I’ve always loved reading books and I have always found my inspiration there. It doesn’t matter if they were novels or non-fiction books – I’ve learned a lot from them and they’ve had a great impact on my way of thinking and on my entire life.

My fellow blogger Dimitar Nikolov has shared his top 10 list of life-changing books and has tagged me to do the same. The meme was started by Rayna Tzvetkova (in English) and I was so inspired by this idea that I created my own book store. It is the ultimate place where you can find the books I like and I highly recommend. There are not so many books there for now since I have read most of the books in my life in Bulgarian and they are not sold by Amazon but I am going to add there more titles regularly so please, visit it from time to time and take a look at the books listed there.

It is very difficult for me to select only 10 books because my life is constantly changing and there have been always books that have driven the change. At least the change in my mind. So I will share with you some titles and authors that have inspired me through time in different areas of my life.

Software development and Project management

I started my career as a software developer and at the time I thought I was pretty good at writing software. What was my surprise when my brother brought me Steve McConnell‘s books Code Complete and Rapid Development! It was a true revelation! After reading them I finally understood that software development is not writing code for fun but a real industry with its own business rules and if you want to be a true professional you have to know them and follow them.

The software industry is very indicative of the importance of the people who work there. There are still a lot of people who think that making software is technical work and they are very, very wrong. Making software is a very delicate business of making some people work together as a team. Thinking of them as of replaceable parts of a big machine brings Death March projects which are prectable failures. The software development world invented the word Peopleware, which is how you manage and motivate a team of creative people.

Business and Entrepreneurship

I worked as an employee for about 20 years. I have always dreamed to start my own business but I was always afraid to jump into the deep waters justifying myself that I didn’t have enough money, connections, partners, or ideas. At the end of my career I was a regional manager of an U.S. software development company in Bulgaria. Then the company bankrupted and we were all laid off. Then I realized that it was exactly the right moment to start working for myself.

Fortunately, I had some savings so I didn’t worry about the incomes at the beginning. But I was still afraid – I had no one around me to follow as example. Then I started reading books on starting up your own business, how to develop it and how to market it. Guy Kawasaki‘s books Rules For Revolutionaries and The Art of the Start are still like Bibles to me along with Seth Godin‘s The Bootstrapper’s Bible, Unleashing the Ideavirus, and The Dip.

Personal Growth

The next step in my personal development was to realize that the most important thing in life is to open your heart, to accept and enjoy all the good things that happen to you, and to learn from the bad things because this is what makes your life worthwhile and makes you happy.

I came to realize that there is a tight relationship between the quality of your (spiritual) life and your wellfare. When I feel happy and my soul is free then my business goes better and I am getting richer. When I am angry with the world and I feel miserable then my customers run away from me. The book Beyond Code by Rajesh Setty is the perfect example of this statement and this is the reason why I put it in this category. Although intended for IT professionals, this book teaches us how to be better people and thus being more successful profesionals. And books like The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success by Deepak Chopra, Who Moved My Cheese? by Spencer Johnson, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, and Personal Development for Smart People by Steve Pavlina really changed my life for better.

Novels

Of course, as a normal person, I read and find inspiration in novels as well as the non-fiction books. There are books which I can open at any time at any page and start reading them with great pleasure because they are full of life, love, forgivable sins, and a little mystery. Such books are Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

I will be glad if the following people join this meme and share their list of life-changing books: Rajesh Setty, Liz Strauss, Steve Pavlina, Dessy Boshnakova, Polly Kozarova, Craig Brown, Pawel Brodzinski,  Pavel Donchev, and Nikolay Yordanov.

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John Wesley of Pick the Brain published recently an article called 7 Life Lessons I Learned Playing Halo where he gives seven great advices that can change your life significantly and for better. I found them very inspiring maybe because I’ve learned most of them the hard way trying to break walls with my head. They are not easy to accomplish but they definitely are worth trying.

I don’t play Halo or similar games so I will only comment on the life implications of these lessons.

1. Hesitation is death. No matter if you are playing combat games or you live the real life. Nothing is more destructive to your life than hesitation and doubt. You may be wrong in your plans, you may reach insuperable obstacles but you will never know how to deal with them unless you try. I was hesitating to start my own business for 13 years and now I regret it. I’ve been suffering all this time that I could do the things better but I never had the courage to make it. Don’t hesitate! Don’t be afraid that you might fall because when you fall you will know how much it hurts. Otherwise you will be afraid of the pain much more than it really hurts.
2. Success requires experience. Well, we’ve all heard about successful teenage businessmen but they are just an exception. If you want to succeed in business you need to learn the basics of the profession and to practice it repeatedly. It’s not enough just to try once. It’s necessary to try it many times. To fall and to stand up again until you realize the internal power that you have and until you learn how to use it effectively.
3. You can’t win without teamwork. In the real life no one succeeds by doing things by himself. The lonely runners are not the successful ones. To be successful you must beat your ego and sacrifice your personal glory. You need to take care about your buddies as they take care of you. When you learn to trust your team and to count on their skills you will get to success.
4. Anticipation is the key to victory. Always try to change your point of view and loof from the eyes of the others. Try to put yourself in the other people’s shoes and to understand their problems, their desires and their hopes – this way you will be able to better serve your customers and outgo you competition.
5. Leverage your strengths. Everyone is unique in some way. If you want to succeed you must know your unique qualities – your strengths which you must leverage and improve, and your weaknesses which you should keep low.
6. Winning comes in streaks. Some days you are full of energy and you can do a lot of work and some days you just can’t concentrate as well as others. To be successful, you need to recognize your streaks so you can weather the bad ones and make the most of the good ones.
7. The Devil’s in the details. As John says “[in Halo] the difference between life and death can be as small as the angle of a grenade toss or the decision to reload. The same is true in real life. You need to pay attention to all the tiny details that contribute to success or failure.”

