Category: Book

It is now for sale

The first copy of the photo book is good looking and beautifully printed, so I think it is time to make it public and available for sale online in Blurb.com. One can pick up a copy of the book with soft cover, hardcover with or without dust jacket.

Frankly, I don’t expect to sell any, but the experience in learning how to publish a book on demand is great.

Around the world in 80 photos

My first photo book

This beauty finally arrived from the mail and it looks absolutely gorgeous. It took altogether 4 weeks to finish and here are the details:

  • Day 01 – download the free software BookSmart from Blurb.com
  • Day 02 – starts the “design” of the book … and it lasts 15 days, as I needed to select the photos, add some, remove some; and searched the information of the place thru the web. It took a long time !!
  • Day 15 – upload the finished book to the web site and place order
  • Day 28 – it’s here !!

Book cover

Inside the book

Getting things done, again

According to the productivity guru David Allen, we shall re-read his book Getting Things Done every three to six months – to see if we can learn something new. But after reading his book two times in the past already, it is not easy to pick up the book again. So this time I tried the audiobook version of the book, narrated by David himself. With only 3 CDs in this audiobook, it is really easy to finish it. And here are the three main points of GTD again, for your pleasure:

  1. Keep everything out of your head;
  2. Regular review and update the complete inventory of open loops of your life and work;
  3. Decide actions and outcomes when things first emerge on your radar, instead of later.

Plain and simple, isn’t it ? Unfortunately, It takes a long time to master it …


I will not be broken

Last week hundreds of thousands people went through their lives’ worst setback, it is about time to search for recovery and reclaim their lives. According to the book, I Will Not Be Broken, there are five key stages of overcoming a crisis:

  • First, face the facts. “None of us will get very far without first examining our circumstances, relationships, and feelings. We will need to be ruthless in our self-assessment.”
  • Second, we need to choose life, not death. “We must consciously choose for our lives to go on in a positive way.” We can choose happiness and create options for a positive future.
  • The third step is to reach out because no one thrives in isolation.”We have to let people in our life into our life.”
  • Next, we need to get moving, to think of the future and develop a plan for achieving goals.
  • Finally, step five is to give back. “You must give to a community in order to belong to a community. You can become a volunteer, a community leader, a donor, a social change agent, a future peer supporter.”

Project management for the layman

I am sure many of us already mastered the use of Microsoft Project – we can produce good-looking Glant charts, critical path diagrams and even resource utilization reports. But I am also pretty sure that most (if not all) of us don’t know how to manage a project, even with the powerful Microsoft Project software.

So what can you do to manage a project, if you are not a professional project manager ? The books “Getting things done” and “The 4-hour workweek” both suggested one simple method to manage your projects … here is it:

  1. Write down the name of the project;
  2. Write down the goal or desired outcome of the project;
  3. Then, spend some time, think about the project for a little while … then;
  4. Write down the possible next step to do … to achieve the goal / desired outcome;
  5. Lastly (!), go ahead to do that “next step” and repeat from the step 3 above.

Believe me, it is simple, it works, and it keep things moving !! Give it a try and tell me what you think.