandlot to professionals on the gridiron. Even bridal parties need someone to instruct and manage the actions of the team members. Professional football and baseball teams often have a different coach for each particular aspect of the game, offense, defense, you name it.

Yet many people outside of these arenas are completely on their own.

The worlds of business and work, family and life are just as important to each of us as they are to professional athletes, yet once we are out of school or college we rarely get any coaching on our performance.

What can a coach do for you?

A coach or mentor is there to help you develop your skills. In many areas of life (such as money, parenting, marriage, leadership, public speaking, even health and excercise) there are coaches available who can guide you to:

• Discover and develop your passions
• Build a clear vision for the future
• Write your personal mission statement
• Learn how to relate to co-workers
• Learn how to manage people
• Learn how to navigate change
• Build your communication skills
• Appraise your performance
• Break out of a rut
• Learn to think about problems in a different way
• Take action in areas that need improvement
• Free yourself of a destructive self-image
• Improve communications in a marriage or relationship
• Become more confident in yourself
• Take more responsibility
• Take more (or less)! risks
• Grow in your faith

If you have had a growth experience with a coach or mentor, tell us about it in the Comments! If you are interested in getting some coaching (particularly about Productivity practices), see the services page and drop me a line.

Or just send me an e-mail. And to totally free Productivity information, and share your experiences with others, join the Productivity Mastermind conference call on Thursdays at 4:00pm Eastern.

Early Look: Top 10 Android Apps - Website Magazine Consumer Corner - Website Magazine

T-Mobile released the G1 mobile phone to the public this week, the first true competitor to the iPhone. And what makes the G1 a legitimate threat is Google’s Android operating system, complete with apps, just like the iPhone. But Android apps will play a significant role in attempting to dethrone the iPhone - mostly because its open source, developers will face less scrutiny and easier acceptance for app creations, and because Android apps will eventually work across more networks, and more phones. So, let’s take a peek at some of the early apps, ranked somewhat loosely in popularity according to Website Magazine’s Peter Prestipino’s shiny new G1. The numbers are current as of this writing. (If the apps below are not linked, it’s because the Android website is not displaying them, but they are available through the G1 itself.)

1. ShopSavvy: 10,000-50,000 downloads, 538 ratings (4.5/5 stars). Scan barcodes with your camera and find the best prices on the Internet, and at nearby stores. We recently wrote a review about a similar, non-Android application, with mixed results. My guess is that the Android app is much more capable.
2. The Weather Channel: 10,000-50,000 downloads, 432 ratings (4.5/5 stars). No surprise here, and the name pretty much sums it up.
3. MySpace Mobile: 10,000-50,000 downloads, 348 ratings (3.5/5 stars). Again, the name says it all. What’s interesting is that this is the lowest rated (by stars) app on the list. It’s unclear whether that’s because of its functionality, or the G1’s audience.
4. WikiMobile Encyclopedia: 10,000-50,000 downloads, 125 ratings (4/5 stars). Over two million articles, including images. “Faster and uses just a fraction of the network data vs. the Android browser.”
5. T-Mobile HotSpot: 10,000-50,000 downloads, 146 ratings (4/5 stars). Automatically determines when you are in a T-Mobile WiFi hotspot, enabling the user to connect that way instead of the 3G network, saving battery power. Theoretically, would also allow a connection to Skype, saving on minutes.
6. Accuweather: 5,000-10,000 downloads, 205 ratings (4/5 stars). Not much information on this one yet, but one forum I read found that this app was “way better than The Weather Channel app.” Accuweather app includes a live Doppler radar map, also according to the forum.
7. Compare Everywhere: 5,000-10,000 downloads, 205 ratings (4/5 stars). Similar to ShopSavvy - scan barcodes, find out if you’re getting a good deal. Includes reviews, shopping lists and wish lists. The personal favorite of Website Magazine’s editor - and his wife’s.
8. Pro Football Live: 5,000-10,000 downloads, 119 ratings (4/5 stars). A football fan site, with live updates and scoring, news, photos and a personalized home page.
9. Translate: 5,000-10,000 downloads, 81 ratings (4/5 stars). Language translator - type in a word or phrase and get the translation in the language you select. Supports 150 language pairs.
10. PicSay: 5,000-10,000 downloads, 126 ratings (4.5/5 stars). An on-the-fly photo editor. Distort images, add shading and effects, speech bubbles and props to your photos, then share them with friends via email, your blog or online phot sharing sites.

Keep in mind that these are actual applications, and not games. However, many of these applications have more ratings than games and just as many downloads (at least as far as we can tell from the less than precise download numbers.) It’s interesting to note that two on this list are shopping services. It perhaps indicates that the G1 audience is a little more business- or consumer-oriented than the iPhone - also indicated by the low rating of the MySpace app. It might also be a sign that mobile e-commerce is going to heat up, now that consumers are armed with more viable tools.

I just saw a remarkable post at Jack Cheng’s blog about the Chronotebook that he is using.Jack has some good insights about how a notebook can be used:

Start with the simplest thing imaginable: a blank sheet of paper. Add a rows of lines and it becomes a notebook. Add a grid instead and it becomes an drawing pad for architects. Add a few tiny boxes and it turns into a to-do list. Put in dates and you’ve got a calendar.

But as they teach you in your high-school econ class, everything has a cost. For each function or feature you add, you lose a purpose. A blank sheet that could’ve been used in a million different ways can now only be used for a few. Artists aren’t going to buy a calendar if they’re looking for something to sketch on. Writers aren’t going to pick up to-do lists to use as a journal. This isn’t a bad thing per se—by narrowing down on a purpose, a blank sheet of paper can become more useful and relevant to certain people.

Increasing the relevance of all of your tools is a good idea, right? But what if you could increase that relevance by broadening the usefulness? Take a look at this:

Now this is a remarkable idea. For visual thinkers, mind-mapping is often a very valuable tool. I have also found that visual thinkers like myself often have trouble with “standard” calendar or day-planner formats.

Apparently this notebook is only available in the Muji store in NY City. But, in the comments to this post, one of the readers mentioned that this is something you could make DIY, just get a blank notebook and draw a circle in the middle of the page!

The commenters also point to a few other, related items, like:

• a cool whiteboard that uses this same idea, with an actual clock in the middle - TaskWatch.
• a circular-format yearly calendar - Once more around the sun.

I am just getting into mind-mapping as a tool for planning, and will have a review of the Buzan iMind Map program shortly. If any of you take an interest in this method of planning daily tasks, I’d love to hear about it. Leave a comment!

Today’s guest post is from Mike St. Pierre of The Daily Saint

We often think of prevention as solely related to health.  What if your productivity had regular doses of prevention? GTD often reminds us to pursue contentment because contexts are known and lists are kept.  When I know what I have scheduled to do for tomorrow, I’m a bit more free today to do what needs to be done, today. I’m thinking of simple things like:

• Scheduling family and friends’ birthdays into Outlook or Google Calendar
• Charging your cell phone before its battery runs down
• Clearing off your desk before you leave for the day
• Responding to email before it gets lost in the shuffle of a bloated in-box
• Touching a piece of mail once rather than marching it around your office in search of a home
• Filing a little at a time

Imagine what things would be like if we practiced preventative productivity instead of reactive work…