Accidentally in Code

Tag: books

  • Book: Taming Your Gremlin

    Book: Taming Your Gremlin

    gremlinTaming Your Gremlin (Amazon) is basically Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) – and I much preferred The Happiness Trap because I found the cutesy “gremlin” metaphor really annoying.

    Basically: the voice in your head that tells you what’s wrong with you and what you need to do, that’s your “gremlin”. And you don’t have to pay attention to it. You can give it a name and notice the way it is, which kind of reminds me of disarming bogarts in Harry Potter.

    Anyway, I was kinda “yeah yeah whatever” on it, because I know the drill – unhelpful thoughts, don’t have to pay attention to them, notice them, get on with life. For me, I tend to channel those kind of thoughts into some kind of productive action.

    But then I was reading it, whilst I was eating lunch (so: no productive action was immediately available), whilst I was having some kind of… well let’s call it “gremlin attack”. I don’t recall what the voice was saying, but suffice it to say, it was some kind of damning indictment of me, my capabilities, etc. And then I was like – OHHHH.

    I don’t know if the Gremlin idea goes further than ACT or if I had just been labelling vicious self talk as accurate. Probably it was just a matter of timing. I wouldn’t say I became a fan, but I did stop being quite so annoyed with it, and I concede the utility of some kind of shared language – my coach asked me to read this, so this was a way for us to have that.

  • Book: First Break All The Rules

    Book: First Break All The Rules

    First Break All The RulesI spend a lot of time obsessing about: 1) how to be a good manager, and 2) how to have any idea if I am doing a good job. So I was happy to discover First Break All The Rules (Amazon), because it contains (data driven!) information on how to be a good manager, and also a list of questions which – if you’re doing a good job – the people who report to you will be able to answer a resounding “yes” to.

    Treat people as individuals. Focus on strengths. Don’t fix people, fix situations. Focus on outcomes not process. 

    When I became a manager one of the things that I had – and continue to have – a lot of anxiety about is that I didn’t feel like I had a good model of what a good manager looked like, and I was really wary to learn from bad managers, because I don’t think that teaches you very much (this sentiment is echoed in the book). So for me the biggest and most useful takeaway is that a great manager can look any number of ways, but the people who report to her will be able to answer “yes” enthusiastically and confidently to all these questions.

    1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
    2. Do I have the equipment and material I need to do my work right?
    3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
    4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
    5. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a person?
    6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
    7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
    8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my work is important?
    9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
    10. Do I have a best friend at work?
    11. In the last six months, have I talked to someone about my progress?
    12. This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

    Note – the first 6 are foundational, and to address the second 6 without the foundation of the first 6 is like building a house on sand.

    The book is a little dated in places, but I’ve found it a really worthwhile read and I’ve got a lot out of it. If you’re a manager at any stage, I highly recommend reading it (I wish some of my managers had read it!). And in my 1:1s over the next little while, I’m going through this list with the individuals who report to me and figuring out the places where I can do better.

  • Book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

    Book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

    switchI really enjoyed Switch (Amazon), it’s a book about behaviour change. The metaphor of the rider and the elephant is used throughout to illustrate that whatever you think you want to do, you (the rider) have less influence than the environment (the elephant).

    It covers how to motivate the rider, but then make it really easy for the elephant. How do you do this for yourself? How do you do this in your workplace? Or use these strategies to enact social change – my two favourite examples were: getting a country to embrace the national bird, and reducing the prevalence of older men preying on young women by mocking them and giving strategies for helping the young women escape.

    The message I took from the book is that behaviour change is hard, that changing environments is easier than changing people, but that often the most powerful thing you can do is change the story.

  • Book: Beyond Blame: Learning From Failure and Success

    Book: Beyond Blame: Learning From Failure and Success

    Beyond BlameI’ve been meaning to read Beyond Blame: Learning From Failure and Success (Amazon) ever since we started planning the Technically Speaking webinar with Dave. Finally got to it!

    It’s a story about moving from a culture of blame – and the costs of a culture of blame – to a culture of blamelessness. What does that look like?

    Problems with a culture of blame: accountability means finding a scapegoat, which means that people fear sharing what they know because the repercussions are so extreme. And in any complex system, it’s hard to understand what is going on and how things will interact. Stuff will happen – when people don’t share what they know, it can’t be learned from. When people are fired because they did their best but were operating with incomplete knowledge and something broke as a result, organizational knowledge is lost.

    The main process outlined in the book for a blameless culture is the blameless postmortem. People share what happened and what they know, and are not judged (or allowed to judge themselves) with the benefit of hindsight. Then things that need to be followed up on can be identified.

    Really the main message I took from the book is that blamelessness is necessary for a culture of accountability – because without blamelessness, it’s not safe for people to share the full details of what happened, which means no-one really knows what did happen.

  • Book: Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

    Book: Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person

    The Year of YesI absolutely loved Shonda Rhime’s Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person (Amazon).

