Monday, December 17. 2007
Interesting books to read
Over the last few weeks I've been reading some intersting books, which are definitely worth to be read.
The first one is "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates". The book gives an intersting view point about Microsoft by an ex-programmer. How the work has been in those times, how projects were managed.
Interestingly to mention: it seams Windows was in fact seen as an unimportant project after it's initial failure with version 1.0. Management abandoned it, and some programmers kept poking arround to make it better - without all the management pressure. It appears the success of Windows 3.x was completely unexpected to Microsoft too! 
The book also tells about the beginnings of the marketing machine - you can say the biggest product of all. However I missed details about Microsoft's (imho unethical) behavior towards the outside world. I guess that stems from the fact the author is an ex-programmer, and he mostly tells what he has seen from his position: how projects were managed. Still an intersting read though, because it gives quite a different view on Microsoft's own developments and successes.
The second book I'm reading right now is "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. And oh my this is real nice piece of work! I've gotten an introduction to GTD before, but with the book everything falls more in place. I'm at page 66 now, and it's already an revelling experience for me. Not only does David advocate a different model of tracking todo's and planning projects, he also explains how his methology actually co-operates with the natural, intuitive, way your mind operates all the time. 
Additionally it's really geek friendly, addresses common pitfalls and yet I can manage my stuff with simple tools! I have got a pen+paper with me all times nowdays, I collect the todo-notes in a simple basket at home, and process those later into Kontact notes, Basket or KOrganizer (but even .txt files would do fine!).
Everyone who is doing "knowledge work" benefits from GTD. It works bottom-up, addressing the hectic atmosphere at your work/home first (which prevents you to move forward), and slowly helping you to get more overview of your projects, responsabilities and vision. It does this by helping you getting stuff out of your mind, so your mind can focus itself on more creative stuff, and do what's really good at (which isn't recalling todo's at the moment you actually needed them).
GTD promisis an interesting end result: to overcome stress, feel confident you won't miss something important, feel more relaxed and have more energy to actually do things. And while reading David's reasoning I believe this system will actually work for me, both personally and professionally. 
do you think it includes many things that we don't already know we should do?
I haven't read many other books, but I don't expect you'll become disappointed. The introduction calls the book a "gold mine of insights" and that's how it feels for me right now too. It's based on 20 years of experience of management consultancy, coaching and seminars.
I find a lot of those 'self-help' books are mostly common sense
advice that I just never get around to actually following.
Try this one!
The the book is written in a way that stirs the motivation to start practising this methology.One of the reasons I think it works is because it invites to include everything: your life, work, personal goals. Everything you must or want to change. No matter how important or unimportant the issues are, they'll all be in your head anyway draining your energy (whether it's replacing batteries, calling a client, or writing a business plan).
If you get started with this book, I'm really curious how it will work out for you!
Try one until you find one that meets your needs. ThinkingRock somewhat does it for me, especially since they are going to release it as open source in this release. It could use some more work to make it smoother.
If you liked GTD, then also get his other book. It too is full of insights and pretty simple ones at that.
After taking my first management course after 20+ years in IT, it is quite obvious why there is a disconnect between the two. Why business choose to use such twisted wording to describe business functionality and then use those words with the worker is beyond my keen. Allens books tend to make the business world go back to thinking in simpler terms and that is good for both IT people and those with MBAs.
As for ThinkingRock.. interesting to see, but I think it's a bit overwhelming or complex for my situation yet. I can still manage my stuff with more simple tools. Someone else also pointed www.rememberthemilk.com which is web-based with offline abilities and good integration in other devices. Also worth checking out!
