Category Archives: Nonfiction book reviews

Review: “Eat That Frog!” by Brian Tracy

by PJ Posted on February 9, 2012

I spent most of last year focusing on keeping my to do list organized.  I read “Getting Things Done” over the holiday break at the end of 2010.  As I indicated in my review of GTD, this approach has helped me tame my to do list and although it’s still a work-in-progress, I am much better organized.

In spite of having an organized to do list (most of the time), I still struggle with completing the tasks on the list. One of my challenges is that with two young children, I am subject to frequent interruptions and my windows of time to tackle my list are relatively small.

“Eat That Frog!”, as the subtitle indicates, contains “21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.”  The principles themselves are sound and, depending on your situation, can be very useful indeed.  People have a tendency to rely on just a couple of ways to tackle or prioritize their to do lists.  This book provides a large number of other ways to look at your tasks and figure out which ones to do next.

One criticism of this book is that it is too general and doesn’t provide specifics.  One reason that I agree with this criticism is because it lacks concrete examples.  Most of the 21 points are explained pretty well in the few pages allocated to each.  However, providing examples could have really helped to drive the points home and made each of the points more memorable.  There are a handful of anecdotes, but not many.

Another criticism of the book is that it often loops back to advice that sounds suspiciously like “just do it” (sorry, Nike).  If “just do it” was sufficient, then there’d be no need for the book at all.

But there are useful approaches in the book and although you won’t find cutting edge research here, you just may find a few tips to help you to rethink your work.  I’ve listed them all in my organizer and I plan to refer back to them frequently as I re-prioritize my to do list this year.  I’ve also starred the ones that I anticipate using the most.

“Eat That Frog!” is available in e-book, paperback, audio and hardback formats from all major booksellers. 

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Review: “Getting Things Done” by David Allen

by PJ Posted on February 2, 2012

Since becoming a mom, I had forgotten all of the organizational productivity skills that i possessed during my successful career as a manager in information technology.  My to do list was a disaster.  During the few moments I was able to have some semblance of a to do list, I didn’t have the right tools in place to be able to access it easily.

Then I discovered David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done.”  Surfing the web, you’ll find proponents and detractors of the GTD system.  While reading the book, I found numerous things that didn’t work for me.  But on balance, there were more things that worked for me than didn’t.

For example, some things that didn’t work for me:

  • GTD recommends having an extensive tickler system to handle recurring events. Although I have a number of recurring events on my to do list, I found it much easier to simply use recurring events in my to do list software.
  • The concept of the “inbox” didn’t work for me.  If something gets stuck in a folder it’s “out of sight, out of mind” for me.  I need to either get something on my to do list right away or make a visible pile that will force me to deal with it in the short term.
  • Although the GTD approach does not encourage assigning priorities to tasks, I found that I needed to use both priorities and assigning tasks to specific days.  I had to do this because I cannot operate with a larger, amorphous to do list.  I had major problems choosing the “next” thing on the list to do and I needed for the list itself to tell me what to do next.

And here are some of the key concepts that rang true for me:

  • The two-minute rule has worked wonders for me.  The rule says that if something will take less than two minutes, just do it rather than putting it on the to do list.  I modify this rule from time to time. I sometimes change it to a five-minute rule. Sometimes I violate the rule if I just don’t have time to do something in the moment.
  • The process that Allen walks through to gather all of the “stuff” that needs to go onto the to do list was very effective for me.  The bad news was that it made my to do list much bigger, but the good news is that it relieved my stress because i finally felt that I knew everything that was on my plate.
  • Part of my problem, as I realized while reading GTD, was that many of the items on my to do list were too ill-defined and they were actually “projects” rather than to do items.  Once I analyzed those items and followed the GTD approach of putting the “next action item” on my to do list (a smaller, specific task) my list got much more manageable.
  • One of the guiding principles of the GTD approach is that a large part of the daily stress that we experience is a result of trying to keep all of the tasks that are on our plate in our heads. The process of dumping all of those tasks into a list is tremendously freeing and goes a long way towards reducing stress.
I’m still in the process of refining the concept of “projects” within GTD and how to make that work within my to do lists.  I created folders and had my task lists there, but with my “out of sight, out of mind” issue, these lists got ignored.  I agree with the philosophy of projects, but haven’t yet found a good solution to how to keep this work organized.

I still get overwhelmed sometimes and I’m not very good about having a regular weekly review period to update the to do list.  But I’m much better than I was a year ago and I hope to keep improving.

One of the best things about this book is that you can read it in chunks and do the organizational work as you read. I personally hate self-help books that take so long to read that I feel like I’m being prevented from working on the task at-hand.

Critics of GTD often point out that the book is very general and common sense. While I agree to some extent, there are a lot of specifics in this book that can help you rethink how you organize your tasks and your time. If you read this book and come away thinking that it’s too general, then your to do list is probably pretty well organized.

