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By Krishna, January 7, 2009

I have been a huge fan of Project Gutenberg since I first landed on it a decade ago. This is one of the earliest and largest Internet projects, comparable to Wikipedia, though garnering significantly less publicity than most. Project Gutenberg is the largest collection of free electronic books and, very importantly, an entirely legal collection, as all the books are in the public domain in the United States. The site closely tracks the US copyright laws, which get changed every once in a while, to accommodate Disney and other content creators. If you are living outside the US, there are Gutenberg affiliates such as Gutenberg Australia that cater to regional copyright law.

Project Gutenberg has evolved over the years. It now has an audio books section. I find the human-read audio books to be of higher quality than the computer-generated audio books, only because the humans understand the context of the sentences and place the right emphasis on the right words. Of course, the quality of different human authors can vary too. The non-fiction books are the best, because they lack dialogue which can be a challenge for even the best narrator. You probably need a bunch of narrators to read a fiction book, something on the lines of a radio play such as the one by Orson Welles.

In addition to audio, you can also get the material on the Gutenberg site in different formats. Although the original philosophy of the site was ASCII-only, they have now relented to have HTML versions of the books as well as Plucker files for smartphones. You can also get entire CDs and DVDs filled with books sent to you, though with the greater bandwidth nowadays, it is not as attractive an option as it was during the AOL dial-in days.

With 27000 free e-books at Project Gutenberg (and 100,000 at its affiliates), the problem is not finding something to read. It is about finding the time and convenience to read. I enjoy lying curled up in bed with a book, and so have not been a fan of reading full books on a computer screen. Recently, however, I found Daily Lit, a site that packages short installments of books and sends them to you via email or RSS. Reading a few pages of a book every day in Google Reader isn’t so bad, though it does take quite a few days to get through a book. A minor grouch I have is that the installments break off without much attention to the beginning or end of chapters.

Project Gutenberg doesn’t have many non-fiction books, though there are some interesting ones like “Amusements in Mathematics” and historically relevant ones like “The Origin of Species”. For obvious reasons, it does not have many technology or business related material unless you count books by Adam Smith. But if you are looking for fiction, especially classics, this is the place to go.

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By Krishna, December 24, 2008

To continue a tradition from last year, I am once again listing the best and worst books I read this year. Many of these were not actually published this year, but I got around to reading them only in 2008. I read almost 70 books, but that includes a significant percentage of fiction books this time around. Still, there are enough books to fill both lists.

Best books I read in 2008

• Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston: This book is a compilation of interviews with some of the renowned names in the computer/software industry such as Steve Wozniak, Ray Ozzie, Joel Spolsky, David Heinemeier Hansson, etc. Livingston does a great job of selecting the most prominent founders and asking the right questions.
• Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et al.: A book on how to handle tough conversations and negotiations, especially when there are important items at stake. Many people, who are good at regular conversation, cannot handle an adversarial discussion without it disintegrating into nastiness. This book provides a good framework for handling such situations.
• The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb: The standard investment warning is, “Results in the past are not an indicator of those in the future”. Taleb explains why with amazing clarity about randomness and uncertainty. One caveat: The author goes off the rails ranting against his detractors. Ignore those and just focus on the ideas. You may also want to check out Taleb’s “Fooled by Randomness ”.
• Irrational Exuberance (2nd edition), by Robert Shiller: Shiller gets 2 out of 2 right – he predicted the technology bubble in the first edition of this book and the 2nd edition includes a discussion of the real estate bubble before it burst. It is a pity more people weren’t paying attention to what he and others (like Peter Schiff) were saying.
• Influence, by Robert Cialdini: In some ways, this is a creepy book. It explains how people can be influenced or manipulated to act according to the desires of the influencers by various techniques such as artificial deadlines or use of authority figures. It redeems itself by explaining how you can learn to say “no” even when subject to such techniques.

