RamsThoughts

June 29, 2009 8:47 pm

Review: Th!nkTweet

Filed under: Books,Review — ramsblog @ 8:47 pm
Tags: ,

As I had commented on Rajesh’s blog before, Rajesh had probably started a similar concept even prior to Twitter came into existence in the form of mini-Sagas; however Rajesh clarifies that the frequency and speed of feedback is much faster in Twitter where twitters tweet the tw(f)eedback tw(qu)icker for 140 letter thwoughts.

First, Thank you Rajesh for forwarding a copy of Th!nkTweet. I started reading your writings ever since I was directed to your Change This! manifesto “25 ways to distinguish” and started following your blog – all those mini-sagas, quoughts, etc and including your interviews on itsdiff.com

As I started making notes while reading this book, my thoughts wandered towards writing only appreciations or only critique it. When I think about my purpose of reviewing a material, it is not that only look for positives or look for only negatives, but i think,
1. as a reader and potentially author material in future, it helps me see how my writing will be perceived so I can self learn now
2. my mind certainly goes to the appreciations on this book and all the positive notes mentioned below.
3. and that said, wear critique’s hat and see what I can derive and learn from it
4. or apply few pointers from the book and share about my personal experience? I think this would fantastic if I share my day-today experience applying the concepts from the book, eventually that should be my goal too.

Overall, this is a great twincredible material a Must read and realize or sharpen the values and principles they live with. While writing this, I wondered if i keep my observation to 140characters or to 140 words:) , anyways here it is.

1. Th!nkTweet is a tw(f)antastic one liners every page sooo (tw)easy  to read – with large fonts and two messages a page
2. A great reference book to keep it handy and share the thoughts
3. Several of Th!nkTweets here, as the title go, makes you th(w)ink more and some are like goldmine and eye openers if one tries to understand and apply them in their life scenarios;
4. I certainly see author’s thoughts on “book in your heart” and gives the confidence for any one to be an author and bring out their experiences and share with others, so they can relate to the stories and learn from the stores.
5. It reminds me of the concept of 4 quadrants of feedback mechanism, where 4th quadrant is about reading books to understanding ourselves.

Certain points, I would see could be different: (I know it is easy to pass on the critiques than doing it, but I would still want to mention for my own notes)
1. from the way the tweets printed, I would like it to be a smaller pocket book so it could be handy, and I see a lot of paper space wasted. I am not sure if it was because of the standard book size or if it was something else.
2. Showing “Book 1” on the cover page indicates there will be further updates to it. I think it would be great to provide author’s future ideas around Th!nkTweet as it is now ambiguous that
                 a) will there be another part with more thinkTweets?
                 b) will there be another form of thinkTweet after this book?
3. Agreed for the tweets and feedback, without relating to twitter/tweets, I am trying to understand how different is this from the books we find with “Quotes of <name your favorite individual here>” is it a different name (ie., branding?)
4. From pages (slides?) by tweets 9, 28, 81, 101 and 134, I thought they would probably resemble chapters, but not necessarily, I am not sure if I found the relevance in the tweets of respective sections.

having said these, here is what I personally thought and how I am going to use these tweets (as appropriate)
1. several tweets that made me think on my current situation
2. some of them were really helped me realize my shortcomings so I could back on track.
3. I will use some of them to build my speech topics at the Toastmasters club I am part of :)
4. I will share about this book with possibly everyone I come across. I know it is a must read and keep it handy for reference.

I like the way you have set up Tweets on your site.

ps: these are just my personal observation – and i haven’t reviewed this write up before posting it here.

October 27, 2008 7:23 am

Not keeping up finishing reading yet…

Filed under: Books,Hobby — ramsblog @ 7:23 am

Looks like I have started reading too many books at a time recently and not been able to complete any. I know there are many people around being able to start many books and complete them. I don’t know if they are speed readers or they are good at managing their time so they are able to finish their reading sooner. I also often hear from time management perspective that it is better to complete one book before starting reading another. Well, It has been hard for me to do, although I have tried that for sometime and I had liked it, then, since I had a satisfaction that I had completed reading at least one book.

I am currently reading the following books:

1. Whale Done
2. Debugging the Development Process
3. Millionaire Meditation
4. Code Complete 2 – by Steve McConnell
5. Raving Fans

I have liked the “Whale Done” very much. It talks about the relationship management, although takes an example of training a killer whale, but is very relevant to the people management at work or at home.

Debugging the Development Process” is very insightful in terms of learning what we do right and the things we do wrong as part of the software development process. this is mainly about debugging the process itself than debugging the code. Debugging in software development terminology is to find the defects and the process of troubleshooting and fixing the defects in a given application. However, the same is used in terms of the development process itself. It also depicts the examples of how a lead without crisp goal can push the team into chaos situation.

