Get your boss to do this: have your entire company put all non-essential work (i.e., everything but your customers) on hold for a whole week and devote your time and energies to neglected projects and wish-list work that you never have the time, energy, or team to accomplish. And call it a hackathon.

ActiveState had a full week-and-a day of hackathon goodness last week, where we attacked projects as banal as moving the microwave (so the short people can see if their food is boiling all over the place and get it down without scalding themselves) and fixing the sticky lock on the ladies' bathroom to grander schemes involving taking a hatchet to some antiquated legacy systems that seemed to constantly slip through the rethink cracks.

We came up with a huge list of tasks and projects (although kept our scope to projects that could be achieved in a week), and each volunteered for the work we wanted to do. This wasn't some top-down cheesy corporate team-building directive, but an opportunity that worked because everyone wanted to ax some persistent irritants and make progress on forsaken projects.

While many of the items were related to our work space, a few initiatives have a more public face. We're putting the final touches on a couple cool things that I'll be announcing here over the next week or so. Stay tuned!

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