Business Books

A truly wonderful system, complete with methods and follow up exercises that help you realize the focus that is needed to excel in your professional life. A lucid flowing style makes sure you grasp and retain everything that is said. Distinguishing yourself is the key to being noticed, remembered and respected in this world. This book is the Bible when it comes to building your own "Personal Brand".

Learn the ways to change yourself internally and change the way you perceive and interact with the world. Jumpstart your future professional life. Practice what is said and you will truly see a difference in your life.

Distinguish yourself, for if you don't, you will fade away and drown in the sea of "cliched existence".

Rajesh Setty's "Beyond Code" is a deceptively simple prescription for getting out of the rut of today's complex workplace. As a career coach I see many clients, especially from high-tech who feel lost, stressed out, and hopeless. This simple book (not just for those from high-tech) can change their outlook on how they can learn to manage with what is already available to them in abundance: Their own internal resources! If those who feel "unplugged" in today's indifferent world, they can simply change their outlook by following the nine potent steps outlined and beautifully illustrated in Shetty's book! Bravo!

Dilip Saraf
Career and Life coach

Rajesh Setty's 'Beyond Code' is a book that anyone in the IT industry must read. Even if you are not from IT, you will find it reveling. You connect to Rajesh's thoughts immediately from page one and never stop thinking about what he has to share all through the book.

Most of the headings and highlighted sentences appear common sense to you, though the explanation that follows depicts thoughts that have come out of experiences, tried and tested. The connection is immediate and long lasting. Rajesh explains why book reading is so important even if you think you know what it teaches you. I appreciate Rajesh sharing his real life experiences and the 'suggested' reading list at the end of the book. Books are life transforming indeed.

The author clearly makes his experiences, ideas and thoughts by categorizing the 'inner game' and the 'outer game' in the pursuit of 'distinguishing yourself'.

My favorite parts of the book are, 'My Story', 'Likability' and 'Lead'.

I strongly recommend reading this book if you believe in the idea that 'you learn from other's experiences, not to spend precious time learning from your own experiences'.

I would have loved to read and learn more and more of real life professional experiences of the author, all of 'highs' and 'lows'. May be I call for a sequel to 'Beyond Code'.

Even though this books targets to distinguish yourself in the technology professional world, it does not limit there. Its highly essential for any person to distinguish himself or herself almost in any domain on both personal and preofessional front.

My favorite chapters were likeability, leave lasting impression, leverage and listen!

The best part of this book is it asks to you to implement whats written in the book. These theories are highly practical. The books is highly adoptable.

Beyond Code provides advice on how to differentiate yourself. Make your customers happy, communicate well, keep learning... the pieces of advice are good but common sense. They have already been covered in other books. I recommed Working With Emotional Intelligence and The 12 Bad Habits That Hold Good People Back.

Given the title of the book I expected practical information targeted at software engineers. But the book does not provide examples related to software. Instead we read about the author writing his first novel at age 13. While this would make good writing in an autobiography, it leaves me cold. Many programmers are introverted (INTJ types). Surely there is specific advice that can be provided to that group.

If Beyond Code is the first book you read about personal development, you will find it useful. If you have already read other books there is nothing of interest in it. As the author says: you have to differentiate yourself or be commoditized. It is too bad he didn't apply the idea to the book by targeting it more carefully.

This book does a nice job of motivating you toward your leadership aspirations, but many times I felt like I was back in Jr. High school and was listening to my teacher tell me stories of when he was growing up. With all the author's experience and interaction with such high-profile icons of this generation (and a few past), I would think he could have transferred his leadership skills in a more adult and interesting way. Overall, the book was OK.

The Business Playbook: Leadership Lessons from the World of Sports by Brandon Steiner does a tremendous job of explaining why it is important for one to set goals, as well as telling you what steps you can take to help you in achieving your goals. The book is well written, with a good amount of actual sports stories featuring some of the biggest names in sports. One downside is that many of the athletes discussed in the book play or played on teams based in New York. I would assume that is because the Steiner's business is located in New York and therefore these are the athletes he has the most contact with. The stories that he does tell about the athletes, however, are closely related to the lessons he is trying to teach in his book. Seeing the success that these athletes have had is a great motivator for the reader to try to accomplish much the same success in business instead of on a playing field.

