Are you happy in your current job? Do you enjoy your work? Are you doing what you’re good at? Does your work make you feel proud? For many people the answers are No. If this is you then this book is for you…

A couple of weeks ago I caught a tweet and learned of a new book entitled And What Do You Do? 10 Steps to creating a Portfolio Career by Barrie Hopson and Katie Ledger. I bought the book and consumed it in under a week. I liked the contents of the book so much I’ve already started implementing my plan to create my portfolio career and feel this is worthy of a book review.

Finding one job that can pay the bills, give you the lifestyle you want, and make you happy is difficult but what if you had multiple jobs that allowed you to do the many things you enjoy, what you’re good at and make you feel proud; working those kind of jobs would mean work isn’t work.

The book starts out by describing the career situation that most people find themselves in, then discusses the relative pros and cons, presents the concept of a Portfolio Career, and then briefly covers the ten steps to arrive at your tailored portfolio career.

The first two steps prompt you to confirm whether or not a portfolio career is really for you, asks if you can afford to pursue one, and suggests ways to transition into a portfolio career.

The book then takes you though the next steps of identifying what you’re naturally good at, what you enjoy, and what makes you proud (your Motivated Skills), your values (what makes you want to work), and the many types of people that you are.

The rest of the book deals with how you get started with your portfolio career, networking, choosing the careers, marketing, brand, and follow on activities to make your careers thrive. The book has lots of exercises that help you realise the shape of your portfolio career.

I’ve always avoided doing something I love as a job as I’ve often heard people say that it could turn something you love into a chore and therefore something you hate. I believe that there is a risk that this can happen but I feel it’s all down to how you handle the job. There is always going to be ‘grunge work’ as the book describes it but so long as this is minimised there shouldn’t be a problem.

You can get a copy of And What Do You Do? from Amazon.

I hope to blog more about my transition into my Portfolio Career, why not subscribe to my blog to ensure you get future posts.

Do you have a Portfolio Career? Have you read And What Do You Do? Do you agree with my comments? – Please take a few moments to leave me a comment.

Until the next post…

Just finished reading The Google Story and thought I’d write a review. The Google Story written by David A. Vise is another one of my charity shop finds.

The book does what it’s title says and takes you through the life of Google from conception to now, and the kinds of challenges popular growing services and companies face.

The main thing I got out of reading the book (and seemed to be a theme running through the book) was yet another confirmation of how a focus on solving a problem for people is such an important factor in success; and how solely focusing on making money will lead eventually to failure. You realise that Larry and Sergey were not interested in making money they just wanted to solve a problem and do it in a way that no-one else was doing; provide the best returns for a given search criteria. Google’s competitors had money as their focus but with Google’s resistance to advertising (certainly in the early days) they won users favour; when users want to search for something all they want is a page with a search bar and a button to press, not heaps of advertising and flashing text or graphics. Even now when adverts are part of the Google search returns, you can see they don’t clutter the page.

I’ve used Google for many years and recently I’ve use Easysearch to help raise funds for my local astronomy group (if you’d like to help raise funds too, then go to http://masas.easysearch.org.uk/ and set them as your homepage; or select other good causes to support) and you can see a big difference in the search results you get back. I think Google is better and although I’ve not done many recent comparisons between Google and other popular search engines Google is just better. I think one of the reasons for this is that the Google founders spent more time developing the search engine as opposed to concentrating on money making.

The book starts out describing the beginnings of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and how they came to meet. It then goes on to tell the story of how they got their first investments with out a real business plan for how returns on those investments were going to be made; again returns on search criteria were more important than returns on investments. The book then takes you through the rest of the history of Google to present day and finishes with a few pointers of where Google is headed in the years to come.

The book is one person’s account of the Google story and was not created, authorised, or endorsed by Google, Inc. and because of this a sceptical mind like mine is always going to wonder if some of this is propaganda. But you can’t deny the fundamental fact that when you win the hears and minds of your customers, by fighting your customers cause with them, by providing the service they need in the way that solves their problem, you’ll win their support and in turn win their business.

I found it a smooth balanced read; it doesn’t go too deep into the technical or the business side of things. Think you could work for Google? Then have a go at their aptitude test in the Appendix section of the book and let me know how you get on.

You can buy this book from Amazon *AF but make sure you get the latest version as this book has gone through a number of updates.

Have you read The Google Story? If so, what did you think? Do you agree with my thoughts? Let me know by leaving me a comment.

Until the next post…

We all know that to complete a project we have to complete tasks; essentially it’s about getting things done. I have seen the Getting Things Done methodology and principles banded around for a while and decided to buy the book to see for myself. I actually bought it in time to take with me on holiday; might sound a little boring (certainly the reaction I got from my wife) but having read it, it seems the best time to read it cover to cover and absorb the whole book. I often think that holidays are the best time to not only relax and party, but to take stock of your life, career, etc… when you are away from it all, things seem much clearer. Anyway, back to the Getting Things Done review.

First of all the book is written by a guy called David Allen; never heard of him before I saw his name on the book, but after a little Googling it appears he has written other self help style books. As the title of the book implies, the Getting Things Done, or GTD as we in the GTD-world like to call it, is all about having a system of managing tasks. Essentially it is about taking some incoming thought, letter, email, voicemail etc… and recording it in a system so that your mind can forget about it. And that is the real point that David Allen makes early on in this book; when your mind is empty of things you have to do, you can get on with what you have to do, you can get on with the task at hand in the comfort that you know what you have to do (its all in your GTD system) and you’ve not forgotten something.

Notice I said, Your GTD system. Although there is little need for deviation from the GTD methodology, the tools you use to implement the methodology means that different people’s implementation will be quite varied. I actually found that the way I used to manage my tasks was very similar to the GTD system; I’ll be describing “my life before GTD” in a later post.

Being a freelance consultant I hone in on the way people manage their work; and quite often I am amazed by the poor work-management systems people have in place for themselves and their team; I wonder how they ever get anything done. And that is the point, they don’t get much done and certainly not in an effective way. These are the people that scratch their head when giving updates to actions and say “err.. ongoing”, or when you ask them if they’ve done something yet they put their hands on their heads and say “sorry I forgot.” If you are one of these people then this book is for you.

As I write this post I am managing 8 projects and have about 70 other things to do. I have been using my GTD system for about two months now and I really do think I am getting things done at a faster rate. I also find that I have less on my mind, because when a thought comes into my mind I write it down and it goes through my GTD system.

I could hammer the keyboard for days expressing my thoughts on this book, it really is worth reading, but I think it’s best for you to discover GTD for yourself; you can get a copy from most book shops and on-line stores; I got mine from Amazon

Any questions, leave me a comment…

Until the next post.