Honorable mentions go to Presentation Zen (Garr Reynolds), The Art of the Start (Guy Kawasaki), Crossing the Chasm (Geoffrey Moore) and Refactoring (Martin Fowler). A great book that straddles the line between fiction and non-fiction is the excellent labor of love by James Kakalios, The Physics of Superheroes.

My favorite author for 2008 is Peter Drucker (Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Managing in Turbulent Times). I find it incredible how much of what he says still remains relevant today. Of course, he doesn’t predict everything right, but there are more hits than misses.

Worst books I read in 2008

• The Art of Influence, by Chris Widener: The book is an insult to any self-respecting reader, as it tries to package its lessons using a ridiculous made-up story. And you know what I think about made-up stories.
• The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber: Apparently, this is the 2nd edition of the book (I haven’t read the 1st edition). It starts off well with a reasonable-sounding diagnosis of problems afflicting small entrepreneurs. But its use of a special case (franchises), a narrator acting as a know-all, end-all, and a heavy dose of sentimentalism kills the rest of the book.
• Blue Ocean Strategy, by Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne: Alright, I have already ranted about this.
• The Myths of Innovation, by Scott Berkun: I like Berkun – he posts some good articles on his blog. But this book is really unworthy of him. It has no soul or meaning. It feels almost as if he wrote up a bulleted list of myths and then started expanding them into chapters. Here is a thought experiment: Take the heading of every chapter, and reverse the meaning (creating the opposite myth) – You can find enough evidence to justify the exact opposite of this book, but get no closer to innovation.
• Little Red Book of Sales Answers, by Jeffrey Gitomer: Gitomer is a great salesperson. That is why his books are getting sold. It doesn’t mean that they have any substance or depth, just the necessary flash to lure book-buyers. By its very nature (short, simplified book), it avoids all the hard questions asked by struggling salespersons. If you need inspiration (and some real answers), simply read Seth Godin.

A book that didn’t make the top 5 worst books was The Build Master (Vincent Maraia), which I spared because it was not necessarily a bad book, just an incomplete one. I think there should be a larger book (maybe a few hundred pages) that explores build practices for different types of applications in various environments.

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By Krishna, June 2, 2008

I was chatting with my friend the other day and we got talking about vocabulary. In his case, he was interested in some short-term solutions to the problem because of an approaching exam. I didn’t have many ideas at that time, but later, I came up with some thoughts:

• Read political writing in blogs and newspaper editorials. The writing is generally done by trained journalists who are very good writers. Politics also covers a wide variety of topics (economics, law, etc.) and you will be exposed to many different words in short time. Any of the major newspapers (liberal or conservative) or magazines would do the trick as long as you consistently read them. Blogs are even more convenient. Reading a few articles daily takes just a few minutes, but pays a high dividend.
• An easy book to learn big words is Norman Lewis’s “Word Power Made Easy“. It contains several exercises and mnemonics. I suppose there are many similar books in the same category to improve vocabulary, but this is the only one I have read. My recommendation is to get at least one book in the category and work through it.

Short-term vocabulary improvement requires making a conscious, active effort at learning. This can mean writing down new words that you are unfamiliar with and looking them up in a dictionary. You should try to use these new words in your writing or speech until you become comfortable with them. Sometimes, a poor choice of words may result in embarrassment, but such problems come with the territory when you are in learning mode.

A long-term commitment to improving vocabulary can be passive. The easiest way is to read whenever you can and your subconscious mind will automatically learn new words. Fictional works will introduce you to generic, but obscure words, while non-fiction will give you jargon, terminology specific to the area you are reading. The trick is repetition. The more often you see a word, the more your brain understands the context and is able to notice it then and recall it at a later time.

Writing is a good way to strengthen your knowledge of words. You don’t have to write articles or blogs to do this. It could be as simple as trying to write better emails to people, or writing full sentences when you exchange instant messages with someone. You could use the opportunities when you are asked to prepare any written material (say technical documentation) to use the words that you come across.