The book is broken down into chapters, and each chapter essentially highlights a different principle that one can use on the road to success. Within each chapter every principle is broken down even further into various sub-topics. Although some of the sub-topics may not flow together as well as they could have, this style made the book very easy to read as well as understand. None of the information in the book is too complicated for the average reader to comprehend, and all of the information is explained very well.

By associating success in business with success in sports Steiner does a tremendous job in offering a book that is fun to read as well as a book that offers real lessons in business and leadership. Everyone who is at least in part a fan of sports and works in a business field should take the time to read this motivational book. By reading this book you will be able to tie aspects of sports into your business career in ways you may have never even felt were possible.

The Business Playbook is hands down the best motivational book I have ever read! Anyone who reads this book will take at least one valuable lesson that they could use in both their business and personal life! Mr. Steiner has a true sports marketing mind, and in my opinion is the best in the business! Keep up the good work!!!!!!!

I thought this book was very intuitive. It really made think about my future goals, and how I should approach them. It is a good reading for anybody who wants to be successful in what ever they want to do. Being that I am a big sports fan I really appreciated the sport figures and events that brandon used as analogies. It should be required reading for buisness students and for anybody who wants to move forward in life. Great book!

I was lucky enough to read this book after the CEO of my company asked me to purchase it and write him up a quick synopis. It was a quick but powerful read and by the end of that same weekend my senses were ablaze with newly kindled hope and inspiration!

Brandon Steiner has a great sense of motivational ability, and unlike some who give advice with an heir of condescension, he has an amazing ability to strike a chord with the reader through highly assimilable, digestible prose and imagery. He presents a theme and then illustrates it anecdotally. In his line of business one can only imagine the stories you'd have after working so closely with such colorful clientele. At the end of each chapter there is a summary and a closing paragraph or two which ties all the subject matter together.

The book is divided into key principles: "Start with a road map; Find your niche; Wake up nervous!; Know your purpose; Go the extra mile; You never know; Get focused!; Nothing changes if nothing changes; It's not what happens, it's what you do with what happens; and finally, See success as a habit." I saw so many points therein which had immediate relevance to my life and my future goals.

I am very glad to have read "The Business Playbook" and strongly advocate to anyone who reads this to pick yourself up a copy. You'll be glad you did.

Michael G.
NY, NY

I have found that most books about marketing are about someone's one success in the past and just discuss the barriers they had to break to make their winning strategy work...they tend to be egocentric. I have wanted a book that really lines out the steps to take to create people loyal to a brand. I am not looking for a magic step-by-step I know everything takes time, but this book is doing a great job explaining practical things to do to create a loyal following. I got turned on to this book by their blog which is amazing...check it out at http://www.churchofthecustomer.com/

Ben and Jackie have written a great book about how to harness the power of your happy and loyal customers to build relationships with new customers. Their authentic ideas allow brands to build trust with customers.

Dr. Karen Mishra
Author, "Trust is Everything: Become the leader others will follow"

I have the original hard cover book and absolutely love it, it is my bible. So I bought this new one to share it. Looks updated but still has all the good stuff in it. This book has amazing ideas and examples that really work when you put them to use.

This book provides all the research needed to help you easily find customer evangelists! It's a great book, I highly recommend it.

This book is a perfect companion for wannabe-evangelists, or simply to understand the mechanisms behind some kind of "marketing" efforts (such as Dallas Mavericks' or O'Reilly Media's) that can be unclear at first.
I suggest it, a great purchase!

There is an enormous amount of negative energy in the world today. Those that choose not to fall into this trap, rise to the top at an exponential rate. Any fool can condemn, critize, and complain, and most fools do. This book highlights the effects of positive energy and is enjoyable to read. So good, I encouraged my wife to read it and we have had several discussion around its topics.

This book is worth your $$$ and time to read. It was a fun, easy to read story with an amazing message.

