If you're going through your gift list and trying to think of what to buy for your creative friends, one good choice would be "The 4 Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss. His premise is that you can turn your 40 hours a week into 4, without giving up productivity or profit.
The title is hyperbolic--certainly Mr Ferriss has not been following his own advice lately as I've found him all over the media (for far more than four hours a week) promoting this book. But the basic ideas in it are useful. One of the main ones is not to become the tool of your tools--especially e-mail. He suggests the radical (for some) strategy of checking your email only a few times a day, at set times. If you inform people of this schedule, you can train them not to expect an instant reply. (You can tell them they can phone you if it's really that important). Ferriss also pushes the idea of outsourcing by using virtual assistants.
It's a fun read and a good addition to the gift list. And if I may be so bold, so is "Your Writing Coach" (by me, published by Nicholas Brealey) for any of your friends or colleagues who are writers or would like to be writers.
