More Awesome

More Awesome: Goal 1.10 Complete

RaeBelle

A little late in posting this.  October was a busy month and I didn’t really read a ‘normal’ book.  I read like 3 magazines cover to cover and I read quite a lot of technical documentation and articles, none of which I’m counting here.

What I am counting is the very long User Guide for one of the systems I work with that I read this month for work.  I had to do some research and the index was rubbish, so I read the guide.  It was not fun at all.  November I really need to read something fun again!

More Awesome: Goal 1.09 Complete

RaeBelle

I’ve had hockey on the brain which makes me a bad blogger here sometimes.  But I do do quite a lot of reading during September.  I don’t feel I’m any good at book reviews, and I read 3 books so I’ll spare everyone who read this from my poor attempts at reviewing the books.

I started with The Balkan Escape by Steve Berry.  It was a short story to prepare you for the next book in the Cotton Malone series, The Emperor’s Tomb.  It was such a quick read, I almost felt bad about listing it.  Though it did kick off my little reading binge, so it made the list.  It’s only available in eBook format, which was fun.  I love reading eBooks, so it was no problem at all for me.  I can’t wait for November and the release of Emperor’s Tomb!

Next up was The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova.  It was a good book but felt a bit plodding at times and took me much longer to read than I thought it would.  I just couldn’t dive in for extended reading sessions.  I had to take some breaks.  I think I preferred Kostova’s first book, The Historian.  If she releases a new book, I’ll give it a try, but my expectations are lowered a bit.

I ended the month with 206 Bones by Kathy Reichs.  I’ve read every book in the Temperance Brennan series and I always enjoy them!  As always with Kathy Reichs, this was a great book.  I’ve never been disappointed by one of the Temperance Brennan books.  I have another on my iPad waiting to be read. 🙂

More Awesome: Goal 2.03 Complete

RaeBelle

Work has been quite a bit of keep doing the same thing, without a ton of new projects.  So this quarter’s update was fairly simple to make.  It was nice to be able to add a project to my job with the new company.  I enjoy making the quarterly updates to my resume.  It makes the whole process a bit simpler.  I just know it’s done and no need to worry about my resume falling out of date.

More Awesome 1.08

RaeBelle

In August I made up for my slacking in July 🙂

To start the month, I read A Vintage Affair by Isabel Wolff.  It was an interesting story about loss, grief and forgiveness.  Though the actual plot felt like that was almost secondary to the descriptions of vintage clothing.  I enjoyed the descriptions of the vintage clothing, as it is a fondness of mine.

In the middle of August, I read the Paris Vendetta by Steve Berry.  It’s the 5th book in the Cotton Malone series.  I really enjoy Steve Berry’s books and I’ve read them all to date.  I really enjoyed the book and there were actually some events I didn’t anticipate, which was a nice change for me.  Normally when I read action or mystery books I figure it out early in the story.  I didn’t have it all figured out, which I loved.

To wrap up the month, I read Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson of 37signals.  I’d heard a lot of good things about the book.  It was pretty good, but nothing in the book really felt revolutionary to me.  Of course I didn’t read it for a revolutionary experience, so it met my expectations.

I’ve also been listening to Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk.  I’m really enjoying it, but it doesn’t count towards my goal :)  I’ll probably do a separate post on that!

New More Awesome Goal Thoughts

RaeBelle

It’s been a few months since I created my first 2 More Awesome goals.  And I have thoughts on the third goal.  It should be something related to fitness.  But how to make it a SMART goal?  That’s something I need think about more.  Inches?  Pounds?  Number of repetitions?  Workout a number of times?  Those would all achieve the measurable result, I just need to figure out which is the best for me.  Any ideas out there?

More Awesome: Goal 1.07 Complete

RaeBelle

Such a slacker in my blogging recently, I must work on that.  I bought an iPad and playing with that has occupied my time to an alarming level.  It’s also made it easier to read some of the PDFs I’ve had sitting around and I’ve not read.  And one of those was What Matters Now a really great eBook available free!  It was great to read so many pieces by some very intelligent, well respected people.  It was inspirational and I’d highly recommend it!

More Awesome: Goal 1.06 Complete

RaeBelle

It’s almost the end of June and I almost forgot to pick a book to read.  I have so many books I want to read, sometimes it’s super hard to actually pick one and read.  Which actually corresponds with the book I did select for June, The Dip by Seth Godin.  I love Seth Godin’s blog and was inspired to pick one of his books to read.

The subtitle for The Dip is “A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)” and that’s exactly what it does. It reminds you that quitting isn’t a bad thing. It’s not the same as failing. In fact, quitting at the right time is one of the best things you can do.  Successfully quitting is a strategic decision, not something you talk yourself into.  The Dip also nicely reinforced the idea of ignoring sunk costs, with a small story about Michael Crichton.

The Dip is a short book, but a very interesting read.  I can see myself rereading it when I need a reminder about quitting and it’s value!

If you’re interested in learning more about The Dip, there’s a great squidoo page on it

More Awesome: Goal 1.05 Complete

RaeBelle

I decided to mix it up for May and read Steps in Time: An Autobiography by Fred Astaire.  I love Fred Astaire.  I have Fred Astaire movies on DVD, recordings on CD and even pictures of him.  He was stylish, an amazing dancer, a great singer and actor.  I found the book fascinating.  Astaire is a very good writer.  I knew a lot about Fred Astaire, and yet I learned so much more.  His early career with his sister Adele on Vaudeville and Broadway were particularly interesting.  I didn’t know that much about his pre-movie career and personally find Vaudeville and Broadway fascinating.  Astaire’s writing took me to the those periods he was describing.  There were almost 50 photos included with the book, which was wonderful.  How could I not love more pictures of Fred Astaire?  I might have to break out some of my DVD collection and enjoy them all over again.

More Awesome: Goal 1.04 Complete

RaeBelle

For April’s book I read Hershey by Michael D’Antonio. My husband purchased the book last year and I stumbled across it when I was selecting my book to read for April.

I grew up near Hershey PA and I moved back to Central PA a few years ago.  I’ve been to Hershey more times than I can count.  So I’m relatively familiar with some of the history of the town and Milton Snavely Hershey himself.

I found this book very interesting.  It confirmed many things I believed to be true, some of which weren’t overly positive.  An example is M.S. Hershey’s temper.  It’s not something that’s commonly known, but I always rather suspected he had a temper and the book confirmed that.  I could have lived without the rumours about Kitty Hershey and her life before marrying Mr Hershey, but that’s my personal preference.  Since I’m a bit of a history buff, I was a bit annoyed by the attempts to place the story in a historical concept.  If it wasn’t connected to M.S. Hershey or the history of the company, I didn’t really need it.  An example would be mentioning Lincoln speaking in Lancaster.  I’m not sure what that really had to do with the story, but again that’s personal preference.  I’m sure those pieces of information were useful to someone not as well versed in history.

The majority of the book is devoted to MS Hershey’s life.  I found the portions on Milton’s early life extremely interesting.  These are some of the very important events that helped shape the man.  I’ve always found these portions of his life to be breezed over in most of the other Milton Hershey information I’ve read.

The information about his early businesses and failures he faced were eye opening.  I’d known he’d tried and failed before finally succeeding with the Lancaster Caramel Company, but never heard the actual extent of those previous businesses.  I really enjoyed reading about the Lancaster Caramel Company’s creation and later sale.  That sale allowed Milton Hershey to have to time and money to create the town of Hershey, the milk chocolate recipe, and the Hershey company.  There was a lot of history to the company of Hershey I had a only slightly familiar with, like the Cuban sugar plantation & refinery, and they were covered in the book.

The last 2 chapters about his legacy and lasting impact on the people and town of Hershey.  They even cover some of the recent history of the legal battles of the Milton Hershey School Trust.

If you want to learn more, the good and the bad, about Milton Hershey, the Hershey Company, the town of Hershey or the Milton Hershey School, this is a good book to pick up.  I’m happy I read it even with the negatives I mentioned earlier.

More Awesome: Goal 1.03 Complete

RaeBelle

I recently participated in a Random Act of Kindness (ROAK) for the Belen Echandia Sub Forum in the Purse Forum. My wonderful buddy sent me Drive by Daniel H Pink, a book I’ve been looking forward to since I saw Kathy Sierra mention it on Twitter.  Once I received Drive, I knew it had to be the book I read for March!

Drive’s subtitle is The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.  The book explores a type of motivation beyond the normal reward/punishment system (Motivation 2.0), a Motivation 3.0.  Pink points out that if basic needs are met, Motivation 2.0 can actually harm instead of help the very things it’s trying to accomplish.

Motivation 2.0 worked when it was created because of the type of work being done.  People needed to comply and Motivation 2.0 excels in that situation.  Now, a lot of work requires problem solving, creativity and willingness to experiment.  Motivation 3.0 seeks and allows for engagement, which fits the current environment.

Pink provides examples from some companies that are embracing Motivation 3.0.  Three of the big names are Zappos, Best Buy, and 3M.  Zappos empowers their employees to provide make the customer happy.  Best Buy operates a Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE) in some areas that allows their employees to determine where and when they work best.  3M provides their technical staff with time to work on a project of their choosing.  One of these projects resulted in Post-In Notes, one of my favorite products!

Motivation 3.0 is 3 basic elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose.  Pink dedicates a chapter to each and discusses them at length.  The end of the book a toolkit for Type I (his type of Motivation 3.0 person).  The toolkit provides 9 strategies for finding your motivation.

I really loved the book.  It’s one of those books you don’t want to put down, but you know you have to let it sit so you can absorb the information.  I took me almost 3 weeks to read the content of the book, and I’m still reading through the toolkit and thinking about it.  A lot of the Motivation 2.0 not working and Motivation 3.0 recommendations made sense to me.  I don’t work at a company that embraces Motivation 3.0, but I can see some ways my management has implemented portions of it (and I’m sure without having read this book).  If you want to learn more about motivation, I suggest getting Drive!