If you are reading this, you are a reader. By today’s standards, when most programmers do not read books, you can even call yourself a vicarious reader. Chances are that you like to snuggle up in your bed and skim through the crisp pages of a book as leisurely moments glide by.

Books are fun, books are entertaining, books happen to be the source of food for your hungry, possibly hyperactive mind. You love your books so much so that somewhere deep in your mind you actually believe that your books love you back. You even visit the local bookstore during weekends and spend time reading stuff there.

And then you bump across a new book full of new ideas. You are holding it in your hands, snuggling up on a couch and skimming through it. Glancing through it. Hunting for ideas you can take home or ideas you can carry to work and put to use Monday morning. You are moving fast. You are sucking in information like a sponge.

That is not real reading.

Real reading is when you are reading slow, real reading is when you sit with a pencil and circle paragraphs as you read them. Real reading is when you are in crazy war with the book.

Scott Berkun describes his fascination for seeing his book, used, abused and worn out. He explains:

There is something depressing about seeing one of my books high on an office shelf, in perfect condition, covered in a layer of dust. I’m thrilled they were purchased of course, but there’s sadness there too.

Some people keep their favorite books in great condition, and that’s awesome. It’s an act of great respect.

But I admit I love seeing one of books all dog eared, with tabs, post-it notes, or even coffee-stains all over the place. That’s a book that has lived and has spent long hours in use. It’s been lent to many people, traveled in buses and planes, and read by many sets of eyes.

Real reading is when you appreciate the well knit articulate stream of words effortlessly brought together to create equally coherent stream thoughts in your brain. Real reading is when you get so excited about a paragraph that you have to take notes on the margins, a notebook or a piece of paper, right then.

Real reading is when you are not reading a book to finish it, but for the pleasure that you get out of reading it. Real reading is when your are reading is not just supposed to make you a better reader, but a better writer. Real reading is hard. Real reading is slow. Real reading is fun.

So, what did you read this weekend?

A wise man who looked at an email trail between me and my manager once remarked that both of us were misusing the concept of email as a medium. "You are way too long winded", he said, "that is not what email is all about. When you guys have written an email, you should reread it, ask yourself how you can say the same thing with fewer words, delete everything you have written and rewrite the same email this time with a lesser number of words".

The idea was simple. When it comes to writing or reading content, that is supposed to make a point, short works better than long.

While with books the cartoon might seem funny, with emails most people scan your content anyway, and the longer it is the lesser the chances that they might actually read it. After all, people do not read email. They read me-mail.

Years later the same feedback came in for my blog posts. A colleague of mine mildly hinted that I should practice writing shorter. Particularly since all my post revolved around a point which I was trying to make. Making the same point with lesser number of words, was an art, he believed I should start learning as soon as I possibly could.

We're evolving as a race. Twitter imposes a hard limit of hundred and forty characters. Most other mediums are not as controlling and clear about how you aught to use them, but as a general rule, If you want to make a point, keep it short, keep it simple.

If you have a story to tell or a book to write, go ahead and add verbiage. Describe your experiences to your heart's content. If it's humor your are trying your hand at, and you prefer not to use brevity, play with words all you want. There will always be cases where you need to flip those keys for hours but when it comes to an email or a blog post that is supposed to make a point, short is sweet, short is fun, short is powerful.

Ok, done. I think I just made a point. That was short.

Nasty emails that are condescending and / or simply supposed to trigger meaningless arguments are all over the place in the software development world. Some of the best builders I have worked with often think of these as fouls  and believe that you cannot win a game by scoring a foul in answer of another foul.

Given that you are dealing with other human beings and given that you are yourself going to act like an asshole every once in a while without even knowing that you are doing that, chances are that you are always going to face a turmoil regarding the thoughts that you want your brain to focus on and the thought that your brain actually focuses on.

You want to focus on the facebook integration for your product and think about it.

But then, are you truly focusing on it?

Fred is acting like a hardcore asshole. The suit, who you report to has suddenly started acting like a jerk. There are three emails in your mail box that you are just itching to respond. You can shatter the sender of all these three emails right now. All you need to do is hit the reply to all button and slam your keyboard with your fingertips for five minutes.

You are thinking about responding to those emails when you truly want to think about facebook integration.

Aren't you? Huh? Huh? Huh?

Paul Graham has a rather interesting take on the topic. He explains:

Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half.

I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head.  I'm always delighted to find I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn't been thinking about them.

My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish.

Some attacks are best defended by funny twitter hash-tags, some are just not worth responding to and some are not even worth thinking about, because all they do is clutter your brain and occupy precious processing time which could have been otherwise used processing way more fun filled ideas that would help you move forward. Thinking of how you are going to respond to Fred? I suggest throwing the idea out and not giving Fred your precious processing time.

Go reserve your processing time for something more meaningful that is going to add some genuine value and ultimately matter in the long run.

I wish you good luck.

There is something to be said about throwing out "work in progress" versions of chapters for your book online. Last week, I published a chapter of my book live and within a week I heard from more than individuals who had important but varied feedback about that chapter. All their feedback basically boiled down to this:  'Pops, the chapter sucks! Take it down and rewrite it. Now!'.