I highly recommend this book if your to do list is out of control.  The principles may or may not work for you, but I encourage you to try the GTD approach and then tweak it if necessary to fit your work style.

“Getting Things Done” is available in e-book, paperback and hardback formats from all major booksellers.

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Review: “Hamlet’s Blackberry” by William Powers

by PJ Posted on September 8, 2011

I’ve been waiting for the perfect time to write a review of this book.  It’s recently been released in paperback, so I figured that time must be now.  I’ve been so eager to review this book because it’s had a profound impact on me and I hope to share some of it’s goodness with you in this post.

To begin, William Powers did an interview on PBS Newshour in August, 2010 that really does an excellent job of capturing the high level essence of the book.  The video is just under eight minutes and is well worth the time.  I should also note that it was through this video that I first became aware of the book and it was none other than David Allen (the “Getting Things Done” guy) who shared the link on Facebook.  Moments later, I was purchasing the book for my Nook app.

Do you ever get the feeling that instead of managing your life, your life is managing you?  Between numerous social media platforms and a buzzing, whirring smartphone, overflowing RSS readers and emails, my connectedness had gotten out of control.  There’s a certain appeal to being constantly connected.  You always feel “in the know” and you always feel needed.  But it comes at a high cost.  That nervous twitch that your eyelid has developed?  Yeah, that’s part of the cost.  Not being able to focus on any task for more than two minutes without checking your email?  Yeah, that’s another part of the cost.

After watching the video, you may feel as though you’ve already gotten the key message from the book, so why bother to read it.  Haven’t you read an article about how being disconnected sometimes is a good thing?  Have you made an effort to do it?  Have you incorporated disconnected time into each week?  each day?  It’s easy to say and difficult to do, right?  The lessons that Powers covers in this book are in-depth and powerful.  And they simply must be read to be fully appreciated and absorbed.

In particular, his approach of using historical figures as examples to drive his points home is quite effective.  He talks early in the book – and in many of his interviews – about the unplugged weekends his family has instituted.  If the solution was that easy and obvious, there would be no need for the book.  But it’s much deeper than that. Powers uses the examples of Plato, Seneca, Gutenberg, Shakespeare, Franklin, Thoreau and McLuhan to teach us very specific and valuable lessons about how these figures approached the problem of being over-connected.  It’s about learning how to set boundaries and how to incorporate new routines into your life.  It’s about understanding our desire to be connected and the ramifications when it gets out of control.

So, if you’re picking up on the idea that I highly recommend this book, then you’re quite perceptive ;-) I have instituted some changes in my life after reading this book.  I’m not as rigid as Powers’ family with their modem-free weekends, but I try to remain nearly completely disconnected on the weekends with only the occasional email check.  I also try to unplug for a couple hours or more each day.  I have turned off all alerts and notifications on my smartphone.  The downside is that I periodically need to check all of my emails and social networks in turn, but the big upside is that I am not getting constant interruptions.  I have also come to recognize the signs of slipping back into over-connectedness and I am more disciplined about forcing myself to step away from the computer and turn off the smartphone if necessary.

Some people don’t really have an issue with finding a natural balance in their connected and disconnected lives.  I am not one of them.  I tend to crave information and being a stay-at-home mother can be isolating at times.  So, I definitely tend to be too plugged in, fearing I’ll be missing something.  Although I have to work at it constantly, I am finally finding a nice balance in being able to reap the benefits of technology and connectedness while minimizing the downsides.  I hope that this fantastic book can help you do the same.

“Hamlet’s Blackberry” is available in e-book, paperback and hardback formats from all major booksellers.

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Review: “A Self-Publisher’s Companion” by Joel Friedlander

by PJ Posted on May 10, 2011

In his Preface, Friedlander talks about the thinking behind creating this book.  He is a prolific blogger with a treasure trove of information in his blog archives (which are, by the way, growing by the day).  I have been following him on Twitter and on his blog for some time now and I can attest to this.  Finding “the post” that you’re looking for in such a vast archive can be challenging.  So he’s gathered up some of his best posts and organized them to provide this extremely useful and important orientation for anybody considering self publishing.

An important point to make up front is the one that Friedlander himself makes in the preface:  if you’re looking for a detailed “how to” or instruction manual, this is not the book for you.  He felt that there are already enough instruction manuals on the market so he focused his book on more “big picture” issues including why authors should consider self publishing in the first place.

There were a couple of things that I didn’t like about this book.  I’ve read other books that were formed by blog posts and there are two approaches:  1) outline the book up front and then begin blogging in the content to fill out the book, and 2) dig through archives, as Friedlander has done, edit the posts and organize the posts into a book.  Although Friedlander would disagree with me, I feel the first approach works much better because the structure has been created with forethought and the sequence of the chapters and sections are logical.  It took awhile for me to get used to the format of this book because the sequence of the sections sometimes seems forced and at times there is repetition of key concepts across sections.  This is natural in a blog, of course, but less expected in a book.

