Unstuff Your Life!

by Andrew J. Mellen.

"One home for everything and like with like."

Some books have one thought; everything else is detail, evidence, implications or padding.

The author pursues his thought, "One home for everything and like with like" to its logical extremes, in the kitchen, the office, the closet, the basement. All the wile he assures us the we are not our stuff, that we will feel better without it.

The New Articulate Executive

By Granville Toogood. Does it sound pretentions that I read this?

I skimmed through it really. There is a large section on working with teleprompters and being infront of cameras that I just didn't need.

I will probably go over the rest of the book again. It has a lot of good information on how to talk. I say talk and not present because the book is kind of anti-presentation. Too often people deliver a presentation that doesn't involve the people who are listening.

When you speak...

• Get to the point. In fact, make your point first and not as the conclusion.
• Don't wing it. Prepare.
• People will judge you by poor grammer and spelling mistakes. They are not that hard to eliminate, so put some effort into it.
• If you talk for longer than 18 minutes, then people will loose interest.
• If you are using Powerpoint, then don't use word slides unless you really have to. Don't read from the Powerpoint.
• Start talking about the next slide before you present it. This will show that you are talking about something you know and not reacting to the Powerpoint.

Blackberry Planet

By Alastair Sweeny.

The story of Research in Motion. From their early days, to their current market dominance. Rather than being told as a narrative, the book contains dozens of short stories about different aspects of the company-- how they formed, the people who use them, their patent woes, quest for market dominance, etc.

How to measure anything.

By Douglas W. Hubbard

I need to re-read this at some point. It's a useful book. Much of it covers how to practically use slightly advanced statistics.

It is better to be approximately right than exactly wrong. When you want to measure something, ask what decisions the measurements will drive. When you answer that question, you will probably discover that you don't need as much accuracy as you think.

Measure in terms of ranges, say the 90% confidence interval, and not by specific numbers. Specifics hide the amount of error you have and give you a false sense of accuracy.

Try guessing a 90% confidence interval by asking yourself two questions. What number is the answer probably larger than, but possibly not? What number is the answer probably less then, but probably not?

If you have 5 samples, the 90% confidence interval is between the largest and smallest sample.

If you have 8 samples, the 90% confidence interval is between the 2nd largest and the 2nd smallest sample.

Beware of using weighted scores to make decisions. Your biases can compound instead of cancel out. For exmaple, four one star movies do not provide the same happieness as as one four star movie.