
How to read a business book - getp
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/05/how-to-read-a-b.html
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raju
"The goal of the reading, then, isn’t to persuade you to change, it’s to help
you choose what to change."

\- Well said. I have read my share of business books, and wish I had stuck to
this philosophy. I have begun to take a lot of notes on index cards, and
attempted to apply at least one principle from each book that I read (think of
it as "Deliberate Practice" [<http://tinyurl.com/6da4ey>]).

Don't get me wrong, there are a _lot_ of bad books out there, so its hard to
know whether you are wasting your time with a bad book, or wasting your time
because it happens to be a really good book but you don't happen to do
anything with it. The problem that I face is separating the wheat from the
chaff - most business books that hit the bestsellers normally have a huge
marketing engine behind them, which does not necessarily make them great
books. On the other hand, books like "Think and Grow Rich" which you can pick
up at Half Price Books for $3 is something I read every year (once).

On a side note - "Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are
presented with everything they need to program a certain tool." I disagree. A
lot of programming books I have read just don't cut it and provide little or
no value. Mainly because a lot of authors are playing catch up with the latest
and greatest technologies and invariably the book is rushed to the printers
just so that they are not a version or two behind. The ones that provide real
value are the ones that have proven to be timeless (SICP, PAIP which I am yet
to read).

~~~
kirubakaran
You may like this: <http://www.squeezedbooks.com>

("Business Knowledge - Extracted, Compressed, Discussed")

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dmix
Is that your site?

If more people contribute this would be great. (and maybe some design work)

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davidw
It's my site, actually. Thanks kirubakaran for posting the link:-)

Frustratingly, that's about as good as I seem to be able to do in terms of
design. Another good reason to get a cofounder who covers for some of your
skill gaps, I guess.

In any case, yeah, I'd love for more people to contribute, at least to
discussions, if not to the summaries. As note takers like ajju below have
found, I absorbed the material a lot better by creating some of the summaries,
so there is some benefit for summary creators, beyond just the value of
sharing.

~~~
kirubakaran
Thanks for the great site, David.

I have a feature request. Can you please display a simple html table with
title, author, link etc as columns for all the books squeezed? That will help
find books.

~~~
davidw
Where would you see that linked from/to? Find books?

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kirubakaran
Yup. Thanks.

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pg
_The recipe that makes up just about any business book can be condensed to
just two or three pages. The rest is the sell. The proof. The persuasion._

I agree with the first sentence. But it seems to me the rest is generally mere
bloat. Nearly all business books consist of an essay's worth of ideas diluted
with a book's worth of words. Why are perfectly good essays ruined in this
way? People pay for books, and they seem more impressive on CVs.

My advice about how to read business books is: don't. You'll learn a lot more
by reading biography and history.

~~~
projectileboy
I agree in general, although I can think of a (very) few counterexamples - in
particular, "The Essays of Warren Buffett", which collects fragments from
Berkshire Hathaway annual letters into related topics.

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calpaterson
No, business books sell well because of the fantasy aspect.

Business books are overwhelmingly bad - and still sell - because it's very
difficult to verify anything said empirically. Most of the time, business
isn't treated as a science (a mistake), and a lot of business books are
written by people who are good salesmen, but not much else.

Good business books are very rare. They don't have marketing titles like
"small is the new big", they don't feature the author's face on the front
cover (where else but ego-centric business books does that happen?) and they
don't endorse moronic checkbox routines like "Decide, before you start, that
you’re going to change three things about what you do all day at work. ".

Seth Godin is very much a junk author.

~~~
notauser
I have been sitting management accounting exams for fun. (Well, really to keep
in study mode - half an hour a night every night is maintainable - unless you
stop, then restarting is hard.)

I would highly recommend them to programmers. Because the maths is frankly
trivial for anyone with an engineering or CS degree the textbooks are easy
enough to skim, and once you have digested them they give you a solid
theoretical basis to attack business problems.

Understanding cost and revenue behavior may not be as sexy as making people
stand up in meetings, but it's a damn sight more useful. At the very least it
can give you a hint about which people you should make stand up.

~~~
otoburb
Works for me.

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ajju
I posit that the 3rd point "share your book" is as much about increasing the
word of mouth for Mr. Godin's books as about helping readers increase value
derived from the book.

I am a fan Seth Godin and his books. His second point about keeping notes is
actually very true. If I am not making notes, I just read the book for the
vicarious pleasure. Putting in the effort of taking notes forces me to digest
and revise the points just to get returns on the effort I put into taking the
notes.

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mooders
I think it is also helpful to understand one's own motivation for picking up a
given business book. For example, Kawasaki's Art of the Start is very useful
for most startups, but invaluable for those chasing external funding. But
Porter's Competitive Strategy is less useful (note: not necessarily
<i>useless</i>) for a startup than it is for an established player looking to
compete effectively in an established marketplace. The point being that if you
understand the problem / context you have that requires resolution or action,
then you can better judge whether reading a book is more or less likely to be
a productive use of your time.

I do very much agree with Seth's second point: markup the book with tags and
pencil as you read. I find this essential if I am to retain both the content
and how I think/feel about implementing it in my own situation.

~~~
davidw
Heh, I picked up Competitive Strategy and am not sure what to think yet. It's
fairly slow going in some ways.

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wallflower
"Programmers get amazing value because for $30 they are presented with
everything they need to program a certain tool."

There have been a few technical books that have more than paid their cost
based on finding the answer to just one vexing problem (DHTML bible, for
example). Theoretically, the answer could have been googled but opening the
book found it.

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omouse
Where does he get that $30 amount? Every single technical book I've bought has
cost me at least $50. Except for the _Learn C++ in 21 Days_ book, which was on
sale at Wal-Mart for $20.

I admit that the price is worth it in some cases, but $30?? Where's he find
those books?!

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halo
It really does depend on the book. Looking at Amazon, the Django book,
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, The Pickaxe, CSS Mastery and The Ruby
Programming Language are all <$30 each and are all well regarded. I'm sure
there's plenty more.

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edw519
"It’s not about you, it’s about the next person."

Not just for business books, but for everything we do.

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sabat
"Wreck a roast chicken and it’s $12 down the drain. Wreck a product launch and
there goes your career..."

God help us if that was actually true. Temporarily hurt it, maybe.

