I Learnt

How I learnt about not compromising

December 12, 2023

I have just finished re-reading the book The Spark, a fictional account of a sports agent and his journey to learn about Cirque de Soleil from the inside.

Favourite books

November 25, 2023

The top shelf of books in my study has the books that have had the most impact on me or that I have enjoyed reading the most.

The joy and dilemma of reading

November 24, 2023

I read a lot of books. Last year I read over 50 books and this year I am heading towards 40 books.

The right question

June 28, 2023

I’ve written a lot about questions, and answers.

In the book Questions are the answer there is a quote from Peter Drucker:

Pressure and stress

June 27, 2023

We often equate pressure with stress and vice versa.

This article has a nice definition of the difference:

Mind - not time - management

June 25, 2023

Being productive is sometimes more about mind management than time management.

In 2018, Andrew Barnes’ company, Perpetual Guardians, permanently introduced a four day week (FDW). The staff would get 100% pay but work 80% of the time as long as they hit 100% of their productivity goals.

Bad estimation

June 18, 2023

Estimation is a very difficult task - depending on what is being estimated.

Delete your meetings

June 17, 2023

Could you be bold enough to delete all the meetings in your calendar?

Be surprised

June 14, 2023

When I am developing software I build an internal mental model of how I expect things to work. As I learn more I tweak that model - or if it is not working as I expect then I tweak the code to match the model I have. Over time that model grows and evolves.

Art - theft, forgery and wow

June 13, 2023

I am not an artist and I have limited knowledge of art but I recently enjoyed a TV series and I am currently reading a book related to the subject.

How might we

June 10, 2023

The simple use of the phrase “how might we” can open up design discussions and improve company mission statements.

Value other peoples time

June 8, 2023

Maybe it is my upbringing but I always try to be on time for things.

Helping habits happen

June 2, 2023

In the book Excellent Advice for Living, Kevin Kelly identifies the importance of habits.

Moving from 'can't' to 'learning to do'

May 31, 2023

It is easy to decide that you can’t do something.

Don't be afraid to ask the stupid question

May 30, 2023

Ego and the fear of how we appear to others can get in the way sometimes. We don’t want to appear stupid so we avoid finding out things we don’t know.

The upstream butterfly effect

May 26, 2023

The butterfly effect famously states that the flapping of the wings of a butterfly somewhere in the world can impact the weather on the other side of the world - a small change can have a huge impact over time.

Downstream to upstream

May 25, 2023

How do we move from solving downstream reactive problems to upstream proactive solutions?

Why gossiping can impact you

May 19, 2023

In the book 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman he talks about an effect called “Spontaneous Trait Transference”.

Sweets can make a difference

May 18, 2023

My daughter sometimes works as a waitress at the local Pizza Express. If she has a good night then sometimes she can earn more in tips than her wages (although that is not very often).

Which bird are you?

May 8, 2023

I am a lark.

In the book Time Wise by Amantha Imber she discusses the three main types of people and their alertness through various times of the day. It impacts when they are most productive for certain types of tasks. This has been written about in numerous other places but she summarises it really well:

Alarms lost in the noise

May 7, 2023

Adding an alert or alarm for a situation you need to monitor should be a good thing but sometimes, depending on how it is done, it can actually make things worse or at a minimum not work as expected.

Armada by Ernest Cline

May 5, 2018

Took me a little while to get into this book. It starts out in a school where a pupil spots a spaceship from his favourite video game. This then moves on to it being a precursor to an invasion by the aliens from the video game and the game itself was actually put together as training so the players could pilot drones in the war. A slightly surreal concept but pretty well executed. The “twist” with the main characters dad is a bit contrived but overall not a bad read - enjoyed it more as it went along. Not as good as Ready Player One.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

May 5, 2018

I had read a lot of good things about this book and it had sat on my Kindle for a long time. Really enjoyed the first half of the book but thought the second half was more focused on things that weren’t relevant to me. There were some statements made that were clearly opinions but were stated as facts. Overall a bit disappointing.

Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard P. Rumelt

March 17, 2018

I’ve had this book a while but never got around to reading it properly. One of my colleagues at work was listening to the audio version of it and recommended it. This was an excellent read and very relevant to what is happening at the company I am working at at the moment. For me the key takeaway was that what most people call strategy is not actually strategy but vision or goals. Strategy is setting a direction and what needs to happen to achieve it. The observations about the approaches of Walmart and Cisco were particularly good.

Blackout by Marc Elsberg

February 26, 2018

This story documents one scenario that could happen when the nightmare happens of a massive power cut across Europe. It starts with a number of threads and weaves them well together. It follows an Italian as he realizes it is a terrorist attack on the smart power meters. This destabilizes the power grid which takes down most of the grid across Europe. A second attack targets the power plants. This leads to a power cut across Europe that lasts days and the storyline of how they track down the cause and the perpetrators.

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

February 17, 2018

I really liked Simon Sinek’s other books but didn’t get into this one as much - don’t get me wrong, it is still an excellent read and you can learn a lot.

Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

February 8, 2018

I was really looking forward to this book as I had listened to a podcast where they explained the ideas behind it. The two authors run a design course in Stanford that gets massively oversubscribed and has a huge impact on those who take it by looking at life as a design problem. The aim is to come up with lots of possible routes for your life that could be awesome and then design a path to achieve one of them. If that doesn’t work you can use the same approach to look for new opportunities. I have not yet made the time to do the exercises and these are absolutely key to getting the most out of it.

The Kubernetes Book by Nigel Poulton

February 2, 2018

At the moment I am having to get up to speed on a bunch of technologies relating to “DevOps”. This includes Kubernetes. I borrowed this book from a colleague and read it over the course of two days commuting. It provides a very good high level overview of all the main concepts of the platform.

When The Game Was Ours by Jackie MacMullan, Larry Bird, and Magic Johnson

January 31, 2018

On 12th June 1984 I was on a family holiday in the US. We had spent three weeks travelling around Florida and then up the east coast to finally end up in Boston. During the day we had a guided tour of the city and we were told that it was game seven of the NBA finals that night between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers.