Book review: Stay Confident by John Caunt

I have had a great chance to work and know a young and kind Indian friend from my old company. In age, he's much younger than me. However, I've seen in him something I called "struggling"; Struggling of a young person who is trying to escape from his unclear goals and aim to better values in life. Whenever I talked to him, I always put myself in the position that I was talking to a person who may advance very far in the future. He yearned to learn, but he was not able to tell what would be his right destination. I think that's very normal to a young person. Not only him, it's been happening to me all the time as well. So why do I write about him now? Before he left Canada, he offered me a lot of books. Today, I will write a first review on one of his books. Therefore, I write these lines firstly to thank him, and secondly to wish him the best in his future endeavor.

The book today is Stay Confident from John Caunt. The edition in my hand was published way back in the past (2009!). The cover picture is not exactly the same as the one below, but I hope you get the idea. 

Book Review: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Are you fast or slow thinker? Wait a second, don't answer it yet. Why? Simply it's not an easy question :-o). To really understand the question and be able to grasp some hint-sights, let me introduce you to the book: Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Book Review: “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores The Hidden Side Of Everything” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

A book full of untypical and freakish questions asked and analyzed scientifically from large amount of data under an economic point of view.

Book Review: The Magic of Thinking BIG by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D.

These three weeks, I took a short break in the middle of project management books by reading The Magic of Thinking BIG by David J. Schwartz, Ph.D. This book now is worth of being added into my book recommended list for life motivation category. Since I’m rather busy to run after some huge life plan at this point of time, I’m just introducing a cursory review here.

Book Review: Project Management for Mere Mortals by Claudia M. Baca

Due to the complex work demand, project management requires a lot of skills and knowledge, among them, flexibility and smartness cannot be missed. Human beings are unpredictable and project management job spends more than 90% of time to deal with human (the upper, peer and lower). If a person unluckily gets stuck in that maze, every day at work is just like nightmare. To be flexible, there was more than once I put myself deeper in the process to obtain soft skills and somehow I got positive returns. However, smartness or cleverness was a kind of innate talent, I supposed, which was not a thing that money or time could buy. What to be done if I’m not lucky enough to possess that kind of talent? “Project Management for Mere Mortals by Claudia M. Baca” opened a door for me. Achieving the skill via in-house empirical experiences, I’ve been always questing for some formal materials to fill my gaps and gain more credit of work.  This book gave me hope.  Recommended by my mentor, just after reading two chapters of the book, I knew I had to take notes carefully and must read it from cover to cover. The book tells me that a project manager, especially IT project manager, isn’t necessary to be a superman or superwoman. By its aid, as long as I pay enough time and attention to different aspects of work, I can gain some level of the thing called “cleverness”. And someone who has never read this book would call it “smartness” [not able to obtain by learning process] as I used to. If you’re looking for a full skeleton of project management from opening to closing, an approach to work with your team and a strategy to face with your uppers, this book is for you.

Book Review: What the dog saw and other adventures by Malcolm Gladwell

I’ve been reading 4 books from Gladwell so far. However, I think only “Outliers” and this book “What the dog saw and other adventures” inspired me to write a review. Basically, Gladwell’s books usually collected reliable science evidences or research studies to reveal the world in disruptive ways which need the third eye to discover. What was considered as myths or weirdness were explained pretty well in different manners in Gladwell’s books, especially in the cases of mysterious accidents, social phenomena or human psychology. I’m going to give a brief review for “What the dog saw and other adventures” in this post.

Book Review: Step Up To IELTS - Self-Study Student's Book by Vanessa Jakeman and Clare McDowell

Living in an English speaking country and using English for everything, those things are still not enough for me. Whenever bumping into any academic fields, I need a recognised certificate. I had tried to avoid an international certificate as long as I could – for at least 5 or 6 years I think – simply because I didn’t need one for all sorts.

I just wish life is always that simple . Unfortunately, it is not. The need for an international certificate is coming and hitting me back now. For better or for worse, I should get high scores for at least one international English test system this year. Also, an international certificate could help prove my stand in the effort of a fresh life-kickoff. After all those considerations, I select IELTS as the target. My strategy is self-studying (the best and also the hardest method) and the score expectation is between 7 and 8 (band 7 or higher).

With all those introductions, I just want to let people know that from now on, my blog will also contain some self reviews on IELTS books, learning strategies, learning sources or English tips. By forcing myself to update the learning progress regularly on this blog, I hope it would also motivate and keep me up to the end of learning journey. Just hope that I’m strong enough to not drop the plan in the middle

I have begun studying since March (two months ago) actually. After researching all necessary tips and resources on forums, I had built up good steps for my entire journey though. While there are enormous learning tips and strategies on over Internet, I just emphasize one thing here - All roads lead to Rome. If you’re on the way to get an English certificate too, just pick up your own strategy and go with it to the end. That is also my thorough guideline for self. Even though I need a certificate, I don’t just study for a certificate. Eventually, I will try to review and catch up as much knowledge as I can during the studying time. I suppose it’s always good to replay what was known but forgot or misunderstood now. Therefore, materials used in my list can be both at basic and advance.

The first book I kicked off was “Step Up To IELTS - Self-Study Student's Book by Vanessa Jakeman and Clare McDowell”

This book is really a great start for learners like me who have no experiences of IELST test. After finishing 16 units in this book, I want to jot down some self reviews here and hope they’re going to help those who need it later.

Book Review: Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Project Management by Gregory M.Horine and Mastering Project Management by PM4DEV

Indeed, my first purpose to create this blog was for learning and sharing Project Management (PM) skills. Conversely, after day by day, I’ve turned it into my cozy space for sharing all moments and expertise areas in my life, not just PM. I just hope that change would bring more colors to my virtual space. This post is basically just a book review as usual. The only difference is that the book is in PM field which is also my main major after computer science. 

Book Review: DK Essential Managers - Manage Your Time by Tim Hindle

This book summarizes some very good tips to manage time. We all somehow know all these tips but we never seriously sit down and sort them out. Sometimes we’re just too busy and let go everything by the order they appear into our lives. Happening more than once in our lives, we recognized that our days just passing by without getting anything seriously done. Sometimes we also claim that it’s wasting time to make a critical schedule since it’s very hard be practical enough and usually thrown in the garbage bin in a couple of days.

Book Review: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

This is the biography book about the famous person - Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple Inc.. I think this book already got its historic mark as the best seller for 2011. Maybe millions of people had read it before me. Therefore, the book doesn't need any further input from me. Personally, this post is just to tick the book off from my reading list that I officially finished it. 

Book Review: The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, 2011.

"How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses"

Book review: The Craft of Research by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, 3rd edition, 2008

Research, what is it?

Book Review: Outliers - The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is the name I heard the most from friends whenever mentioning about books and intellectual talks. I don’t know why, maybe by coincidence, I received recommendations on his books from at least 3 people (those who I know in person) from different areas of sciences. The first time I heard about him should be in 2008. At that time, frankly, I wasn’t very excited to read English books at all (English isn’t my native language). Whenever thinking about reading, understanding and catching the metaphor behind the books, I procrastinated myself. Therefore, I kept lying myself that because I was so busy and I couldn’t spend time seriously on reading books. That excuse made me feel better during years. It’s somehow called as “Willful Blindness”[1] symptom.

Book review: A Briefer History of Time by Stephen Hawking with Leonard Mlodinow

Hmm, where to start now? I don’t really love cosmos at the beginning. I just enjoy looking into the sky to find stars even though I can’t tell their names, positions or characteristics at all. I just look at them to know sometimes they cover the sky, sometimes they don’t, some of them are bright, others are not.

Poorly Made In China - An insider's account of the tactics behind China's production game by Paul Midler

Poorly Made In China

The book shows me frame by frame exactly what I had been dealing during the time working with Chinese companies. I was really stuck like the position of the mediator of this book author and of course I couldn’t expect to know anyone else dealing with the same troubles, just simply can’t explain by words. My position was a little different when I couldn’t speak Chinese and didn’t stay inside China. However, all the games of qualities were pushing on me. If I play them hard on quality, they will give me more to play. Sometimes I was asking myself, what happens if I just simply accept “its quality” since no one even cares about the trouble at my side at the end. People want cheap, cheap and cheap. Should I be hard and make my life suck or just let it be. Anyway, I couldn’t just let it be so I quit playing too. It was so astonishing to know that the same scenario is fooling many other people too.

Sách "Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization by Dave Logan, John King, Halee Fischer-Wright"

WormMom (WM) đọc qua nhiều quyển sách, hay có dở có. Sau khi suy nghĩ kỹ, WM sẽ đầu tư một ít quỹ thời gian của mình để viết cảm nhận cho những quyển sách hay. Bởi lẽ khi đọc xong một quyển sách hay, bản thân WM cảm thấy rất hạnh phúc. Mà hạnh phúc thì ai cũng muốn níu kéo nó ở lâu hơn một chút. WM rất muốn giữ lại những cảm xúc và kiến thức thu lượm được từ những quyển sách như thế. Nói thì phải làm liền vì WM không giỏi lưu giữ cảm xúc trong ký ức quá lâu. Nếu khi đọc xong quyển sách mà không ghi nhận cảm xúc ra bộ nhớ ngoài liền thì chỉ một thời gian ngắn sau bộ nhớ trong của WM sẽ dần phai mờ và mất đi cảm giác.