Short Book Reviews
April 4, 2009
I wanted to post short reviews on some of the books that I have read in the last few weeks.
Ready for Anything by David Allen
This book is an easy read! It is a great book to read in a few hours to refresh your personal productivity strategy. Even if you do not follow Getting Things Done to a t, Ready for Anything will have insights for you. There are also a bunch of great quotes along the margins throughout the entire book.
Outliers by Malcom Gladwell
One of the weird things about this book is that along the back cover, it states that Gladwell is the author of two of the most influential books of our time, Blink and Tipping Point. I read Tipping Point, and read book reviews about Blink. I found it a bit pretentious to claim that your own book was one of the most influential books of our time.
Outliers was a creative idea taken too far. The original nugget of an idea is that an individual’s success is somewhat a function of his or her unique ability, but mostly a function of the unique time, place, and context of where this individual was born. Gladwell gives a lot of interesting examples of this phenomenon.
The problem with this book is that it was boring. Once you read the first few chapters, there was really no benefit to reading the entire book. In fact, once you have read my summary, there is probably no need to read anything else.
7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
My top 3 business books of all time are:
- Feiner Points of Leadership by Michael Feiner
- Getting to Yes by
- and Getting Things Done by David Allen
7 Habits has now claimed the top position above all 3 of these books. It is difficult to describe how transformative an experience it is to read this book. Covey does it all. He is able to tie together fundamental negotiations, leadership, values, principles, and day-to-day tactics and personal productivity.
The funniest part of the book is that it is very human and imperfect. Covey readily admits that he is unable to follow the 7 Habits, particularly the “seek first to be understand, and then be understood.” He admits his inability to listen. He gives the reader insights into some of the bizarre arguments that he has with his wife.
But this superb book about leadership in the voice of an imperfect man makes it an even better read. I highly recommend this book to all individuals.
Jump the Curve by Jack Uldrich
I did not like this book. I thought Uldrich is not technical enough to have any interesting techncial insights. But he is not too business/strategy minded either. I do not have much more to say about this one.
Personal Productivity in the Education Sector
April 19, 2008
The topic of personal productivity is something that I am passionate about.
I have developed my own personal productivity style after extensively reading the following sources:
For those of you who are not aware, GTD (Getting Things Done) is the “bible” in productivity circles. The GTD tag on del.icio.us is a good place to start learning about the topic. I was also happy to catch this post on GTD in Education.
Believe it or not, personal productivity can be broken down into a core set of principles:
- Keep things simple
- Do one thing at a time
- Outsource everything possible
- Remove distractions from your life
- Work in terms of action steps
- Follow the Inbox Zero principle for your e-mail
- Have a weekly review to go over your projects, and clear your inbox, action steps, and follow ups