Listening to famous speeches and podcasts is another way to improve recognition of words, the only problem being that it is sometimes inconvenient to interrupt your listening and record the new words that you are hearing. Joining a Toastmasters Club or a local debating association will also help you improve vocabulary skills (and of course, your speech-making capability). Public speaking forces you to be structured and accurate with your words. In addition, you also get to hear talented speakers.

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By Krishna, March 27, 2008

When it comes to managing one’s strengths and weaknesses, there are different schools of thought. Some people are of the opinion that weaknesses are areas of improvement and it pays to work on them. The contrary point of view is that we should focus on improving and taking advantage of strengths rather than trying to reduce weaknesses.

Focusing on strengths and working at a job where you can utilize your talents and skills makes sense on different levels. You can be much more productive and have a greater chance of obtaining successful results. Success at your job can provide greater satisfaction in both tangible and intangible ways. Strengths usually have a snowball effect, i.e., the better you are at something, the more you are likely to learn and improve upon them.

Of course, you don’t have to be dependent on your job to receive satisfaction. Many skills can be used at hobbies, which provide an outlet for greater creativity and fun. Many personal qualities can be channeled into productive activities within your community, helping people in the best way you know.

But let us look at the limitations with only focusing on improving strengths:

1. The snowball effect does not continue forever. At some point, you hit a point of diminishing returns from improving your strengths. This is usually a function of external circumstances. For example, while the best programmer may be 10 times more productive than the worst programmers, they never get paid at the same ratio. High rates of improvement may not be possible because of stagnation or lack of innovation in your industry. This is not true of the technology industry, but many other sectors are conservative and not receptive to or do not generate new ideas.
2. People often confuse managing their strengths and weaknesses with managing other people’s strengths and weaknesses. As a manager, it is advantageous to place people in situations which make maximum use of their strengths and reduce any risks caused by their weaknesses. All things considered, you cannot force people to change their personality and hence this is your best option. But when it comes to you, you do have a choice to do something about your weaknesses, such as creating a process around you to prevent problems.
3. You cannot expect other people to accept your weaknesses and put you in a situation where only your strengths matter. That may be the wise thing for those people to do, but often, they don’t do it and you don’t have a choice. Nobody loves you for what you are. They always love you for what you will become (or what they imagine you to be). And that means change. There will be many aspects of your job that will require you to overcome certain weaknesses. A new opportunity that closely matches your strengths may also mean managing some of your failings. You cannot be perfect, nor can you improve upon everything, but you may have to work hard on some aspects of your personality.
4. Many people also tend to confuse strengths and weaknesses with likes and dislikes, leading to premature dismissal of anything distasteful. Some jobs or tasks may take great advantage of the person’s strengths, but the person takes time to realize this. Often, the cause is bad training or a bad trainer. You can see this in the school system where some students fail at everything, even though it is conceivable that they may succeed in jobs requiring one or more of those subjects.
5. Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses is an imprecise science. For example, consider the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and its different personality types. Even setting aside concerns about reliability and accuracy, people may end up making mistakes in answering an MBTI questionnaire, and think that they have strengths and weaknesses that they do not possess. This may drive them to make incorrect choices about their career and what they do at their jobs.

Nothing is ever static. As industries evolve and the nature of jobs change, strengths that may have worked for you in the past are no longer as helpful. Long-term neglect of weaknesses may create a crisis situation. To avoid that, pay some attention to your weak spots regularly. Constantly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses with respect to your present career path and make necessary adjustments to avoid big corrections in the future.

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By Krishna, December 24, 2007

I read around 65 non-fiction books in 2007. Here are the lists for the best and worst books I read. Some of them may have been published prior to 2007, but the best books seldom get outdated and the worst never get better over time.