The Energy Bus is a book I would recommend to everyone. I would love to see it required reading even at the high school level and weveryone in the business world should read it. It might make some teens rethink their life goals or think about their life goals. very easy reading for anyone over 14 years old.

This book was recommended by several collegues at a recent convention. I read it in one sitting. There is so much usable information in this book! When I went back thru it, to highlight the key items, I ended up highlighting something on almost every page. Buy the book and jump on The Energy Bus.

Very good simple basic rules for work, life and family. Is a good easy read.

I am currently working on my first startup and was looking for resources to guide me. I ordered this book based on it being on several entrepreneur's reading lists and am happy to say that it was worth the wait (I waited several weeks as I am in Asia).

The outlined customer development process is very methodical with a lot of meat (unlike other start up books which focus more on high level principles) with a workbook section that you can work through in a checklist fashion.

One of the key aspects of this book is getting in touch with customers to validate/update your hyphotheses, which will prove to be the bane of every shy founder!! Fortunately for me, I already have a list of potential customers to approach, which will save me having to do cold calling!

My (minor) gripes are the shocking editing and the amateurish print quality.Furthermore, like an earlier reviewer said, its not an easy read and at times I felt like I was reading a textbook. Nonetheless I am awarding it 5 stars based on the outstanding content.

I highly recommend this book, along with Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start, Founder's at Work and 37Signal's Getting Real to aid you in your journey.

* I've been looking for a startup manual that matches my experiences for a long time. This is it!
* Note that this book is not an easy read. It is more of a manual.

* I've been using this book as the main text in a course this past month with good results.
- A big "Thank You" to the author for supporting me

Key Concepts that I really like are.

1) Your "product/idea/customers/model" is all a hypothesis at the beginning.
* It is not fact.
* The sooner you "get out of the building", test it out & iterate it, the better.

2) Customer Discovery Rules
* "Facts are outside the building, opinions are inside."
* "Solve a problem that customers say is important and valuable"
* "Does the product concept solve that problem"

Great Stuff.

This book is a must have for startups. I have been using it to develop a framework for my startup and find it vital to my current success. I highly recommend this book.

Steven Blank has done an incredible job of demystifying the market demand creation process. The book itself is a step by step guide on all the stages required for a successful product launch. Blank takes you from the early R&D stages to positioning.
Even though when I first read the book we were at the later stages of the process, this was helpful to fill in some gaps and to refocus on what is important.

This book is a must-read for all entrepreneurs who are serious about making their venture successful. Steve Blank, an accomplished serial entrepreneur, provides a rigorous process, supported with details and examples, for discovering and validating early customers, creating customer demand and ultimately building a successful business. His process parallels and complements the much-accepted, engineering-driven Product Development Process, used by most VC-backed Silicon Valley startups. Blank's process focuses on where the highest startup risks usually lie - that is, the risks of having few or no customers by the time the product is ready for prime time. His process is structured with early customer testing activities and milestones, all aimed at intimately understanding the customer needs early on and ultimately ensuring that the product gets customer traction by the time it's ready to ship.

This book is extremely valuable because it provides a structured approach for understanding your most important early adopter customers, and then feed this customer intelligence into the Product Development Process. I wholeheartedly recommend it to both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs.

Over all the book is very good. Short chapters make it easy to get through it and it does not drag. I found it a great resource for other books that it referance (eg. Think and Grow Rich). Depending on your occupation some of the ideas presented in this book will not apply to you (at least that's my opinion). For instance "printing" everything on paper might be more applicable to someone that gets a lot faxes or documents, but if everything you get is electronic I just find printing everything to be over kill, not to mention environment unfriendly. Other part of the book are good. Author states, "read this book and take whatever you want" and I totally agree. Even if you don't find some parts of the book applicable to you, you will find something that you'll be able to use.

Of the 3 dozen books I've read related to organizing, this is one of my favorites. It is presented in an easy-to-read format that makes it possible to spend a few minutes and read a chapter at a time. There were many great quotes and ideas that are easy to implement. The book also included fun anecdotes. Very well done!

