The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine

Just finished The Male Brain by Louann Brizendine.

I was very surprised at how much I liked this book and how good it was. I can't remember who recommended it or why I picked it up because it's not the sort of thing I would have normally read.

I particularly enjoyed the section about the teenage male brain. Finally I don't feel so guilty about the way that I behaved when I was a teenager, I was wired to behave that way.

I believe that the male brain is a sequel to The Female Brain which I have not read and I'm not sure if you need to read it after reading The Male Brain. I say this because at every stage of life she compares and contrasts the male brain to the female brain so you're really learning about both and their differences.

At the end of the day the reason why we act the way that we do is because we have these chemicals marinating our brains and pushing us back towards the stone age man.

Drive: The Truth About What Motivates Us

Another audio book finished: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

Excellent book! If you've read any of the books mentioned in previous blog posts you will notice that you've already heard many of the examples that he uses. He quotes experiments done by Dan Ariely in Predictably Irrational and also uses many of the same examples as him. He also quotes the oft quoted Wikipedia example which I'm getting tired of.

In Drive, Dan discusses what motivates us and demonstrates that extrinsic motivators, if - then rewards, only work on routine tasks and have a negative impact on creative work which require intrinsic motivators.

He talks about a new "Operating System" for business revolving around the three elements of Autonomy, Master, and Purpose.

Autonomy - people want to direct their own lives.

Mastery - we want to get better and become experts or go-to-guys for something that matters.

Purpose - that what we are doing is in the service of something larger than ourselves, something meaningful.

I think that as a software engineer it's pretty easy to be in a job that satisfies the first two elements. Most development work is based around results and we're given the autonomy to produce those results. We have to master the subject to be able to do the job. Those are a given. I think that the job of software engineer might fall short when it comes to purpose and it's sometimes difficult to see the big picture of what you're contributing to.

Concepts that I enjoyed from this book

FedEx Days - Australian software company Atlassian give their employees a FedEx day once a quarter. Engineers start work on a Thursday evening at 5pm and have to deliver something by 5pm on the Friday - i.e. have to deliver something overnight - hence FedEx - so long as it has nothing to do with their regular job.

Google 20% Time - 20% of your time is spent working on a project that might benefit the company but has nothing to do with your day-to-day work. Similar to FedEx Days but you're given 1 day a week to do this instead of a 24-hour period once a quarter.

ROWE - Results Only Work Environment. No schedule, don't need to be in the office, meetings are optional. Personally I think that you have to have the right type of employee to make this work.

You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself

Recently finished listening to the audio version of You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself by Harry Beckwith.

There was nothing in this book that I could disagree with. It all made perfect sense. The main takeaway that the book kept on hinting at was to look around you and take note of who impresses you, how they do it and why. Same applies to companies. Compare people to each other. Why does Jill impress you and Nancy not as much? Nancy knows more, speaks better, and is friendlier but she wears jeans and T-shirts to work. Jill is always wearing a business suit, that's all it takes. This is of course a contrived and simple example but it highlights how we are always selling ourselves in everything we do, say, wear and eat.

Sex, politics and religion

It seems that I have known forever that you don't talk about sex, politics, and religion in formal environments. I once attended a lunch with 7 journalists and during the first 30 minutes of lunch all that was talked about was sex, politics and religion. When I jokingly pointed this out they said that as journalists they could talk about anything at anytime. So maybe this rule doesn't apply to journalists. However, it definitely applies to all work environments that I have been in and I have seen some interesting mistakes through slight of tongue on these three forbidden topics.

Apart from listening to this book I also have the hard copy. One thing that I didn't realize about it while listening to it is that it's made up of lots of short one page chapters. Easy vignettes that can each be read in 30 seconds. This is a great book to keep in the lavatory - if that isn't awesome praise then nothing is.

Strengths Finder 2.0

Just finished doing the test and reading the book for Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath.

