I read this book on the fly. Couple of hours and done. Book is written in very specific way, that allows to read it quickly. It spreads very interesting ideas.

One of the main concepts is that you are General Director of your life and your name’s company and that is real place where you must do the best. You should have something like a new title of your current position in Company-You, like “Catalyzer of progress”.

Book just throws into you lot of gripping mottos that make you double think if you do the right things and if in right way.

Book’s author is “COOL” and he wants you to be “COOL” as well. You should make yourself a “dude with power” and then sell yourself with high price.

For some reason book is also concerned about building professional network. Intent is to be aware of the best people around you, so this could help you move forward. Few weeks ago I started looking around for cool people to have lunch with them. During lunch I’m trying to familiarize with that person and understand what does he thinks about the job. Mainly I talk with Software Developers. To some extent this helps me be known and get interesting information from them. Probably it worth to consider meeting with people of other professions.

Regarding what it talks about your job, ideas are great and are very applicable to my current position and current team work. I would love if we use following motto: “Work with what you have, and make it awesome‘. There is no room for complains, there is only room for getting it done.

Be the best!

So far I read another book on business and management. Now it is called “It’s Not Luck”, and is written by the author of “The Goal”.

Honestly, I liked this book, less than “The Goal”, because now I knew what to expect. I knew that all of the problems will be solved and that the hero will be promoted to the general director of Uni-Co.

The main and huge difference is that in this book author represent to us new way of thinking to resolve issues.

I will try to summarize it here from my perspective and my understanding.
So, first of all you have some conflict. You write it down with good formulation – that is the main thing you need to resolve. After, you should build some tree of dependent reasons-effects. To do that you need to write them all down and dive into intensive thinking to find out all of the dependencies. Book, states that in most cases reason of the main problem is just one of the reasons, you listed. If you commit lot of effort in building your dependencies tree, your reason will be obvious, so after that, you can proceed with building your plan to resolve that. Plan is path from root reason to the main problem, you should solve.

Book is very gripping and is written in way that gives us touches of both personal and business examples. I liked it, and maybe will try to use some of the technics to solve problems in my life.

Last weekend I had a chance to read very interesting book, kind of business novel. I was given this book by my managers after we finished with my performance appraisal. Which (btw) went very well.

Book talks about guy, who manages plant where he encounter problem of going behind the schedule and his bosses wanted to close out his plant. But he with colleges, using Theory of Constraints and sophisticated thinking, was able to get plant to the new level.

From first pages I was not sure if book is kind of my thing, since I usually don’t read novels,  but it turns out that book is only a bit hard going at the beginning. From page to page it was more gripping to read and in the end it just became a real page-turner.

Book forces us to think that everything is possible, you just need to take a look for wider solutions without using any of your stereotypes. Book never gives you ready answers, so it is thought-provoking one. First it states the problem, describing it in details, after that main hero is bombarded with different questions by friends, which provoke us think in pair with him.

Reading book was really-really enjoyable and I would highly recommend it for your reading. Book indeed is exciting for those who are interested in career development and in manager’s positions.

P.S. I’ve changed this post a bit to use more specific words like: interesting, exciting, thought-provoking, a real page-turner, gripping, kind of my thing, hard going at the beginning, gripping. That was English course activity to have review on some book. I’m lazy to write new one.

Today I finished listening to another book on success. It is called “The Law Of Success” by Napoleon Hill. Book is represented in 16 lessons.

I think that it worth to read or listen to this book. It shows up lot of different tips that you can use to achieve your strongly defined and be biggest goal of your life. I know that most of books on success talk about main goal of your life, but this one I think is the strongest on this requirement.

So it says that you need to define for yourself goal of your life, and… what is more interested… you should keep repeating its formulation every day few times. Hill just refers to autosuggestion as one of the key concepts on getting your results.

Honestly yesterday I tried to repeat for myself that I will wake up 2 hours early than I usually do, and it did not help… sad. Today I will have another try. So “I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8 regardless of Saturday! I will wake up at 8am! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8 and will be able to do what I have planned! I will wake up at 8! Guys, I will wake up at 8! I will wake at 8am! I will really wake up at 8am! I’m going to wake up at 8 o’clock tomorrow! I will wake up at 8 am! I will do that! I will wake up at 8! I will wake up at 8!”

Ok, I did what he asked, now I will see if it will really help me, and will share with you :)

I just listened to one very interesting audio book. Book title is “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. And I think that it worth to read, or listen to it as I did, because it teaches you how to interact with others. If you are going to grow in your career you indeed need such stuff to know.

This book is of psychological type and author (Dale Carnegie) is talking about interaction with other people. Mainly it talks about how to correctly behave when you want someone to be on your side.
Book could be very useful for managers and for people in their lives. For developer it could be useful in future when you are going to drive few people in your team. If you just starting as a senior developer you already should have some experience driving junior stuff. When you are Technical Leader you need to drive whole team, you need to establish correct processes in your team and one of the hardest tasks in all of this is to make others work on tasks you assign them in the way that they will want to work on that.

Sometimes there are situations when you see somebody’s mistakes and there should be a way to show them this, but at the same time not make them your enemies – they should look at you as at friend, who wants to help.

Book has a lot of different examples from real life when you convince others to do what you want, but for them it looks like they really want to do it, because it seems useful for them.
There are a lot of rules in book. You could go and see contents of the book.
Go to this wiki page to see main points of book. (I recommend).

But now I will try to list down what I remember:

• Honor others for the smallest they did.
• Show that they are valuable – all people indeed what to be valuable.
• Start conversation with what people want and make them answering with “YES” on your questions, only then you could give bad news.
• Smile to others but don’t bluff.
• Build reputation for mentees in eyes of others. So your mentee will do everything he could in order to prove what you said about him.
• Really think about how to walk in his/her shoes.

I know that you heard about that a hundred times. But when you will spent 10,5 hours on listening to this book and when author talks about this during all the time. This will ensure that you remember it and probably will force you to try it in real life. You could start with your team members or with you wife. I think that I will try with my girl just today… or even before I will meet her, since I’m now disconnected from internet and typing this in bus road to Lviv. So will be able post this in evening.

I would recommend this book if you have time for such things or if you could get audio version as I did.

P.S. I tried today some tips from book – it works! You should try.