Books

my whole summer vacation this year is a week by the sea. however, I was able anyway to catch up my reading backlog from last few weeks - books put aside and waiting patiently in their queue. so let’s go faster this time, but through the whole list: Matthew Syed - The black box method - a great book describing the process of correcting errors; it starts with aviation, which over the last decades has led to a dramatic increase in flight safety. then we are moving to medicine and other sectors. methodical research, inference and drawing conclusions, sometimes contrary to incumbent ’experts’, allows not only to increase security but also to push our understanding of reality and facts forward. great book. ...

some of us know it better, some worse, and the rest haven’t heard or thought about it (or claims “i don’t need it”) work ‘in the zone’ got popular immediately after world ended being enchanted by open spaces and mandatory offices, and got back to using rooms or - in XXI century - in “home offices”. the fact that giants like Facebook or Apple still build huge offices and promote unconstrained mobility, availability and capability to forget about home given work is the most important thing you can do (hence “socializing” is as well), doesn’t change too much. most of us fares better when we can isolate ourselves from noise and constant interruptions (not to mention all kind of viruses, so proficiently distributed in todays offices by AC). ...

after stumbling upon Farnam Street blog, i found another one - that of Mark Manson. and i found it thanks to The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck article. after reviewing this short list i realized how many of those advices i could give to myself seven years ago. it’s worth to read. and think.

“Picture a tall, dark figure, surrounded by cornfields… NO, YOU CAN’T RIDE A CAT. WHO EVER HEARD OF THE DEATH OF RATS RIDING A CAT? THE DEATH OF RATS WOULD RIDE SOME KIND OF DOG. Picture more fields, a great horizon-spanning network of fields, rolling in gentle waves… DON’T ASK ME I DON’T KNOW. SOME KIND OF TERRIER, MAYBE. …fields of corn, alive, whispering in the breeze… RIGHT, AND THE DEATH OF FLEAS CAN RIDE IT TOO. THAT WAY YOU KILL TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE. …awaiting the clockwork of the seasons. METAPHORICALLY.” ...

from everything read up to date and noted as worth reading: Think like a freak - great set of anecdotes coming strait from author real experiences. there’s a lot of examples that if you don’t know that something can’t be done - you’ll succeed and amaze people around you. so called “ground truths” are serious problem those days. in most of the cases because people have very shallow knowledge or lack it - so can be easily manipulated. Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics - both good ones, driving such simply yet powerful narrative through our world economy First, break all the rules - interesting one, targeted at people managing other people. a lot of interesting examples, recommendations (4 generic and 12 worth more attention) and a lot of survey results. you could imagine all of that is well known - but it isn’t, believe me. fresh look can save you a lot of problems Dealers of lightning - fascinating story about Xerox PARC. you’ll find a lot of familiar names that extended ideas taken from their time at Xerox, including way of thinking and innovation approach that we could only imagine here in Poland Tankists - “true” history of 1st Armor Bridge. worth reading to understand both context of our popular TV series but also get a clue about how decisions were made on tactical and strategic level during second world war Command & Control - book that mixes narrative of real accident with a lot of background information about nuclear warfare in US. this is accompanied by information about how knowledge and experience shaped operations and helped to avoid errors. it’s worth reading, as nuclear weapons are hard to get right, with a lot of misconceptions. i’m still fascinated by Fight Club. with quotes like ‘Losing all hope was freedom’ it’s book that should be read couple of times. and think it over. ...

as I read a lot of books, at some point I decided to share those worth mentioning here. partly so you can see what I’m reading, partly - to have a good summary about those books. let’s start - over last two weeks I’ve managed to read: How Google tests software - great book for everyone that deals with software development, process optimization or simply building their own company. it demonstrates how important is to get feedback from users, and how hard it is to built whole compliance system right from the beginning. on the other side, the things Google builds and rebuilds - are usually masterpieces Elements of networking style supposedly a classic book, written in very difficult language. it’s worth to read just for the sake of it, but there’s nothing very interesting or suprising inside What If - great book authored by xkcd.com geek. highly recommended! on top of that, I’ve found recently great company selling stickers - stickermule. if you’re in that kind of things, we have polish startup providing printing services. they’re doing this on t-shirts - TeetBee. ...

it seems that F-35 can’t end it’s failure series. despite GAO audits, model of building military equipment for biggest army in the world didn’t change a bit since end of second world war. they’re still ordering and building things that will bring maximum revenue to military vendors and not what military customers actually need. i immediately got back to one of the articles i’ve read recently in ACM Queue - responsive enterprise: embracing the hacker way. it’s great piece and synthezies todays world - not only corporations are dinosaurs of our current times. a big portion of industry is. on normal market, companies that can adapt or use feedback loop tu build better and better products thrive. and those, who need years and still are not able to produce competitive products should vanish in history books. ...

…gave me food for thought. i counted 18 books in different places around my house, that i was trying to read at the same time. today in the morning i decided it doesn’t make any sense, and it’s exactly the opposite approach i should take. so, books landed in stack, into nice queue. i’ll be reading two books at the same time from today onwards - starting with ’essentialism’ and Pratchetts ‘Raising Steam’. ...

…i’m reading right now an interesting book - Essentialism. it beatifully demonstrates how to decide where it is worth to invest your time and energy. and it gives you great framework for doing just that. another theory, you’ll say? well, 37signals, builders of the great web apps announced they’ll… drop all other projects and focus on only one - Basecamp. that’s how you put theory to practice. by the way - i highly recommend all of the 37signals books, they’re great source of proven advices how to build your own business and how to choose paths in life. ...

let me quote book i’m reading now: A quick hypothesis: say one million monkeys speculate on the stock market. They buy and sell stocks like crazy and, of course, completely at random. What happens? After one week, about half of the monkeys will have made a profit and the other half a loss. The ones that made a profit stay; the ones that made a loss you send home. In the second week, one half of the monkeys will still be riding high, while the other half will have made a loss and are sent home. And so on. After ten weeks, about 1000 monkeys will be left - those who have always invested their money well. After twenty weeks, just one monkey will remain - this one always, without fail, chose the right stocks and is now a bilionaire. Let’s call him the success monkey. ...