Chris Crouch's "Getting Organized: Improving Focus, Organization and Productivity" is a fine read which accomplishes what all good teachers do best: Imparting with vivid good humor and simplicity the wisdoms of processes taken beyond the classroom. The target audience here, primarily workers in any workplace, calls for a most delicate balancing act: Being thoughtful and succinctly explaining the theory, practice, and results of a disciplined approach to Organization. Mr. Crouch accomplishes this masterfully with anecdotes, explanations, and his "master teacher" persona.

This is a very good book to help you get organized. I originally had a three star and changed it to a four star. So many of this book's best elements are also found in David Allen's Getting Things Done. I read Allen's book last year and it knocked my socks off. When I read this, I wasn't as impressed as I would have if I read Crouch's before Allen's (they're both obviously drawing some of the best tidbits from some of the same material that preceded them). They have many, many of the same very helpful tips. The advantage of Crouch's is that is has short digestible chapters. However, an overall approach does not clearly emerge, just a bunch of big and small organizing ideas. An advantage of Allen's is that you get a clear, overarching approach into which all those good tips suggested in these books fit. Allen's chapters are longer, and though very readable, can get a little bogged down compared to Crouch. If I had only one book to buy, I'd get Allen's. However, I'm glad I read Crouch's because it has given me a refresher.

Getting organized is a major issue for many of us (I work two jobs, both of which require me to maintain an office). While one book may do it for some, I strongly believe that major habit changes will more likely come if you really plunge into an area like this. That means reading Crouch's book, Allen's book, and even Julie Morganstern's Organizing from the Inside Out. While Allen and Crouch focus on the office and home office (mail, home files, etc.), Morgenstern also covers garage, basement, closets, etc. I'm serious, to change the way you look at things, you need to read several books and make yourself an "expert." Otherwise, it will be a book you read that you're not likely to act on.

I read them in the order of 1) Allen, 2) Morgenstern and 3) Crouch. If any readers will choose to read all three of these, I'd recommend Crouch first, then Allen, then Morgenstern. Crouch will lure you in with his short little chapters (once you get past his too many introductory-type chapters before you get into the good stuff). Then, reinforce what you learn by reading a lot of overlapping stuff in Allen's book, but Allen will give you an outline or framework that ties it all together. Then, move on from the office to your closets and garage with Morgenstern. Of the three, Allen was the best for me, but I needed the others to sustain my momentum. Good luck!

I recently bought both this and Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity in order to stimulate my thinking about how to take charge of my incredibly busy job as a software development manager in an e-commerce company. I manage about 8 people directly and am also the prime facilitator for another project team of about 15 people, half of which are contractors. Like most people, I also have my own work projects and initiatives, as well as huge laundry list of personal items to keep up with.

At first I was a little turned off by the 55 super-short chapters, each of which is 1-2 pages in length and has a "What? So What? Now what?" layout. The writing quality seemed only average, and I was left thinking "Is that it?" after each chapter. However, after I finished the book rather quickly and then got bogged down in Getting Things Done, I realized that this is a pretty good layout for the target audience - people who feel too busy to read a book on productivity.

Many of the observations seem obvious, but that is one of the key messages of the book: we're all making this stuff away too complicated. How many of us take ten minutes each morning to set a focus and key priority list for the day? Or do we omit that simple step, or fall into the trap of checking email "just for a few minutes" first and then get seduced into following little shiny objects all day while missing the big picture?

The "Five Decisions" chapters - Discard, Delegate, Take Immediate Action, Put in a Reference File, and File for Follow-up - are important but I think are covered better in the other book. About half of the other chapters really resonated with me, which made it worthwhile overall. However, the author lost me when he spent 10 chapters describing a paper filing system with folders for each day of the month plus various other files. I agree that people shouldn't expect software and tools to solve all their problems, but I think a PDA or list software like Remember the Milk is much better than a paper system for anyone who works in multiple locations or is "on the go". I felt like he was being a bit techno-phobic, sort of like the guys who insist that LP records are better than CDs or MP3s.