Also, due to the nature of how the book was created, I had a bit of a difficulty with the sense of time reference in the book.  Several times throughout the book Friedlander references events that have happened “recently.” I am detail-oriented to distraction and in several of the cases, I wanted to know specifically when the referenced event occurred. This is important because the world of book publishing is changing so quickly year by year and sometimes month by month.

In the first section, “A Self-Publishing Orientation,” Friedlander provides some excellent big picture information on the state of self publishing and provides lots of hints and tips to help you formulate your high level approach to self publishing.  The “Self-Publisher’s Self-Questionnaire” is a particularly useful section for authors as they begin to consider their strategies and tactics for self-publishing their book.

The section “Bookmaking” is sort of an ode to the bygone days of book craftsmanship and an entreaty to authors to use professional services for cover design and book formatting if at all possible to ensure that the end product is the highest quality possible.  Book design is important and although it may be difficult to make the case “buy this book, it’s designed beautifully,” a good design will certainly increase the credibility of you as an author.

“Social Media for Authors” provides some very useful tips for authors who are new to social media.  It should be said that the bulk of the content in the book is useful for both fiction and nonfiction writers although some of the content is more geared towards nonfiction writers.  The section entitled “17 Ways for Writers to Publish Their Content,” for example, provides excellent food-for-thought for nonfiction writers.

“The E-book Revolution” discusses the pros and cons of e-books and “The Electronic Life” talks about some of the distractions in our new digital world.  The final section “You Are the Market” discuss author branding and platform.

At the end of the book, Friedlander also references numerous additional resources available at his blog “The Book Designer” and cites other websites useful to self publishers.

In a delightfully meta move, Friedlander blogged the process of creating a book from his blog (did you follow that?).  These posts add an entirely new dimension to the process and anybody serious about self publishing should spend some time reading through these step-by-step posts as well.

So, I highly recommend this book if you are new to the idea of self-publishing.  Have some patience with the sequence of the sections and you’ll find many hints and tips to get you started thinking about self-publishing.  You’ll also find pointers to more detailed information that you’ll need on your journey.

“A Self-Publisher’s Companion” is available in print from Amazon and Barnes & Noble and in e-book format from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

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Review: “Story Starters” by Clifford Fryman

by PJ Posted on May 7, 2011

“Muses never play nice. They torment a writer with ideas when there is no time to write and refuse to cooperate when in front of a blank screen. It’s enough to make a writer pound their head on their keyboard. But even the most fickle of muses can be thrown into a creative frenzy with StoryStarters prompts – a handful of words to inspire thousands more. Over 1,000 prompts to tickle your muse.”

I thought maybe Clifford’s muse had taken steroids when I first stumbled on his Twitter meme “#storystarters” one day.  Clifford was steadily tweeting out many of these story prompts over the course of each day.  In all fairness, a small group of writers joined him in sending out prompts, but his were by far the most numerous.

Turns out he was working on gathering the Story Starters into an e-book and so I assumed that once the e-book was out, the Story Starters would cease and Clifford’s muse would retreat into hiding like my own muse often does.  Then I come to find out that his muse actually specializes in Story Starters and cranking them out continuously is a great source of entertainment for her.

His wife, Lisa, says in the introduction to the book that he has had this continual inspiration at least as long as she’s known him and, in fact, that’s why she married him.  (I think she may have been kidding.  Or at least exaggerating.)

But you and I can benefit from Clifford’s turbo-charged muse now that his “Story Starters” e-book is available.  There are two editions – a free “Mini Edition” that contains 67 pages of Story Starters and the full edition which was released on Amazon on May 1 that contains 154 pages of Story Starters (that’s over 1000 Story Starters!) plus two flash fiction stories inspired by the prompts written by Fryman himself and links to stories written by others.

Although the name is “Story Starters,” in my case, I haven’t limited their use to the beginning of a story.  They could come in the middle or the end or they might not even be used verbatim in the story.  The Story Starter can sometimes simply inspire another idea which inspires another idea which inspires a story.  It’s interesting how the brain latches onto something and it’s impossible to predict the end result.

Some of my readers will remember a story called “The Pianist” that I wrote last year that turned into a serial story that sadly was abandoned after four episodes due to my lack of outlining.  The Pianist was inspired by a Story Starter:

“He decided he must be deaf if music was the language of the heart.  The song had everyone in the room weeping except him.”

I didn’t use the words at all in my story, but I used the sentiment that was implied by the words.  But I digress.  ”The Pianist” will be making a reappearance in my writing at some point down the road, likely in a different form and after considerable outlining.

If you’re looking for inspiration but not sure whether Story Starters will work for you, then i recommend checking out the Twitter hashtag “#storystarters” to have a little sampling from Fryman or other writers.  If you like what you see, then you can download either the Mini or Full edition of “Story Starters” and start writing.

“Story Starters – Mini Edition” is available free at Smashwords, Barnes & Noble

“Story Starters – Full Edition” is available for $.99 at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble

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