Reading List Continued

I've still been reading but just not taking the extensive notes as I did on a couple of books. Here is a quick update on what I've been looking at:

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. As in my review of The Tipping Point I was a bit dissapointed with this book. Maybe it's all the hype. Maybe that it only took Gladwell about 10 pages to explain the idea and then 200 to provide examples. These examples were fascinating but they didn't do a great job of exposing subtle nuiances of the concept of "Thinking without Thinking" in my mind. I would recommed this book simply because the core idea is so radical in our modern managed world. From the time we enter school we're taught not to trust our gut reactions and that the only way to make decisions is to analyze and prove through research and argument. I've found that over the last couple of months I've been listening to my gut a lot more and I enjoy my days more that way. Let's see where it leads me 6 months or a year down the road?

Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink. I love this one. I checked it out of the library and decided that I needed to own a copy of my own and keep it close by. I had intended to write a much more in depth review of this book but I had to return it to the library before I had a chance to write up my notes. I guess I'll have to summarize by saying that if you work as an independent professional or are thinking about doing so you should take a look at this book. It provides a context for independent work that I've found to be both inspirational and informative. It's very likely that I'll be refering to this book in future posts about various topics because I find that I bring this book up conversation at least a couple of times a week.

Thinking for a Living by Thomas Davenport. Written by a manger for managers. I was able to go cover to cover in about 5 minutes. If you manager people that use their brains to do their work and you have no idea how to understand, manage and motivate them then this book might help you out a bit. I found it to be off-topic for me as I was hoping that it was going to be written for the people who Think for a Living rather than their managers.