Really the best way to improve your organization habits is to browse several books and articles on the topic, note the themes that recur (like planning time, grouping tasks by project or goal, etc.) and then choose a couple of things to focus on. I'd recommend this book as one of those resources but not the best-written or only one.

This book must be mandatory before and during any econometrics class. In intuitive terms and examples, with minimal notation and math, manages to deliver a working knowledge, a basic understanding that can supplement and aid in the use of the usual undergraduate and graduate econometrics books like Green and others.

What is exactly opposite of these other books is that you can really enjoy reading this book while drinking your coffee, or lying on the sand enjoying the beach. I recommend this book in my syllabus to all my students in all graduate and undergraduate courses I teach.

This is a great econometrics book. I wish that I had found this book earlier in my graduate career, and now I find myself going to it all the time. It covers all the important concepts and is very clearly written. The best thing about the book is that it teaches how to use econometrics not just what it is. It makes that very important jump of teaching students how to apply these tools properly. I cannot recommend this book enough!

I highly recommend this book as a source of intuition for econometrics. As a Ph.D. student working on my own research I find this book very helpful when I want a quick and easy explanation. This book is also good for clarifying some basic concepts that never got adequate explanations in my econometrics courses. I only wish that this book had a little more coverage on limited dependent variable models.

Not many scientists can write but Peter Kennedy is NOT one of them. He presents the mathematical and statistical information in clear, concise language. A wonderful AND informative read!!

This is a great book. But buy it for the right reason. All by itself, not as useful as a lot of the reviews suggests.

This has to be used together with Greene's <>. It suppliment a lot of the formulae with ideas and reasons. But it is light on formula by itself, and you can not use it as a reference. This is a explain book, tells you why we should do it this way, what to caution/watch for, what is the logic behind that.

So buy it with greene's book. Learn the math in greene's book, keep greene's book on the shelf as regular reference book. But read this book to understand ideas, and sort out complexicities.

Overall, still a great buy.

This was a gift for my 9 yr old granddaughter. She told me she loved it.She had rented from the library and was overjoyed to have her own copy.

Of all the Andrew Clements school books I've read, Lunch Money was by far the least engaging. The reason for this is that a large part of the book focuses on numbers instead of people, and where Clements has succeeded in the past is in his ability to make us really like his leading characters. Greg, the lead character in this book, is not very nice. He's largely driven by money and selfishness, and although Clements does try to make Greg more personable by depicting his change of attitude, the change does not come off convincingly.

The concept itself behind the book is terrific: schools are hypocritical because while they profess to be trying to promote certain values and healthy lifestyles, the actions districts take are at times directly opposed to the high moral standards the districts are imposing on the students.

I did enjoy the book, and recommend it to those looking to read more of Andrew Clements' books. I would pick up Frindle, The School Story, or The Report Card first however.

Lunch Money is a good book for money lovers. Its about a boy who has all these good ideas to make money and then he comes up with his best idea yethe decides to make comic books!The princapal disagres but then Mrs Davenport decidesto let Greg sell comic books. I highly recomend this book!

I really liked LUnch Money because it was detailed, funny and lots more!
It is about a boy named Greg, who, really, really, really likes money. For almost his whole life he has been enemies with a girl named Maura.
What will happen?Read the book to find out!

I'm a nine year old boy from NY. This book is funny and serious, too. This boy Greg wants to make lots of money while copycats try to steal his ideas. He makes money by selling little chunky comics. I recommend this book to everyone.

WB

Setting the Table by Danny Meyer provides lots of value for business leaders. I ranked this book five stars based on the value alone. The reader should be apprised that the book is written as a memoir of Mr. Meyer's experience in the restaurant business.

As a business leader you should study excellence in your industry and outside of your industry and there are numerous take-aways in Setting the Table that can be applied to any business. Here are ten excellent points I took away from Mr. Meyer's book.

1. The Excellence Reflex - "A natural reaction to fix something that isn't right, or to improve something that could be better." The excellent reflex is a natural reaction that some people have and cannot be taught. Meyer trains his leaders how hire those that have it.

