Controversial baseball slugger Barry Bonds is poised to break the magic 714 mark of career home runs set long ago by the legendary Babe Ruth.

The pursuit of the San Francisco Giants star is tainted by charges that Bonds regularly used performance-enhancing drugs (steroids). When he passes the Babe, Bonds still would lie 40 home runs behind the all-time home run king, Henry Aaron.

On the radio this week in San Francisco, sportscaster John Miller told a fascinating tale about what happened to Hank Aaron’s final home run ball, #755.

For the past few weeks I have been feeling overwhelmed with more tasks than I can fit into a harried schedule. Granted, I confess to living on the edge of taking on too many commitments. At the moment, however, lots of project deadlines combined to conjure up a perfect storm on my calendar.

I advise many senior managers who live in this state perpetually. They could clone themselves three times over and still not get to the bottom of their "to-do" list. So how do you make sure that you get the most important tasks done?

Pedagogy - a word rarely used. And in our age of achievement testing, a bit of a lost art.

For nearly 15 years I have been a professor in the university system. I guess by now I cease to be annoyed by the students who approach school like an obstacle course: hurdles they need to crawl under or jump over in order to achieve the grade they want.

I make it my personal challenge each semester to inspire these students to love the process of learning. I tell them that they soon will enter a world of work that will value individuals who can apply intelligence and emotional tools to evolving environments. Memorizing a set of data or mastering a skill has a value, to be sure. In the 21st century, however, a law of diminishing returns immediately kicks in to depreciate the value of those personal assets. It jars my students - who obsess over the major of study they should choose - when I proclaim, "It really doesn't matter what you study, but it does matter immensely that you study with curiosity and passion."

"What could the workplace look like if it were designed to promote both organizational and individual flexibility, and what must executives and individuals do to realize this vision?"

That question drove the Career Innovation Company (CI) out of Oxford, England, to conduct a global survey of knowledge workers. Its results point to a workforce that is fairly disenchanted with the traditional structures of work that still dominate the market.