This is an interesting "book" to read from the point of view that the book is only "usable" by one person. You cannot gift the book after you've read it. The book starts off with 30 pages of introduction which are fairly quickly put behind you and effectively convince you of the merits of continuing. You then turn to the back of the book and cut open the packet which has your unique access code to the strengthsfinder 2.0 assessment and website. Using this one-off code you do the 30 to 40 minute test online and this spits out top 5 strengths. Mine are:

• Learner
• Activator
• Analytical
• Achiever
• Focus

Once you have the list your then read the 5 Themes and Ideas for Action from the list of 34 themes and actions in the next part of the book. These themes explain how these strengths impact who you are, give some quotes from real world people who share those attributes, and finally some action points that will help you leverage those strengths. There are also a few action points for working with people who have those strengths.

Learner

Your are energized by the steady and deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. Understand how you best learn (me: by doing). Track progress when you're learning and find opportunities to do courses and further yourself.

Activator

You learn more from real experience than from theoretical discussions. Most developers (software engineers) would fall into the activator category as I think that most of us "click" when we do rather than when taught or reading.

Analytical

Prove to me that this is true. "Show me the money." I'm not going to believe your theories until you've demonstrated to me that they have some sound validity. Objective and dispassionate.

Partner with someone with strong Activator talents. This person's impatience will move you more quickly through the analytical phase into the action phase. (This means, I think, that I should partner with myself.)

Achiever

You feel as if every day starts at zero. By the end of the day you must achieve something tangible in order to feel good about yourself. And by "every day" you mean every single day...

I completely agree with this assessment and how it applies to me. I also agree with the statement that the feeling of achievement is short lived and I need to start looking for the next item. In general I agree with the action items and considering the Learner I have to accept that the "attain certifications" item is going to have to now be on my list.

Focus

You stay on the main road and don't wander off down alleys that don't benefit the final goal. You are goal orientated and driven. You must have a purpose and goal to focus on. Include time-lines and measurements in goals.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

I recently finished reading Linchpin by Seth Godin. This is a great read and packed with insight. The full title is Linchpin - Are you Indispensable?

I found the book from reading Seth's blog which I try and read daily but usually catch-up with it on weekends.

The crux of the book is about how some employees are able to do anything. They are the go-to guys who seem to know someone or something that can get the job done and have the talent for making it happening. They are the linchpins.

A lot of the book discusses art and the generosity on non-reciprocal giving. I've read a number of books like this lately and the one example that keeps on coming up is Wikipedia and I have to say that this example has been overdone many times. Perhaps it's still relevant and perhaps it's the largest and best known example of its time but I would like to see some other examples apart from Wikipedia.

Seth is a big fan of shipping and doing so on time. He's right and to get a product to market you have to ship. Don't look for perfection or you will never ship.

Even Faster Web Sites

Just been reading Even Faster Web Sites. I had never heard of comet before I read this but it makes sense and I'm looking forward to trying it.

Comet is a long-held HTTP request allows a web server to push data to a browser, without the browser explicitly requesting it.

I was a little bit surprised that the book only gave two pages to CSS Sprites. My testing shows that sprites can significantly improve web site load times if the site has multiple small images coming from the server.

Web app efficiently is going to start playing a more and more significant role as we return to the mainframe model with cloud computing. Many of the cloud computing providers are charging by processor cycles so the fewer of these your app uses the less expensive it is to run in the cloud. On top of that because you are processing your requests faster your site will be more competitive.

Predictably Irrational

I've just finished reading Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. This is a great book that applies to everyone and should be required reading before you leave school. Everyone is guilty of being irrational in their decisions and some of us continue to do it everyday even though we know that it's stupid and, yes, irrational.

One of the stories that I loved was the pen and the suit comparison. If you were buying a pen and saw it on sale for $30 and knew that you could buy it across town for $23 then you'd likely jump in your car, make the drive, and save yourself that $7. However, if you were buying a suit for $400 and the same applied you're highly unlikely to make the same trip to buy the suit for $393. Why would you do that.

One of my favorite experiments that they did was that with Lindt Truffles and Hershey's Kisses. They priced the Truffles and Kisses at 15 and 1 cents respectfully and found that 73% of customers chose the Truffles. They were willing to pay that extra 14 cents to get a superior product. However, when the dropped the price by 1 cent and made the Kisses free then suddenly everything reversed and 69% of customers took the free Kiss over the Truffle even though the price differential of 14 cents was still there.