2. Employees can be categorized as Overwhelmers, Whelmers, and Underwhelmers. It is easy to identify Underwhelmers and get rid of them. The most dangerous employees are the Whelmers because "they infuse an organization and its staff with mediocrity...and send a dangerous message to your staff and guests that "average" is acceptable."

3. Coaching is correcting with dignity.

4. You obtain valuable leadership skills while managing volunteers. It requires you to consistently motivate employees beyond their earnings.

5. Create a sense of "shared ownership" with your customers by taking an interest in them and making them feel important. They will view you as a partner instead of a provider.

6. ABCD - Always Be Collecting Dots. You should aggressively collect lots of little information about your customer (dots) as they interact with your product or service. Then make the connection between the dots as a mechanism to improve your product or service to all customers.

7. Customers may love your product or service but the relationship that they have with you or your employees is what builds loyalty. Therefore you should take every opportunity to exceed expectations to create a lasting relationship.

8. Enlightened Hospitality - "We would define our successes and our failures in terms of the degree to which we had championed, first, one another and then our guests, community, suppliers and investors." This is an extremely powerful concept and is rooted in the integrity theme Meyer has throughout the book. You can't expect employees that don't treat each other with respect, who can't be hospitable with one another to then turn around and treat the customer with respect and high levels of hospitality a customer deserves. Poor relationships internal to the organization migrate to poor relationships external to the organization. Ultimately being last on the list benefits the investor by long term organizational success.

9. Judge your staff on 51 percent emotional job performance and 49 percent technical job performance. You can always teach technical while emotional is much harder if not impossible to develop. Lack of emotional job performance skills destroys teams and alienates customers.

10. "The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled" and "the worst mistake is not to figure out some way to end up in a better place after having made a mistake."

The ten points above are obviously more powerful in the context of the book when illustrated with Mr. Meyer's stories and experiences.


Dr. James T. Brown PMP PE CSP
Author, The Handbook of Program Management

Danny Meyer is now one of my new heroes. I'm at a point where I will be opening a new restaurant in the coming year and I plan to buy a copy of Setting the Table for all of my employees and all of my investors. I can't wait to have the time to visit all his restaurants one by one. This book or cd should be required listening or reading for anyone going into the restaurant business. Thanks for stocking this amazing informative book.
All the best,
Danny Quinn

The restaurant business begins with a vision well founded on food knowledge. Having had great and many good meals helps. But the lessons of this book are many: the best is his order of priorities....first the employees, then the customers, then the suppliers and last the investors. Brilliant.

One of the best business books I've ever read. Danny really "gets it" as far as treating his employees and customers like family and VERY important people. THIS is why he is so successful with the top restaurants in NYC. A MUST read for anyone in sales or who deals with customers and employees on a daily basis

A great book that describes how to create customers for life, with "enlightened hospitality", creating an outstanding customer experience, based on a dialog with the customer. As he puts it "picking up the rocks" (to find the info) and "connecting the dots", a process that could and should be copied for every business.

His passion for food comes across the written page, its contagious.
I'm not a wine drinker but his passion made me want to give it a try.

I never been to one of his restaurants but I now see a trip to New York to visit his restaurants.

Highly recommended not only for restaurateurs, but for every business that has contact with customers.

Finally someone noticed all the small differences in System Administrators lifes that require a different approach to time management.

Plus, a sense of humour and accurate advices.

Time Management for System Administrators is a book not only aimed at system administrators but also other task and interrupt driven employees early in their career. It presents a core concept of use to anyone struggling with a "never ending TODO list of doom" both for business and personal tasks. Some of the information is of a very basic nature such as "do short tasks and important tasks first". Part of this, however, could be Thomas Limoncelli's writing style which is detailed almost to a fault. It is, however, a very easy book to read and I found myself going through quite a few pages in one sitting.

On the negative side the analogies the author uses to try and explain time management in computer terms get a bit thick at times in the first few chapters but soon they run out and are no longer in the way of the points being made. Two other somewhat awkward chapters are the Stress Management and Automation chapters. Is it worth the time to write (or read) a chapter to basically tell us to occasionally take a vacation and to get a massage? It seems like filler to pad out the book. Similarly, the important take-away point of the automation chapter is to, well, automate things! However the chapter contains an overly specific set of shell programming tricks the author has learned over the years. These are of course presented as examples of how to automate, but the amount of time spent on details and anecdotes makes this chapter also feels like pad. The time spent in these chapters could have been better spent on the core points of the book.