Millionaire Meditation” is a great book where author Paul Farrel goes on to explain about how anything you do can be a meditation depending on how you do it. Love and enjoy what you do and incorporate that as part of the meditation process. It doesn’t have to be a sit at one place for hours to perform meditation. I like this idea.

Code Complete” Just started reading this book, and not too far yet to say anything about this book yet.

Raving Fans” is all about customer service and the people relationship management.

 

Readers: How do you keep up with reading books.
       Do you block off some time every day/night?
       Do you complete one before moving on to another book?
      What is your style of reading?
      Are you a speed reader?

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February 10, 2008 12:42 am

Book Review: Speed Reading for Professionals

Filed under: Books,Personal Development,Professional skills — ramsblog @ 12:42 am

(image source: amazon.com)

I recently borrowed this book titled "Speed-Reading for Professionals"  from the local library.  Reading initial few pages of introduction, I realized I belonged to one of those sample categories described in the book. Reading is my hobby, but at times I used to feel bad because a small 200 pages book that I borrow from the library would not be completed within the time and had either renew or return half read. On the other hand, my wife would read a book in one or two sitting. Although I am half way with this book, I am trying to implement the techniques described in the book, to read other books I have in hand.

Key Chapters this book covers:
    Understanding why we read slowly, How to change
    Learn to Jog, Not Walk, Through your Reading
    Learn to Run, Not Jog, Through your Reading
    Learn to Sprint, Not Run, Through your Reading
    Understanding and Remembering What you Read

This book is organized into read,implement, practice sections.
             Gives the information first; test run what was described on a sample passage; and suggests to read at least about 10 pages in any book of your choice to implement what was just learned. 
             There are a set of questions following those set of sample passages, for readers to assess their understanding from their short reading. Authors also suggest to go back and read the passage again, if there were questions remain unanswered.

The key point authors make before starting any of those practice passage/exercise is to not to get discouraged even if we lean towards slow reading at any point of time. Just realize the fact and move on with new habit. I am currently reading 5th chapter (sprint). Triple chunking (Left, middle, Right), one of the techniques, appears to be working great for me. I am timing my reading in the past couple of days, and it turns out to be close to 2 minutes for an average page of the same size that I used to take around 5 minutes. Although I think it is still slower, but I think it will get better.

Other Pros I noticed just doing this speed reading:
    a. tend to focus on reading content or at least try to pull myself back to the track, as opposed to having my mind wander around. I realized, letting my mind think about other ToDo’s.
    b. not literally read the words as if I am speaking the words – that used to slow me down before.

It is just a beginning. Looking forward to enjoy more and more reading :)

January 11, 2008 1:28 am

Head First Labs

Filed under: Books,Project Management — ramsblog @ 1:28 am

I stumbled on this site “Head First Labs” site while looking for Project Management resources. There are several sample chapters posted up on this site. One of those I just glanced through was about Risk Management: http://www.headfirstlabs.com/books/hfpmp/headfirst_pmp_ch11.pdf 

Authors have described the Risk management topic in easy to understand manner with lots of examples and pictorial representations. There are bunch of Q&A and exercises available as well.

December 25, 2007 1:46 am

Reinventing Project Management

Filed under: Books,Project Management — ramsblog @ 1:46 am

imagesource- bn.com

I am not sure why I had added this book on hold for me at my local library. However, just received and reading through the book. I noticed a review about this book on David’s Agile Management blog. Perhaps, I had added this on hold after reading David’s blog.

I have just started reading this book, I will write my summary when I get a chance after reading this book.

.

June 23, 2007 4:44 pm

one minute manager: Building teams

I am usually fascinated by One Minute Manager series – they are great books and thought provoking. I am also most influential to read the books authored by Ken Blanchard from my engineering school days. I am currently reading a book titled building high performance teams.

Characteristics of high performing teams: PERFORM –

  • Purpose
  • Empowerment
  • Relationaships and Communuication
  • Flexibility
  • Optimal Performance
  • Recognition and Appreciation
  • Morale

One other thing with reading One Minute manager books, is you would get into thinking and relate to your own situation as you read along the book. Now, that makes more interesting. Either makes you learn more or it helps you evaluate how you are doing in those situations or/and both to make more improvements.

I was just reading about Group Development Stages and I was thinking while evaluating the same – and figured our project team is somewhere closer to stage3. Now my thoughts are into how I can help make it to get to 3 first and then to 4 which I feel more empowered team.

