Are ('nt) you just like me?

Today* morning, I was rearranging the work desk at my office in preparation of my moving to the new place in a short while from now. Very soon I realized that it was no ordinary task that I got involved in, for I had been stuffing lots of books, journals and magazines all through my stay here. It took at least 4 hours (!) for me to dig up and categorize all those stuff into ones that are worth moving to my home or the new office, worth transferring to somebody else, or to the dust bin or destroy before trashing them. Each time I saw a new book or a new magazine or a journal, I would spent sometime on it, thinking about how it came to me originally which increased the time for sorting further more. Many of these books that have been decorating my desk for the past 2 years were brought in from my home when I found that there is no more space left in the cup-boards at home to keep them.

Books (technical books, not stories or novels) had been a weakness for me, as it is for most people working in IT industry. I had this problem of wanting to buy books, even if they had nothing to do with my work. I remember at least 2 times during the past decade, when I ventured on a book buying spree. One of those happened about 8 years ago, when I was at my first job. There were plenty of things that went wrong with my first job, that I decided to change over to another better one. But then, as it is very common among those working in IT, especially a fresher like me, I had this constant prick in my mind that I didn't know enough about my work. So, I decided to get enlightened by buying as many books as I can, even on such subjects that I've never known existed till then. Some of the books I bought during that time were Operating system design, Database designing, Networking with Unix OS, several books on TCP/IP, Mastering Visual C++ and Mastering Java. During the second time, I had a similar enlightenment and bought an equal number of books on management and software engineering of various sizes as if the entire stock of such books will disappear from the store during the next day. Both times, needless to say, I was overwhelmed with some sort of accomplishment after I bought these books from the store. I can clearly remember even today, the store owner asking me if I was buying them for some library! Nobody could ever read those in an empty stomach. And if you read them with a full stomach, you sure will fall asleep within minutes...These books are so powerful, you know!

As it sure will happen with anybody who buys such an awful lot of books, I never went more than 10 pages in any of those books. Till 2 years back, they lied unassuming at my home cupboards and when I really didn't have any space left, I was forced to move those to my office desk. Unlike home, having more and more books in your office desk gives you certain advantages. Firstly, it makes you, in other people's eyes, 'a very knowledgable guy' and an 'efficient manager'. I don't know why it is so, but all managers that I've known in the past, including those I've worked with and many others have lots of books in their desks. I think stacking books at your work desk is a status symbol (ok, at least it is so, in our part of the world). The more books you've at your desk, the better manager you are! Secondly, you don't have to worry about rearranging them, because most of the times, space is never a constraint at the manager's desks. So, for both these reasons, I had piled up enough of those at my desk. I knew that a day would come when I should pack up all these books and move them away. But then, I could move them to another place, another desk at my next office. This could continue forever, till I finally retire from the job! So, I never bothered about it. But, looking at the way things are now (after having experienced the difficulty in moving books for the first time), I think by the time I retire from my job I should perhaps hire a truck to move all my books and at that time, would’ve to spent a fortune to buy a decently sized building to move all my books into:-)

Then, there were many of those journals, brochures and training material that lied all over the place, the ones that I got from various sources during my past 4 years in this organization. Many of those training materials were on soft-skills including time management, stress management, people management, business communication, leadership and so much other bull****. I can't understand why and how I attended any of those. Some of them, I did, because they were mandated by my past managers. Some of them, I guess, just for pastime. Sad to say this, but I can't remember me having put anything I 'learnt' from those training sessions to real use, anytime. I had to really struggle with them to identify which ones not to throw away; frankly speaking, I thought none of them were worth keeping! I even thought it would be a good idea to start my own center to train students on all these subjects, for there was enough material to do that for one or two batches. For whatever material was not available, I could take photocopies of the existing material and give to those who need it. After all, most of material contained in these books were flicked off the internet or from other bigger books. So, I don't think there is anything wrong in doing so, but anyway I don't intend to do that for other reasons. A few others dealt with technical subjects. They were more useful, but many among those were just printouts of ppts. Not really useful, I had to throw away an awful lot.

Some of those who are reading this may brush it aside, but there is some serious learning these experiences have provided me. First, don’t just go around buying books if you don’t really need it. Don’t go by what other people do and blindly take to the industry trends. Sometimes, such trends can be deceiving, like there was a time before the millennium when there was a huge need for mainframe professionals. It won’t matter whether you bought 100 pounds of books worth a fortune on mainframes, all of them will eventually go into dust-bin after the magic year of 2000. Instead, heed to advices from experienced folks (like meJ) around you. If you ask me now, I will tell you 90% of the books I bought during the past 10 years are just waste of money. Only a few really made the difference. It wasn’t after all difficult to identify which ones would help you in the future, at the time of buying.

Secondly, if at all you’re buying books to learn something new, start with the baby steps. Don’t go and buy ‘Mastering VC++’ if you don’t know anything about VC++ or at least know something about object orientated programming. The book will be worth nothing at all to you, except that you can spent some of your time reading the first few pages of it like a novel! But, I’ve known a few innovative people who put it to various other uses – these fat books perfectly suit to adjust the height of your monitor, to meet your eye level or even as a pillow when you want to spend a night in the office for whatever reasons!

Now, when it comes to training classes, I’ve lots to talk about them. This post will overflow, if I tell you all that now. So, we will talk about that during some other time; for the moment, let me just warn you that 90% of training classes (especially the ones that deal with behavioral skills) that promise you the stars, end up being pastimes. I don’t blame the trainers (yes, partly they’re) entirely for this, because most of us ignore to do our homework or even attempt to apply whatever is taught during the training period. So ultimately, we just end up being collectors and stockists of these training materials, which afterwards we will wonder whether to throw out or keep with us.

Just like me!

* I’m posting this write-up, the next day.