What is the most valuable information in this book? The core technique is what the author calls The Cycle System. This is a way to manage your TODO list so at the end of each day every item assigned to that day has been addressed, if not necessarily completed. It's a very useful technique for learning to plan, to ensure you follow through with completing tasks and to improve your sense of accomplishment that you are managing your workload. Interestingly the author has always used a paper-based TODO list and calendar, so each technique of The Cycle System is explained both for paper and digital (PDA) methods. The Cycle System can help by providing a framework for managing tasks other than continuing to add them to an ever growing list, however it still requires a lot of discipline to properly schedule tasks in the future to avoid them all piling up on the task list for the current day. After several weeks of using the system it is certainly a workable method as long as you are honest with yourself on the amount of real work you can accomplish in a single day and you dedicate a good bit of time on a regular basis to future planning and scheduling of tasks that aren't high priority or due immediately. Unfortunately, the author doesn't go into a lot of detail on techniques to handle the issue of building up a backlog of low priority tasks other than to suggest daily, weekly and monthly planning times to reprioritize and reschedule tasks. The issues of email management, interruptions, unexpected tasks, request tracking software and even life goals are addressed. This portion of the book is where the true value lies and it provides a good amount of information.

If you currently have no structured task management system this is a great resource to start with. You'll certainly come away with a wealth of information on getting a system in place to start to manage things. If you forget to complete tasks or tell someone you'll do something only to forget it when the next person you run into starts you on a new problem, then this book will be very useful to you in how to manage interruptions and always follow through. If you are fresh out of school and you're in an IT job where tasks are starting to pile up, this book will be of even more benefit to you with its stories and broad IT specific topics. As such I would recommend this book to anyone in a task and interruption oriented job as a basic primer on how you should be expected to manage yourself. If you are in a computer job, so much the better, but regardless of your line of work you can still learn a great deal.

Ranked at four stars due to the issues discussed above, but still very highly recommended!

I was skeptical at first, but I followed the advice in this book, and BOY HAS IT MADE A DIFFERENCE!

I picked up this book when it first came out, as I was already a fan of The Practice of System and Network Administration.

It's been three years, and I'm no longer frazzled. Users no longer call me angrily wondering why I forgot to do such-and-such. I (hardly ever) forget to renew service agreements and run regular maintenance.

I cannot recommend this book enough, especially if you feel like there aren't enough hours in the day, if you work late, if you feel like your users are beating down your door.

Another thing about the system described in the book is its reliance on a paper-based organizer. I had tried and failed several times to use electronic methods. I'm a sysadmin! I should be able to use computers for everything! Being given a sort of permission to use paper for what it is good for helped me out a lot.

As a DBA, I found this book extremely useful. It's easy to read and has practical advice that works. I was a bit demotivated at work and this book helped me spring back into action.

Some of his quotes I try to remember daily; one of my favorites is "perfection is a real time waster" because it's so true!

Making to-do lists and setting goals is an integral part of time management and this book shows you how to do it properly. A+!

Tom Limoncelli is a well-known system administrator, author and orator. He speaks at conferences around the globe on issues ranging from firewall security to time management. He has also published papers at conferences such as the Usenix LISA on a wide variety of topics including innovative firewall techniques, coordinating massive network changes, models for improving customer support, and the security issues related to firing your system administrator.

I like the book "Time Management for System Administrators" because it is written BY system administrator FOR system administrators.

The book covers not only the general time management principles, but also valuable advices for system administrators: how to make use of automation, how to cope with multiple customers, bosses and tasks, and so on.

In addition to this book, I can recommend the other great titles that I liked much: "Never Check E-Mail In the Morning" by Julie Morgenstern, "Getting Things Done" by David Allen and "Time Drive" by Gleb Arkhangelsky.