4 stages of Group Development:

  1. Orientation
    1. follows one voice – and agree upon the goals –
    2. team gets the directions and leave with some accomplishment but there leaves an anxiety of what next and how to achieve
  2. Dissatisfaction
    1. some concerns and dissatisfactions;
    2. at times people be reserve and not speak up until asked for;
    3. leader encourages team to speak up and show dissatisfactions and concerns, to ensure people are on same page but still remain in the air;
    4. members are frustrated at times and feel confused. at least one individual being not comply with the rest of the team’s direction. etc.
  3. Resolution
    1. team lead is capable of resolving conflicts; team members are open for the conflict resolution;
    2. team members encourage one another 
    3. there is a warmth in the team on what their goals are and the execution plan;
    4. teams go out knowing what to do but gets into inidvidual effort and then try to combine the pieces of puzzle to make it a common goal
  4. Productive
    1. people take the leadership as and when appropriate;
    2. members take the responsibilities towards the common goal;
    3. generally not wait for someone to tell them what to do; team members are empowered to make decisions and take the solution alternatives to the table;homework being worked out fully thought about and discussed among teams and functional area resources. Team lead would jump in when there are any improvements or corrections required or if there was any direction necessary for the team; otherwise team members are empowered
    4. there is a lot of collaboration and respect each others’ values and perspectives.
    5. Team members are always excited.

 I am still half way reading through this book, and this seems be very informative…

<ram>corrected typo in title from “bulding” to “building” hehe…

November 16, 2006 9:09 am

Leaders are Givers…

Filed under: Books,leadership — ramsblog @ 9:09 am

I get excited when I come across people sharing about the books, or if I get to share about the books I read and I mostly read the books like perosnal development, leadership, finance and rarely science and no novels. As Rajesh puts it across, there are quite many books that take my undivided attention, and I hate to go away while reading the books I like. I like the model of Suggestica from my side, because, I mostly read the books that are recommended by the people I respect, by the people whom I would like to follow, etc.

Anyways, Rajesh has just shared about another leadership book on his blog recently.

October 28, 2006 4:53 am

SQ3R method

Filed under: Books,Personal Development,Uncategorized — ramsblog @ 4:53 am

I was reading one of the books recently and apparently started reading the introduction section. I usually don’t read the introduction or preface section, although I sometimes skim through the back page to see some comments written by others authors. I started doing this couple of years ago when I heard someone saying that we should be able to know what to expect from the book when we read other’s comments and how it helped them to make the comments they have made.

I think I am glad I started with an intro section this time. It was very crisp and concise on what to expect out of that book. Well, the author had also narrated the SQ3R reading method that got me excited for learning something more. I later on came across few more resources for SQ3R method [1][2][3].

SQ3R – Survey -Query – Read – Review – Recite.

Survey the document: scan the contents, introduction, chapter introductions and chapter summaries to pick up a shallow overview of the text. Form an opinion of whether it will be of any help. If it does not give you the information you want, discard it.

Query: Make a note of any questions on the subject that come to mind, or particularly interest you following your survey.

Read through useful sections in detail, taking care to understand all the points that are relevant. Mark or make notes while reading the material.  

Review: run through it in your mind several times.

Now Recite the material looking at the notes or try to answer your questions in your mind or on paper.

I think these 5 steps makes us better understand the material and read it to retain the information and not just for the sake of reading. I agree, i have some books but not really remember much of it at the same time there are few books I have read and can’t fort

September 15, 2006 6:24 am

Suggestica…

Filed under: Books — ramsblog @ 6:24 am

I had come across Suggestica site recently and posted an intro last time. However,  I was showing the site to some one today, and we realized a suggestion to Suggestica. As we were browsing through the different sections and authors and the book suggestions, we thought it would be beneficial if the people who suggest their book list, also describe why they would suggest a particular book and what made them to pick this book to suggest out of many others they might be reading then. I am sure this information would help others to get that knowledge. see here for more information on what suggestica about.

September 13, 2006 6:20 am

Suggestica…. Which book to read?

Filed under: Books — ramsblog @ 6:20 am

I was asked many times as to what I do during my spare time – I don’t know about many others but I have/had cultivated a habit of reading books for many years now. Be it a technical book or a purely personality development or financial related books.

At times, it is hard to figure out what book to read. I used to stop by at Borders or Barnes and Noble stores, or any other book stores and wonder which one to read. I see a lot of books and think of reading all of them – but how do I set the priorities then? Well, I came across (via LifeBeyondCode) this new site named Suggestica, where you can find the books by expert areas and get the suggested titles to read. Suggestica seems to be more helpful if you also have a role model and want to know the kind of books they are reading and suggesting. for example, suggestions by BillGates, StephenCovey, JimCollins, KenBlanchard, RamCharan, and many others…

{Book reading,}

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