    It’s a book about being a strong woman, and making your own choices. About being open to life. About being who you want to be, and living the life you want rather than what you are “supposed” to be doing. About doing things that scare you. It’s about how you can be successful on paper, in theory, and still feel dead inside. It’s about who you say yes to… and saying yes to saying no. There’s a chapter on taking complements that I think should be required reading for every woman.

    This book connected with me on a deep, emotional, level, because I feel like it captured and articulated some hard won lessons over the last few years. It also challenged me to think about things I haven’t been saying yes to, that I maybe should.

    One thing I appreciated, was how various talks she gave, and her feelings about giving them, were woven into the story. Part of saying yes involved saying yes to raising her public profile. Giving a commencement speech, being on Jimmy Kimmel, being on Oprah. The book charts the way her life changed, and public speaking was a big part of that. She also shares the full transcripts of each of her talks, which is nice.

    I loved this book so much I already bought a copy for a friend, and no doubt I will buy more copies for other friends over the next few months. I really, really recommend reading it.

  • Book: Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public Speaking

    Book: Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public Speaking

    Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public SpeakingI was lucky enough to get a preview copy of Present! A Techie’s Guide to Public Speaking.

    It was a helpful collection of tips for preparing and giving presentations, including the why and how of psyching yourself up to do it! As someone who reads a lot about giving good presentations (hello have you seen the newsletter) this was one of the more thorough collections of presentation tips in one place.

    My favourite chapter though was the one on running effective meetings! Super useful, and no doubt I’ll be referring back to it.

    Especially if you’re in a phase of “oh maybe I should speak how do I begin”, this book will be a good starting point.

  • Book – Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

    Book – Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency

    slackI thought Slack (Amazon) was just about time management, but actually it is a book about organisational dysfunction. I found it eye opening. At the heart of it is the idea that trying to optimise for efficiency is problematic, and the various dysfunctions that result.

    Dysfunctions such as: busywork (need to appear busy, otherwise you’re underutilized and could be laid off), longer response times (because things pile up because everyone is so busy), cost saving measures that backfire (because e.g. engineers do their own admin work and there’s point where you need an extra engineer when an admin would be less expensive), and micromanagement.

    It’s quite an old book, but didn’t feel dated so much as prophetic. Definitely worth reading.

  • Book: The Truth About Burnout

    Book: The Truth About Burnout

    The Truth About Burnout I found the Truth About Burnout (Amazon) from this article, which I think gives the main takeaways from the book far more succinctly. I did find the book interesting and I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t necessarily encourage other people to. It’s a little dated in places (it was published in 2000), and what it goes into in depth is mainly fixing the experience within broken organisations. If you’re not dealing with a broken organisation, the summary would give you a good list of things to look out for in yourself, or so that you don’t become one.

    The concept of the Maslach Burnout Inventory was really eye-opening for me. There are six causes of burnout… and only one is overwork. When I was working in a job I hated, and wondering why I felt so terrible, thinking it couldn’t be burnout because my hours were reasonable and it turns out it totally could be. It was.

    The other five causes of burnout: lack of control, lack of reward, absence of fairness, lack of community, conflict in values.

    I’m currently watching the stats about the attrition of women in technical roles play out in my network, which is depressing. Leaving myself seemed less bad because I thought “maybe it’s just me” or “maybe I was just unlucky”. Now, when women tell me that the job they have is their last in the industry, and why, I connect those reasons to the five causes.

    Lack of control -> HR process. Opaque hiring and promotion processes.

    Lack of reward -> In SV women make 86.4 cents on the dollar (the pay gap varies across the US and internationally).

    Absence of fairness -> Men promoted on potential, women asked to “be patient”.

    Lack of community -> Being on of few people like you, having to take on the bulk of the work of “fixing” things.

    Conflict in values -> Where do I begin, maybe with white men’s obsession with “meritocracy” and the hiring “bar”.

    My point: I have been thinking about the concepts in this book a lot, and I’m glad I read it as an exercise in taking the time to connect these things together.

  • Book: Mental Traps

    Book: Mental Traps

    mental traps Mental Traps (Amazon) is like… a taxonomy of the unhelpful mental behaviour we regularly engage in. One of my friends recommended it to me after I admitted being a completionist, saying it was so helpful she hadn’t needed to finish it.

    I did actually make it to the end, take that as you will.

    As a completionist, finishing things that I’m not really enjoying is one of my biggest irrationalities. Procrastination is also covered, as is starting things too early. I found it kind of exhausting to go through all the ways that we don’t help ourselves, but at the same time it made me think (or hope) that the things I beat myself up for are very normal. It also made me aware of some unhelpful patterns, and more understanding of other peoples – different – mental traps.

    All in all I would say if you’re interested in being happier and realise at times we get caught up in things that don’t help with that, it’s worth a read.