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I'm off on a vacation beginning Thursday, and--no offense to the bloggers below--what I plan to read while I'm gone will have nothing to do with associations. For those of you working hard, however, the links below are all great non-vacation, learn-how-to-do-your-job-better reads. Enjoy.

Blogger outreach. Maggie McGary points out the potential pitfalls of asking (or compensating) bloggers to write about your association or its cause, on her mizz information blog. She shares an interesting case study and asks some very tough questions. A "must read" if you're considering this kind of outreach.

Board packets. Jen Masaoka offers "Five Tips for Better Board Packets" at the Blue Avocado blog. Two interesting takeaways: "[B]oard members feel disrespected when board packets are late or sloppy and feel railroaded when background information isn't included for an upcoming decision."

Performance under pressure. Paul Sullivan, author of Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Others Don't, offers five reasons why leaders fail under pressure, in a guest article at Forbes.com.

Small-staff social media. Maddie Grant points out potential advantages that small-staff associations have over their larger counterparts in adopting social-media, in a guest post at the Splash! blog.

Gen-X leadership. Eric Lanke, CAE, explains why generation X is the "IF" generation and how its style of option-seeking leadership differs from its predecessors, on The Hourglass Blog.

Gen-X pressures. In another gen-X-related post, Shelly Alcorn, CAE, urges us to consider the new and different types of pressure that generation X is experiencing and how those pressures will be a human-resources challenge for employers (and a serious one: her first point of evidence: gen-X's suicide rate).