While skeptical that it will line up fully with most MBA programs, I think that this program has the right idea. The best learning comes when one is interested in something and really wants to learn more about it. I am interested in learning more about business and entrepreneurship since I feel that my strengths lead in this direction. It seems that these books will give a high return on time invested, as most of the time I see new connections or learn new skills. While the information might not be applicable right away, just knowing more gives me confidence that I will succeed when the time comes. There seems to be a lot to learn, but it’s not rocket surgery either. Many concepts are similar to each other, and having a background in economics probably helps.

My current PMBA progress is here. Both Getting Real (which you can read for free online) and How to Win Friends and Influence People are highly recommended for their fresh perspectives.

If you are in the Indianapolis area, I could be convinced to do a book swap. Many of these books can also probably be found at the library (although I haven’t looked much myself.) It would be helpful to chat about them to refresh my memory and solidify the concepts, so if you’re reading one, let me know. There are reviews or notes for a few of the books in the notes section of this blog.

Original article: Personal MBA

A six month project expects approximately

6 months * 4 weeks / month * 40 hours / week = 960 hours.

If you read material pertaining to your project that takes five hours at the beginning of your project, you only need to save 12.5 minutes per week to justify reading it. That’s maybe two or three google searches for trivial topics or a pretty in-depth search if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. I think that the time invested pays for itself pretty quickly.

But what’s more, you learn solutions that are even better than the ones that you might have come up with otherwise because your learning is condensed and you are seeing best practices and rationale.

Original article: Justification for reading?

One extremely positive effect that I saw with using this approach is that reviews become a lot easier. Let’s say that I take the old approach where everyone works on a huge monolithic task and then checks things in when they feel like it. Three developers might check things in before I get my changes incorporated, and if they changed files that I was working in, the reviewer of my code might see much more than just the changes that I have made. What’s more, by overloading the reviewer with the huge amount of code checked in as well as potential other changes, it’s more likely that the reviewer will miss something. The review will take longer, so when it comes back to me, it might be fuzzy in my mind.

I had the idea this weekend to limit my books in progress (BIP). I have a penchant for non-fiction books of all sorts, but recently started running into a problem where I keep adding books and never finish them. The problem lies in switching contexts. To really get what the author is saying, I have to skim through what I have already read and load it into my mind. After realizing that I could still remember the main arguments of books that I read in college but could not recall the points of the book I started reading last month, I started taking better notes and discussing the book with others to better synthesize the ideas contained. Methods for active reading have benefitted my comprehension of the material.

But even with these better notes, there is still time and effort wasted. Basically my efforts were too diffused to finish books in a timely manner, meaning that I get somewhat bored with the books. So my current plan is to create a queue with a BIP limit of about three to allow freedom in reading but to focus efforts. Then book reviews or writeups should be done shortly thereafter to use the knowledge gained from the book before it dissipates.

Hopefully these two thought patterns (WIP and BIP) were not very disjoint. The first inspired my thinking on the second. Although I suppose that both are instances of knowledge work, it’s interesting how ideas in one field can provoke ideas in a completely different area.

Original article: Limiting WIP and BIP