Best books I read in 2007

• The No Asshole Rule, by Robert Sutton: The title that resonates with nearly everyone who has ever had a job. The most timely book of the year.
• The Halo Effect, by Phil Rosenzweig: The theory described in this book invalidates popular ideas about what makes a company great and profitable. My review here.
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith: How your behavioral failings at the executive level can hurt you, and how to start fixing them.
• Peopleware, by Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister: How to manage knowledge workers: A must for every software project manager.
• Coping with Difficult People, by Robert M. Bramson: This is a much older book from 1988, but is worth the read as it talks about the different difficult behaviors exhibited by people in the workplace and how to cope with them.

Honorable mention goes to Barack Obama’s non-political autobiography “Dreams from My Father” (2004). Poetic!

There are a few books I should have read years ago and finally managed to get around to them this year. They include “Code Complete 2” (Steve McConnell), “The Goal” (Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox), and “Freedom at Midnight” (Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins). All great reads.

My favorite authors for 2007 are Steve McConnell (Code Complete and Software Estimation) and Robert Sutton (The No Asshole Rule and “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense”).

The worst books of 2007 are not the ones that are truly bad in the sense that they are devoid of content or the author writes poorly. The following books are selected because they promise much, and deliver little. A number of these authors are among my favorites, but they disappointed badly. They are:

• The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss: I am surprised that more people, having read his book, have not found many aspects of his advice disturbing and impractical.
• The Cluetrain Manifesto, by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger: Corporate bashing at its worst. I looked forward to reading this for a long time, but the rants overwhelmed the content.
• The Dip, by Seth Godin: Short is good and readable, but the topic deserved a lot more treatment. It failed to explore the nuances, exceptions and pitfalls effectively. A rare misstep by a great author.
• Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams: I have never read a more incomprehensible book. The authors use laborious examples and specialized jargon to obfuscate any ideas contained in the book.
• Go Put Your Strengths to Work, by Marcus Buckingham: What a way to fall! Buckingham’s “First, Break all the rules” remains one of my favorites, but this book is a true hack and condescending towards the reader.

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By Krishna, September 17, 2007

Here is an interesting quote by A. A. Milne that I found thought-provoking:

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority.
The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority.
The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

There are different levels of thinking and learning. Here is a stab at what I think some of the stages are:

1. Not thinking at all or having no opinion.
2. Having an opinion or belief.
3. Knowing opinions contrary to one’s own.
4. Learning to defend one’s opinion against arguments.
5. Understanding the strong points of contrary opinions.
6. Accepting that the other party may have some valid points.
7. Formulating a new opinion by integrating strong points on both sides of the argument.
8. Playing devil’s advocate against one’s opinions.
9. Making opinions evolve through experience and knowledge.

Most of us are usually at steps 2 to 4. In many situations, this is perfectly fine because otherwise, we would waste unnecessary time and energy pursuing needless arguments. But there are other circumstances where not questioning what we believe and what we do can lead to inefficiencies and failures. An example would be the software processes that we follow every day.

Questioning our beliefs and actions is quite difficult. It is much easier to be for or against something and stay on auto-pilot. Sometimes, it requires external intervention from events and people to knock us out of our comfort zone and start critiquing ourselves.

One way to do this is to seek out contrary opinions. If you believe something, search for the opposite argument and read about it. For example, if you believe you should use Framework XYZ to write your new application, search on Google and find what the critics are saying. If you read about a new technique, learn about its weak points.

Above all, don’t believe your own rhetoric. Tying your ego to your present ideas is a sure way to drown with them.

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By Krishna, September 7, 2007

Bookswim, the new book lending service I signed up for, seems to be working very nicely. I received 3 books last week. They would have cost me around $50 at the very minimum. I finished and returned two of them. Now two more are on the way. At $20 per month, the cost savings is really good. And the shipping is free.

I also found the customer service very responsive. They replied back to all my emails and also pointed out an useful book request service. If you don’t find a book in their inventory, you can submit a list of books that you want them to purchase. I submitted a big list of books and they added almost all of them, except a few pricey ones.