The three primary reason why most people disliked the chapter was because:

1. The chapter was written with a timeline in mind and that showed in the writing.
2. I did not have a lot of fun writing the chapter and that showed in the writing too.
3. The third feedback was a rather long feedback which came down the fact that writing for a book is very different from writing for a blog post. When you are writing a blog post you have an audience that reads you and is aware of the context you write in. When you write for a book you need to tell a story, set the context and help your reader understand the context. If you don't do that you have lost your readers.

I continue to be amazed at how easily and clearly people can see through the work that is done halfheartedly without a lot of passion or work that is just done to meet a timeline.

So as of now, I am taking the chapter down and giving you a big fat sorry for wasting your time by asking you to read a chapter that was half baked; something that even I did not enjoy writing in the first place.

Going forward, if a chapter goes out, you can be rest assured that I have given it my best shot, have enjoyed writing it and that there is a good chance that you might have a concrete take-away or something to learn from the chapter.

And as far as this post is concerned, what you can take away from it is simple.

Whether it is a new feature, a new software or a new chapter of your book, the same rule applies when you are about to publish something online.

Did you enjoy writing it?

If you did not enjoy writing it, they will not be able to stand it when they download it.

Do not publish it live.

Let it soak. Work on it. Make it better.

Bring it to a level where you can get at least yourself to genuinely like it.

I wish you good luck.

If you have been a reader of this this blog, you probably know that I am not a big fan of planning. Having said that, I like to celebrate all forms of doneness. An online version of the Table of Contents is my attempt at celebrating doneness as far as this book is concerned.

You can take a look at the work in progress version Table of Contents by clicking on this link.

The page is slightly crude  in terms of design but the good thing about this page is that it gives you a single URL from where you can download all files associated with this book. Of course, any new chapter added to the book will also get added to the Table of Contents.

The second chapter of the book is now live for download. The point of this chapter essentially is introducing the concept of a builder and what drives builders around the globe. The chapter can be downloaded using this link.

It is funny how the guys who talk about management, hikes, career or rapid professional growth hardly ever understand or get to any of these while the folks who are getting a kick out of building stuff often end up getting good at all of this. What is also amusing is how most kickass developers around the world shrug at discussions which involve these topics but get insanely excited when talking tweaking a for-loop which has a database query inside it.

A consistent doer is much more effective than the talker.

This chapter lays the foundation of some for these ideas and more.

Go get the chapter here.

As always, your ideas, comments and suggestions are always welcome.

Feel free to email them to me or use the comment on this post.

For those of you who might have been following the blog and downloaded the Acknowledgement section of the book, the first chapter of the book where the basic theme of the book is introduced is now live and can be downloaded using this link.

During my years of observing multiple organizations at work, one of the recurring theme that often keeps coming out is that when we get together in large groups and try to organize things, we often loose the ability to thin slice information, organizations and situations.

The first chapter is all about thin slicing the people who work in the business of software development.

You can get the chapter here.

As you read the chapter please do remember that this is a draft version and is open to change. If there are any typos, errors or concerns you have regarding any of these chapters, please feel free to email me or drop in a comment in the comments section.

Now go download the first chapter of the book here.

Don't forget to email me your thoughts, suggestions or opinions. Given the fact that I am not working with a full time editor, these comments, suggestions and opinions genuinely help.

Long Story Short.

For those of you who know about my book project. I have started releasing parts of the book live as and when I get considerably 'done' with those parts. This is the first in the series of posts where the Acknowledgement section of the book goes live.

You can get the draft of the PDF version using this link.

If you don't know what this is all about, read on. You know what, even if you know what this is all about, I would still recommend you read on.

The Story So Far.

Months ago I announced on this blog that I would be doing some serious bathroom singing at a concert and that this was your chance to boo at me. The book, even though I have no clarity about what I plan on calling it, was an idea that caught me by my collar and would not let me go till I had set it down on a white canvas of my word document or blog posts.

After writing a truck load of content and material for the book and making all of it live, I looked back at the content and thought I would just dump it in a word document, publish it and be done.

Then when I started re-reading the content, there was only one thing left to tell myself:

Fu@#k!

I mean seriously. There are primarily three reasons why I was f@#cked. They were:

1. Editing and Proof reading a book is hard. Just like everything else this is the ten percent of the work that is usually the hardest. Which means that there was quite a bit of work still left on the book.
2. Your past work, when looked back, from a point and time in the present always sucks. Which meant that there were parts of the book that would have to be heavily re-written and parts that would have to be edited out.
3. The book was not going to let me go till it had received the final touches and till it was released.

So, after a state of panic and denial which lasted for a few days and then jumping over to a couple of added side projects, I came back to the book and decided to pause all other side projects of my life till I am done with releasing this book.

Your Help And Participation Required.

As always, when I sat down to edit the book and give it the final touches, I thought of releasing parts of the book as PDFs which you can download, read, talk about, blog about, tweet about, criticize, comment on and give your feedback on.

With every release of a new chapter, go ahead and grab a copy of the chapter. Go through it. If you find any typos, let me know. If there are parts that you believe are better left out, let me know. If there are parts that you feel would be better re-written let me know.

You can either leave a comment on the post where the chapter is announced for download or just email me using the mail icon on this blog.

The Content.

I've given a decent round of editing and proof reading to the Acknowledgements section of the book which is now available for download.

More chapters and added parts of the books will start following in the weeks to come. Looking forward to your comments, suggestions and opinions. Given the fact that I am a cheap author working without a real editor your help would mean a lot.

Now get the Acknowledgements section of the book using this link and do start in your comments, suggestions and opinions.