Scott Berkun‘s The Art of Project Management gets raves all over the place and I’ve had a copy (only partially-read) for awhile now in my ever-growing ToRead stack. I’ve also had a copy of his book The Myths of Innovation (much shorter and written in short snacky bits) floating around, too. And, in my to-read set of tabs has been the writing he’s been doing about public speaking, including this post from the summer, “Lessons from 50+ Books on Public Speaking” in which he distilled the best of a pile of books so that we don’t have to. Handy!
Dale Carnegie got much of it right 50 years ago in Public Speaking for success (one of the best I read – I’m surprised too). And he hits the same points Aristotle and Cicero talked about nearly 2000 years before. You can throw a dart at a stack of these books and get much the same advice. It goes like this: know your audience, be concise and practice. If you can remember that you are well on your way. Problem is this takes work and discipline, which is harder to do than buying books. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Joining toastmasters, where you practice, is likely one of the best things you can do.
“[] Join Toastmasters” is one of those things that’s been on my list forever. Is there a theme to this post? All these things.. stacks of books, gajillions of tabs, things to do, long lists of places to visit that I never seem to get to. Bah. So frustrating.
This seems like a good time to quote this bit from Rands’s “A Taste Of The Day”:
‘[an] insight I don’t like to give to new managers because it’s a total productivity buzz kill. The insight is: “You will never complete everything you should.”’
yeah, and the flip side is the ton of non-list-worthy things that you do every day, like obtain and keep good foods around the house for TLG, handle mail and bills, keep yourself flush with transit capacity, manage the changing clothing and toy needs of a toddler, plan ahead for the next round of kid and family developments, stay sane and functional on constantly interrupted sleep… afloat is winning!!!
I dunno about “sane” or “functional”, though.. Fortunately, I’m old enough with enough experience at LifeStuff, that I can fake it for quite a long time, tho!