Posts tagged Books
Best of 2009: Book Review – Getting Things Done by David Allen
0I am taking a week of vacation. Today’s post is a Best of 2009 Post. It celebrates some of the best content from the site based upon user feedback and analytics. It was originally posted on this day. I hope that you enjoy it!
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This post is a book review. It is a book that should have a great impact on a great number of fields including that of Information Technology. If you like this post, I would like you to know that it is part of a series of book reviews for works that I think all Information Professionals should take a look at.
I am a big fan of David Allen and his Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. The book that started it all is called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and it carries my highest recommendation. David Allen has been called “The Personal Productivity Guru” by Fast Company Magazine and “The Henry Ford of the Digital Age”. If you know me, you know that his work has become the foundation of my success. GTD is all about living your life successfully.
By the way, his teachings are very popular in the Information Technology profession. I am constantly running into fellow practitioners at work. I think that this is so for a number of reasons. I have heard David suppose that this is because his book provides an all-encompassing recipe or process for handling your life that is very similar to a developer producing elegant code. While I agree with him that there are similarities, I think that it is popular because it is so closely aligned with the system engineering discipline that is the basis for nearly all of the information technology field.
Systems Engineering stresses that all projects begin with a formal set of agreed to requirements. GTD does the same. Systems Engineering then accomplishes success by the decomposition of said requirements into technical elements that must be achieved. These elements are then completed as building blocks and integrated together to form an output product. The final package can be validated and verified against the original specifications down to whatever required level and forms a perfect closed loop process that has no seams. GTD basically applies the Systems Engineering commandments to your life and provides a construct to manage everything in your life from remembering to buy milk on the way home from work, to maintaining loving relationships with your family, to even accomplishing your dreams and aspirations. This is all provided, not through “pie-in-the-sky” platitudes and positive thinking, but by giving you real world advice including how to buy a file cabinet, how to set-up a binder to manage your to-dos, what to do at any time that you find yourself free, and even how often you need to stop and collect your thoughts.
This is how David, himself, describes his system on his website:
Sophisticated without being confining, the subtle effectiveness of GTD lies in its radically common sense notion that with a complete and current inventory of all your commitments, organized and reviewed in a systematic way, you can focus clearly, view your world from optimal angles and make trusted choices about what to do (and not do) at any moment. GTD embodies an easy, step-by-step and highly efficient method for achieving this relaxed, productive state.
Wikipedia has a very complete page dedicated on his teachings here. One gem from that site is:
GTD rests on the principle that a person needs to move tasks out of the mind by recording them externally. That way, the mind is freed from the job of remembering everything that needs to be done, and can concentrate on actually performing those tasks.
Alltop has what I consider to be the best collection of links to GTD web-based content that I have found. If you want to learn more, first go to the David Allen Company Site and then check out their comprehensive listings of GTD links.
I think that every Information Professional should give this book a read. I expect that you will find a comprehensive life management system that can have immediate impact on your, your teams, and your organization’s success.
So what books do you recommend for IT professionals? Feel free to add your ideas in the comments section.
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for December 27, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .
Photo credits: Amazon.com and DavidCo.com
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Book Review: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series
0Today, as my Information Technology Thought of the Day, I offer a reading suggestion.
Sometimes, the best way to appreciate the potential energy of a concept, is to have a storyteller weave a tale out of it. I consider Isaac Asimov’s masterpiece Foundation Series to be the ultimate fable of what the true impact of information management could be on the human race.
Isaac Asimov was a genius who wrote dozens of books during his life. Though he never announced it, he cleverly wove many of them together in a single, continuous universe. This group of stories has come to be referred to as The Foundation Series. I consider it the greatest science fiction tale of all time and a must-read for Information Professionals.
The Foundation Series is a set of science fiction stories and novels that cover a nearly 500 year time period in a distant future where a thousand plus planet galactic empire exists. It is populated by people and robots and features many advances that are key plot factors. The most important of which, is a budding new discipline called psychohistory. This new scientific area of study concerns the mathematical treatment of fortune telling on a macro scale. The unexpected feature of psychohistory is that on an empire-sized horizon, it is nearly 100% accurate at foretelling their futures.
Wikipedia has a wonderful page on this series. It includes suggested story reading order, plot synopsis, and character backgrounds. (Warning: it contains spoilers as to the plot so you might want to skip the plot summary!) If you prefer to experience the series in a manner closer to the way that it was for its first readers, without the benefit of hindsight to his magnificent writing career, then start with the keystone novel, Foundation, If you fall in love with it, as I know that you will, you can always go back and read the prologues and surprise tie-ins to his other books.
