Books, books and books!

While reading this article on the stickyminds - a great web-site containing various kinds of information on software project related activities, especially those centering around software testing - I found this idea to improve the work habits and environment of the entire team. It's a very common sensical, logical approach to building a great career for the individual members in a team, but rarely adopted as a practice. If you check with people individually on what they like to do in their free time, I bet, 60-70% of the times you will get the same answer, that is typical of most people of most sorts and ages - reading books. Book reading is treated both as a hobby and serious culture, by different classes of people. Advantage of reading books is not within the scope of what I'm planning to discuss - there are plenty. Those who pursue it as a hobby, mostly does it for passing the time by reading fiction based novels, classics, short stories and innumerable other forms of lighter reading materials. Those who pursue it seriously, read such materials as biographies, self-help books, books related to specific professions - and anything, that is not just for eyes, but also help practice and habitualize themselves. Habit of reading is so deep-rooted in our culture that it is one of the most obvious, and hence over-looked methods of learning for the rest of us.

By the way, let me clarify a bit here about professional reading materials - such are not limited to hard-bound books, written by well-known professional authors and released in multiple editions, and that are normally sold in heavy duty book-stalls, but any information in a structured format like - but obviously, not limited to - white-papers, articles or even lecture notes. When we talk about articles, there are again many different forms of them - some containing advices, some others with tips&tricks, those offering full-blown help documentation on specific areas or those with tried and tested techniques fully illustrated with case studies. With the onset of the internet, there is no stopping whatsoever on this not-so-well practiced form of learning. If you aren't very organized, you can get deluged by the abundance of the information in this ocean of knowledge, and either drown in it, or prefer to stand on its shores awed by the enormity of it.

So, the safest bet is to go with the tried & tested method of learning - the books. There are so many of it, in various shapes, sizes & content. One thumb-rule that I normally employ while choosing books for my own book-shelf, is to select those with highly-specialized stuff, and that you normally will find useful, and not 'just irresistible to buy' and that you normally won't find anywhere in the public domains like internet. Keep this in mind, again as a thumb-rule: unless you've some idea of when, where and how you'll employ the contents of the book usefully, you're better off than buying it. After you carefully chose one and bought it, don't let it just 'hang-around' in your library and decorate the shelves, but systematically go through the contents (preferably chapter-wise) with the aim to practice it at your job/life some time. Most times, it will make sense to carry out the reading and the practice simultaneously, for otherwise you tend to forget some strict nuances on the subject if you wait till finishing with the whole book, mindfully ignore some of them, or even end up confused (typically, with the present 'on-slaught' of information , one tends to switch between different sources of information even while trying to comprehend any one of them).

I've seen and felt the impact of books in my life, but so far not tested it with my own teams (in fact, the idea never struck me, until recently). But, now I believe that books can help right from defining our work better to enjoying the fruits of our efforts, thus becoming a great booster to confidence and motivation levels of people, and at the same time aid in career building. I'm going to initiate creating a team library of various kinds of books and encourage my people to use them. No doubt, I will face challenges, but I hope to over-come all those. I'll come back to you sometime with the results...