There were only 2 problems I faced. One was the slow performance in the initial days as many people hit the site because of the publicity. This situation has become better. The other problem which still exists is the search, which returns many unrelated results without proper ordering. Fortunately, the search allows ISBN searches, so it is only a minor hassle.

I definitely recommend signing up for this service if you like reading books (fiction or non-fiction, but especially the latter). And here is a list of some lists of books that other people recommend:

1. Personal MBA: http://personalmba.com/recommended-business-books/
2. Coding Horror: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000020.html
3. Joel on Software: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/navLinks/fog0000000262.html
4. Steve McConnell: http://www.stevemcconnell.com/rl-cc.htm
5. Gray’s Matter: http://graysmatter.codivation.com/HowIAmBecomingABetterDeveloperPart1OfInfinity.aspx

Also check your local library for some of these books, especially the business management ones. And that costs no money.

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By Krishna, August 16, 2007

A couple of weeks ago, we moved the TV from the living room to my study room. This has enormously reduced wasted time watching stupid stuff on TV. Otherwise the TV is on all the time. Half the time, you spend watching the advertisements. And the rest of the time – well, let us say that the advertisements are more entertaining.

In my view, TV is one of the most wasteful uses of one’s time, unless one is extremely picky about what one watches. The tendency is to keep it on even though there is nothing interesting. When you have more TV channels, you keep flipping the channels until you find something that you can just tolerate seeing. Watching re-runs of old movies and TV series is another time-sink.

The other advantage of moving the TV from the living room is to have real conversations with people who come to your house. Otherwise, part of the time is spent watching some sports or movie, and then you don’t get to talk with the person or exchange any meaningful information.

Other things I have unnecessarily wasted my time on

• Worrying about the future: Now I am here, I know what I shouldn’t have worried about.
• Learning stuff that became obsolete: No learning is entirely useless, still I could have prioritized better.
• Not holding people accountable: Give a man a fish, you have fed him for today. Teach him to fish…
• Training un-trainable people: Some people cannot be taught to fish, either.

Things I have should spent more time on

• Family, friends and relatives
• Learning what was truly important to my profession
• Becoming a better human being

Hopefully, I still have the opportunity. Yet, I sometimes feel really stupid about the time I wasted. If one only knew then what one knows now…

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By Krishna, July 22, 2007

Everyone wants to be more productive and there are literally thousands of books and web pages to cater to them. In this article, I want to focus on technical people because they exhibit certain special behaviors that get in the way of being productive, even if they want to. Here are some productivity tips for them:

1. Stop trying to be an early adopter for every product: Technical people go gaga over every new application or consumer electronic product that comes out. They must get a hold of it, even if it means starving for the rest of the month. This is such a waste of time and money. Only 1-2 products truly succeed in any problem domain. Trying out all the possible products consumes enormous amounts of time without much return.
2. Learn to switch off electronic items: Switch off your TV and your computer. Stop picking up your phone. Most technical people find this impossible to do. One friend told me that the one thing he needed for survival (other than air and water) was an active Internet connection! But if you manage to turn off, suddenly you get this huge slab of free time which you can use to do all sorts of interesting things.
3. Focus on quality instead of quantity: Don’t try to learn 10 different languages or platforms at the same time. At a time, learn one really well and understand its nuances. Don’t try to swallow hundreds of feeds, articles and books. Instead, select the few that would be really useful. In any case, life is too short for you to consume everything. So be selective and make effective use of your time.
4. It is okay if you are not busy: Some technical folks treat busy work as a badge of honor. They actually love complaining that they have no time to do anything because it proves that they are doing something important and they are wanted. So much so that they have withdrawal symptoms anytime the work load comes down. Having free time is not something to be ashamed of. Use it to refresh your mind and body. Plan for future work by learning something new or advanced.
5. New technology is not necessarily more productive: Email and chat can be more time-consuming than phone calls. It takes less time to call someone and resolve a problem than exchange emails all days long. In development work, a newer technology may have some cool feature that saves some effort, but you also waste a lot of time learning how to do the regular mundane work in it. Choose technology for its utility, not its newness.