There are two primary reasons why I recommend this book to Information Professionals. First, the plot, uniquely revolves around knowledge management. Second, it is a virtual treatise on the moral implications to that same topic. First of all, without ruining any plot points, the series is all about a small group strategically and secretly controlling data, information, knowledge, and wisdom over a five hundred year period in order to reduce the dark ages between two galactic empires from a predicted 30,000 years to only 1000. This group literally employs information as a competitive advantage to influence people, events, and whole civilizations with the goal of both personally surviving and creating a beneficial outcome. The only thing that they have as a weapon, commerce token, and diplomatic tool is what they know that others do not. The moral implications of this situation apply directly to Information Professionals’ daily trials and tribulations. In the book, those with knowledge of true circumstances are faced with one ethical dilemma after another in employing it. Individual liberty vs. group profit, privacy vs. action, and the needs of the many vs. the few are but some of these classic moral minefields. His fictional tales read like case studies in today’s similar moral dilemmas on network security vs. privacy, domestic surveillance requests, and employee’s rights on corporate computer systems. I guarantee that Information Technology professionals will appreciate the parallels immediately.
I expect that if you try it, you will like Asimov’s Foundation Series. I think that rather than be put off by its breadth, you will quickly come to appreciate the depth of the work and be thankful that there will be more of it for you to enjoy for years of reading pleasure. I, also, believe that, like me, you will find that as you mature as an Information Manager, you will value more and more Asimov’s thoughts about information use. While the sum total of his work many represent the ultimate hyperbole for Knowledge Management gone awry, as a galactic-sized cautionary tale to Information Professionals, it is priceless. I hope you enjoy it!
This book recommendation is my Information Technology Thought of the Day for October 8, 2009.
Image Credit: Wikipedia
Book Review: Newton’s Telecom Dictionary
0If there was one book that Information Professionals should have on their bookshelf, it should be Newton’s Telecom Dictionary. I recommend this to every new information technology manager, manager of system administrators, IT consultant, and help desk technician.
This book has so many wonderful features that it is hard to limit my praise to just a few. I believe that its format, context, and thoroughness are what makes it so great.
The format of this work is one of its truly strong points. It is organized just like a standard dictionary. This means that you get two dense columns per page of information with illustrations. This means that you often find just as much relevant information from the entries near the actual topic that you are looking up as you do from your target. It also means that you only have to be 65% accurate on the spelling to hit your goal. The illustrations are great because you can actually search the book by looking for pictures of your connector or cable so long as you have an idea of its name. The density is even useful because you can almost always drill down on 2-3 pages instead of dozens. These are huge advantages over a Wikipedia search.
I always point out the context this book employs to unfamiliar colleagues. It assumes that you have a bachelors level of technical education for search, but offers PhD levels of technical specificity. It is refreshing to use a reference book that does not treat you like an idiot. Concepts like bus, CPU, and networking are assumed so this is not a “Tech for Dummies” book. The entries that you will find always start basically, but then contain enough technical detail to let you get the job done.
I have never once found a networking or computer term older than two years that was not contained in this book. That makes it as thorough as I and you need. Its inclusion of very old terms and tech has saved my bacon on a number of occasions when I needed to refresh, discover, or come up-to-speed on a protocol that I had forgotten or never seen before. This can be a real life saver if you are working in an enterprise that might be upgrade challenged like government or education. This tome can be your guide to the outmoded, but fully functioning standards that are often found there.
My only constructive criticisms of this fine work are twofold. First, I wish that it was available in color. The black and white drawings are reminiscent of the dictionaries that it is named after, but leave you wanting for more. Color would enhance the product. Second, a reference like this almost needs to be updated on a yearly basis like the Encyclopedias used to be. With the accelerating pace of technology development, a four year gap can create chasms in knowledge of the latest and greatest. I would pay for more frequent updates to the work. [UPDATE: Since I initially drafted this review, it has been announced that The Newton Telecom Dictionary is now going to be updated and published annually! I guess that I was not the only one who had this recommendation. Another great example of the quality of this group’s dedication to their core customers.]
If you are an information professional, manage them, or consult for them, this reference is one that you should have access to. Besides filling in when you forget, introducing you when you have never seen, and teaching you new things, this book can serve as your super-geek when needed. I highly recommend the Newton’s Telecom Dictionary.
This is my Information Technology (IT) Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for October 6, 2009.
Image credit: Amazon.com