Category: Book

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.

Made to stick

Finished the book Presentation Zen (see below) some time ago but still I was puzzled by one thing. That is, even we can create the most eye-catching slides with today’s advance graphic software, but how can we make the message we send across stick in the audiences’ minds ? It’s the reason we do the presentation, isn’t it ?

That’s why I bought the book Made To Stick (again, see below) and I am glad to tell you all that it’s a very good read. This book outlines a very practical approach to increase a message’s “stickiness”, and it’s called SUCCESs:

  • Simple — find the core of any idea
  • Unexpected — grab people’s attention by surprising them
  • Concrete — make sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
  • Credibility — give an idea believability
  • Emotion — help people see the importance of an idea
  • Stories — empower people to use an idea through narrative

Except some minor irrelevant sections in the last chapter, the book is very well written and included many good references and case studies. So if you want to improve your presentation, don’t miss these two books !!