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The great news is that we completed successfully the Software Project Management course together with NASD and we published a detailed report from there with a lot of pictures at the RammSoft’s site. I am very positive about the future and I believe that we will be able to establish a strong community of Software Project Management professionals in Bulgaria that would help us share our knowledge and experience and develop our expertise.

Keep watching!

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I love birthdays. It’s great when close and distant relatives, friends, or colleagues call you to wish you nice things, when they give you interesting presents, and in the evening, when you celebrate the end of the day with the closest of them eating delicious food and drinking your favorite drinks.

But there comes a moment when the years seem to pass to fast and you want to slow them down somehow. Unfortunately, there is no way to do that. There are birthdays in everyone’s lives when you become thoughtful, you take a look at your life that have passed and you try to evaluate it up to that moment – what have you achieved, where have you reached, and where are you going to. To some people it happens on so called “Christ age”. To me it happens much more frequently – say, every four or five years. Maybe it’s just because I am a thoughtful kind of person – I like to think upon Life, Universe and Everything…

Today, I’m getting 39. The last year of my thirties. I have the feeling that it is the last year of my youth. The numbers above 40 have always brought to me a sense of aging although some people say that the forties are the most productive time in one’s life. In my profession, where the average age is 24, the age and experience are not valued too much and many people consider me too old.

I, however, feel very strong and fresh, filled with energy and rich of countless dreams, despite all malevolent people and despite my own fears. After almost 20 years work in the information technology field, new ideas were born inside my head, ideas of career change. Instead of working for a salary I decided to take a chance on my own business. Instead of writing software, I started writing blogs and making presentations. Will I succeed? I don’t know but I feel strong and capable and I have firm belief in myself, in my friends, and in my family, who are standing behind me and are giving me an unconditional support with their faith and love.

The education that my parents and the society where I’ve grown up gave me has always made me look for the security – to get a good degree, which will help me find a good job and a high salary. But what exactly does “a good job” mean? Is it a good job where they make you do things you don’t like or at least are not interesting to you? Is it a good job where the boss yells at you and blames you for all their mistakes? Or it is a good job where you can’t find a way to communicate with your colleagues who secretly backbite you behind your back?

No, I don’t say that it all has happened to me! I don’t say that the jobs I had during all those years were bad! I’ve been working at very many places and everywhere I’ve been I have met people communicating with whom has been a great pleasure to me. I’ve always gotten into places where I have learned a lot not only about the subtleties of the profession but also about the human nature.

My jobs have always been “good” but have never been “good enough”.

Now I am taking on a new road. I want to work what I want, what brings me pleasure and satisfaction. I was asked if I consider making a blogging career. I don’t know how can someone “make a career” with this from Bulgaria. I still don’t know if it can bring me enough income to make a living. I only know that I like it damn much and I can do it well (and I am getting better every day). If I could make a career of being an IT consultant, author, speaker and blogger, one day (let’s hope it will be later) I would die happy.

The astrologers say that there are faithful years in our lives that come over a certain period of time, i.e. during those years significant changes happen to our destiny and our lives take a different direction. Perhaps for me this period is 13 years. Today a huge change is happening to my life. 13 years ago, when I was 26, I founded my first company together with my teacher in programming, my brother and two more colleagues. The feeling of doing what you can do best and what you like to do, of making your own decisions for your job and for your life, is incomparable! At that time we didn’t have a strong sense of insecurity because we were five partners and each of us felt the others’ support.

Unfortunately, we were young and inexperienced – not only in the business but also in the ability to understand each other. Soon the trust among us was broken and we had to separate. I couldn’t get the courage to continue my own business and I started an employee job. And it took 13 years – until now.

I believe something important and faithful had happened also when I was 13 (at least I entered the teenage) but probably because of my age my memories have faded and I cannot recall a significant event from that time.

Today it is different than ever. I am taking on a new road. I am alone but I am much more self-confident. I have a lovely family and loyal friends who, although not helping me directly, are my spiritual support and give me the courage and the strength to continue. Where exactly I will head to? I don’t know. Will I succeed? Nobody can tell. Time will be the only merciless judge who can say if I have succeeded or failed. What I can promise for sure is that 13 years later I will make my balance again and I will share it with you in my “little diary”.

