Category: Non-fiction (Page 3 of 4)

A book about the upside of Procrastination by Frank Portnoy

Reflections and Random Thoughts

I started reading this book on April 26th and finished it on July 6th, 2024.

Insights

Key Take-Aways

Something Actionable

What Everyone Else Thinks

I found it compelling and worth the read, but it received relatively low ratings on both Amazon and Good Reads reviews—4.1 and 3.6, respectively—including seven 1-star reviews!

In both the five-star and one-star reviews, the book was compared to “How We Decide ” by Jonah Lehrer and “Why We Make Mistakes” by Joseph T. Hallinan.

Author John Doerr

“When dealing with numerical data, approximately right is better than precisely wrong.”
– Carl G. Thor

Natural resources management gateway

March 24, 2024

Published in April 2018, I purchased Measure What Matters in December 2018, but didn’t read it – geez. I bought it because wanted to be certain I measured what mattered.

I really don’t know how or why I didn’t finish reading it. There are 9049 reviews on Amazon, 66% of which are 5-star reviews, that’s 66%. There are another 32,179 ratings on Goodreads (as reported by Amazon). That’s a lot of reviews.

As always, I looked at the one-star and two-star reviews. The top one-star review found the book “dry, uninspired and a little creepy.” I disagreed and found the review annoying, but the thing I like about critical reviews is that they frequently recommend other books on the same subject, and sometimes, they are worth reading.

In this case, the recommendation is “High Output Management by Andy Grove – who is considered to be the author of OKRs. I have this book and, again, haven’t read it – so I’m going to add it to this themed read.

This is one of now 4 books in my current themed read about measurement and forecasting.

You can find the Amazon reviews of Measure What Matters here.

May 3rd, 2024

I’m still trying to figure out how to document this project – in the blog – in each book post? I really don’t know YET. I’ll figure it out.

I’ve just finished chapter 20 of this book – I’m going to have to read it again. Reading is great, but doing something with what you read is another ball game altogether, and that’s the point of the project.

My takeaways so far:

1. My goals are very small – MINUSCULE really
2. My thinking is foggy

The Art and Science of prediction Copyright 2015

This is one of three books in my themed read about measuring and forecasting. Again I’m only 60 pages into the book today March 23, 2024, so I can’t say much about it, other than, good forecasting is possible and apparently useful – two concepts I’ve never bought into.

You can read the Amazon reviews here – there are 4213 reviews with an overall rating of 4.4 out of 5 – so 60%.

I often find the critical reviews of a book to be more helpful – though some are absurd. One 1 star review complains about the paper quality -and another recommends a different book which is actually about the Vietnam war – really?

Reading the reviews, however brings to me to the subject of todays Day 3 blog post which you can read here – should you be so inclined:)

A book about finding the value of intangibles in business by Douglas W. Hubbard

“When dealing with numerical data, approximately right is better than precisely wrong.”

Carl G Thor

My rating of this book is not based on the quality of its writing or content but rather on how practical and valuable it has been in my life. Not an easy read.

It’s a great book, but it may not be worth the time if you aren’t struggling with the problem it addresses.

March 22, 2024

Reflections and Random Thoughts

One of the first things that came up for me was that not only do “big companies” not know how to measure, but they don’t even try! And here I thought it was just me that couldn’t figure things out.

Insights

Key Take-Aways

Measurements inform decisions. Decisions always have some level of uncertainty. Reducing the amount of uncertainty is the point.

Value of Measurement Matters. If you don’t compute the value of measurements, you are probably measuring the wrong things the wrong way.

Step one: Determine what you already know … even when you think you know nothing

Something Actionable

Review what I’m measuring, i.e., KPI, and consider the value of the measurement. Stop measuring the low-value measurements.

Keep a list of the decisions I’m trying to make.

What Everyone Else Thinks

In any case, I’m reading the 3rd Edition. It was initially published in 1962. It has 563 reviews on Amazon (in Jan of 2025) and a rating of 4.5 but only 3.9 on Good Reads with over 3600 ratings and 257 reviews. You can read the Amazon reviews here, and the Goodread reviews here.

Many of the poor reviews complain about the difficulty of reading the book and too much repetition. And, as usual, the folks who complain about the physical quality of the book they received.

A Book about Hiking the Pacific Trail by Cheryl Strayed

Reflections and Random Thoughts

Started Sept 29th and finished Oct 5, 2023

I started this book in December 2022; my brother Connor gave it to me. I can’t imagine how I put it down without finishing it. This time around, I couldn’t put it down. At the age of 26, the author hiked 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. I was hooked after reading the opening paragraph of the prologue – here it is.

“The trees were tall, but I was taller, standing above them on a steep mountain slope in northern California. Moments before, I’d removed my boots and the left one had fallen into those trees, first catapulting into the air when my enormous backpack toppled onto it … I let out a stunned gasp, though I’d been in the wilderness thirty-eight days and by then I’d come to know that anything could happen and that everything would.”

Wild, Cheryl Strayed

This book has almost 73,000 Amazon reviews, 2% of which are passionately negative. The negative reviews range from accusing her of fabricating her story to complaints that she “probably only actually hiked three or four hundred miles of the 2600-mile trail.”

I found the accusation that she is “more interested in showing off her writing skill than telling her story” particularly galling. Perhaps more authors should give us less than their very best – lest we feel they are “showing off.”

Personally, if I manage to get my three-mile walk on the paved hills (not mountains) around my neighborhood completed more than twice a week, I congratulate myself quite heartily. And when I manage to write even a few sensible words about anything and have anyone at all interested in reading them, I feel like I’ve managed to do something.

She walked somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 miles in the wilderness and wrote an engaging and beautiful recounting of it.

What Everyone Else Thinks

In Defense of Wild

Read the Reviews Here. Buy it here.