The addiction to being connected is something all technical people share. Many people don’t switch off because they are afraid of missing an urgent message. But the fact is that if someone sending an email really wanted to get an answer immediately, they would call you. If someone calling you really wanted to talk to you, they would leave a voice message. So most of the time, there is no reason to respond in real time. (This does not mean that you should be a jerk and not pick up the phone at all, just that sometimes you need to be able to get away from the need to be always available.)

Also imagine if you had an accident and were in a hospital bed unable to move. Would you care about calls or emails? You may be worried, but you cannot do anything about it. And your contacts would have to wait until you got better. Most things in life are not really as urgent as you think or as people would like to have you think.

And tell people about when you normally respond. If they expect you to be responding 24 hours a day, they will send emails or call you 24 hours a day. On the other hand, if they know that certain hours are off-limits, your volume of emails and calls will automatically go down. Unless of course, you want to be masochistic.

A final point: Reduce the need to repeat yourself. When 2 people ask you the same question, send the reply to all possible interested parties. Or post it on your website or blog. I have found the last technique quite useful. When people ask me something and I already have an article on it, I just send them the URL. That really saves a lot of time.

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By Krishna, July 6, 2007

Sometime back, I discussed how doing a hobby project can help one learn many new things regarding a particular subject. When a hobby becomes a passion, you quickly become an expert at it and it is possible to turn the hobby into something that can help you earn money on the side. For example, if you are interested in photography, you could actually try to sell some of your photographs to somebody who is interested.

Doing your hobby as a day job may not be possible, as the amount of money you can make may not replace your regular salary. Although some people are able to make a hobby their full-time occupation, realistically, most people can mostly hope only to augment their income. Doing this is a good thing. Additional income will help you justify the time you spend on the hobby as well as buy or do useful or entertaining things.

There are many hobbies that you can make money off, especially if you are in the technology field. Creating programs or content on the web and using advertisements to gain revenue. Teaching people about computers or programming languages. Giving speeches and taking seminars. Trouble-shooting problems for people. I used to do some of these activities in the past.

Doing a hobby for money does bring a few challenges:

1. There is a direct relationship between how hard you work and how much money you earn. Well almost – the more you work, the greater the possibility of earning more money (not necessarily actually earning). So it is difficult to avoid spending a lot of time on the particular activity and becoming a workaholic. Soon, a hobby can become pretty consuming. Even holidays and weekends can get filled with activities.
2. The focus changes from you to your customers or consumers. A non-commercialized hobby can be pursued without consideration for what other people think. When you are trying to earn money, your preferences may not match the people who are contributing to your income. So you will have to adapt or perish. The hobby becomes more work than a relaxing pastime.
3. At some point, you will hit a plateau where more work doesn’t result in more revenue. You may need to start looking at advertising or marketing or even change various attributes of your products. Thus the actual creativity work becomes less, and more time is spent on selling. In fact, the more successful you are, the less you would actually spend on the core of your hobby and more on publicizing and monetizing it.
4. The ups and downs of income can create additional pressure and stress. When you have a bad day or week where you have less income, you can feel dejected and frustrated, even though the factors that contributed to this may be totally outside your control. It may take time to understand and realize that this is all part of a typical business.

I don’t mean to mention these challenges as a way of discouraging someone from commercializing their hobby. In fact, realizing that you could have earned (and didn’t try to earn) a significant amount of money from something you were just doing for fun can make you feel stupid and foolish. By all means, use your full potential to earn as much money as you can.

But do understand that the process of making money can change the dynamics, make it less fun and create more work and tension. Once you learn to accept this, then it becomes much smoother as you can be better prepared.