Let’s hope we all be live and healthy until then (and many more years ahead)!

Cheers!

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I am a great fan of Guy’s and I don’t intend to write a review of the book – I am just a young apprentice of his and I would like to give you some nice quotes from the mentioned chapter. These are great examples of bozosity, which could teach us not to listen to such “big authorities” when we have our great idea and we are strongly committed to it. The book is just great and I highly recommend it. You can buy it from Amazon.com or from Aliblis.com.

So, here they are, the bozosity quotes:

Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit voice over wires and were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.

Editorial in the Boston post, 1865

This “telephone” has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.

Western Union internal memo, 1876

Everything that can be invented has been invented.

Charles H Duell, Commissioner,
U.S. Office of Patents, 1899

I think there is a world market for about five computer.

Remark attributed to Thomas Watson,
chairman of the board of IBM, 1943

There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.

Ken Olsen, President of
Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Lord Kelvin, British mathematician, physicist,
and president of the British Royal Society, circa 1895

[Airplanes] are interesting toys but of no military value.

Maréchal Ferdinand Foch, professor of strategy at
and commandant of Supérieure de Guerre, 1911

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I found a great article at Steve Olson’s blog entitled Seeing the World Through Entrepreneurial Eyes, in which he describes the most typical characteristics of people who don’t have entrepreneurial eyes and I can see that they are too common for our society and clearly explain why we became the poorest country in Europe. Here they are:

• Us vs. Them Mentality. We’ve been taught to think like this from the first grade at school. We, the workers, the poor, the underdogs, the unhappy are better than Them – the businessmen, the exploiters, the rich, the Party leaders, the politicians. And the best we can do is to sabotage them by not doing our jobs, not fulfilling our tasks, not voting, not paying taxes.

• Retirement Thinking. I know many people who started thinking about retirement in their forties, i.e. about 20 years earlier. They are making their plan for what they are going to do after they retire. But why don’t they make plans to do something now? It’s because most of the people are afraid. They think they have the obligation to work 40 years to make some income, to feed their families but not chasing their dreams. They plan to do something for themselves only after retirement when they will be old, weak, and probably ill but not now when they are young, healthy, and strong.
• Naysayers. I don’t know other people more pessimistic than Bulgarians. If someone comes up with an idea, there will be ten people who will tell him that the idea is not worth it and is just a waste of time and effort. There is no bigger obstacle to the innovation and progress than the negative thinking in which we are the greatest specialists.
• Money and Jobs. The common notion is that people should work something to make money. It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it, you just have to work to make your income. The real entrepreneurs do something because it’s good, it helps people, and because they like to do it. “Entrepreneurs don’t start businesses for the money. Money is the result of the game. The game is creating businesses. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but the fun is seeing what works.”, said Olson.

You can find the whole article here.

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I was going to answer with a comment that he should implement only those features that he thinks will be valuable for the customer. If the customer has a problem and you are able to solve it with your product – they will be happy and they will buy it. It is not necessary to have many features if they are not useful for the customer and it is not possible to solve all their problems at once.

Luckily, Seth Godin posted another brilliant thought and I decided to cite it here because it fits very well to the topic and offers food for thinking upon the question “How to beat the competition?”.

Maybe the reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is…
… that you haven’t given them anything else to care about.

Thank you, Seth!

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I haven’t thought about what makes a presentation good or bad until I read the blog posts by Seth Godin’s blog post Really Bad Powerpoint and Guy Kawasaki’s The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. After reading these and other blog posts and articles I started to realize that I have participated at many bad presentations. This is really sad that so many people make speeches, perform presentations or teach lessons and don’t have a clue about some simple but very important principles of public speaking. I think that the biggest presentation killer is reading the text displayed on the screen to the audience.

Yesterday I saw an awful example of a really bad presentation. I was attending at a PMP trainig course (yes, I still don’t have this certificate but I intend to have it soon) and the trainer showed us examples of Project management plan and Project scope statement documents. Unfortunately, they were real-life documents and had a lot of text inside. The first document was 20 pages long and the second one was 40 pages long and the lecturer read all the documents from the screen – page by page, word by word explaining every single paragraph, every single word! It took 50 minutes and at the end we all felt squeezed.

It was a good idea to show us real-life examples. The audience needed some example of how to structure these documents and what is the minimum information required to put there. But it was completely unnecessary to read them all and to explain all the details in there related to those particular projects that their company had done because it wasn’t on the topic of the lecture, it wasn’t of all participants’ interest and because it was boring.

Some may ask: why didn’t we interrupt him and ask him to stop? I don’t know. Maybe because we were too heterogeneous group – people from different business areas and with different knowledge and experience. Probably, for some of the participants the lecture was not so boring as it was for me. And maybe because it’s rude to interrupt the lecturer although since we’ve paid so much money for that course maybe we have the right to do it and to ask for more interesting and valuable content.

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