Tag: sources of power

Two Books Down, One Up

I finished Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions a week or two ago, and after a bit of a reading hiatus for a week, I finally got started on Defensive Design for the Web from some of the guys at 37signals. Both books read very well and provided good insights into their subjects, and both has loads of examples that illustrates the points they’re trying to get across. For Defensive Design for the Web, this includes at least a hundred screenshots of different sites with comments and comparisons with successful sites in the same genre. Being a very practical book, I read the entire edition in a couple of hours, and while I’m not completely sure what I’ve taken away from it, I suggest reading it again from time to time to refresh your thoughts around the subject.

Anyways, after finishing these two books, I’ve now picked up Information Retrieval: Algorithms and Heuristics (2nd Edition) as my new reading material. This is much more algorithmic and theoretical than my previous books, so hopefully I’ll not get bored after a few chapters.

123-meming with Christer

Christer (thanks a lot, fscker) included me as his 123-meme nemesis. Crap.

But hey, I’m all for propagating stupid internet memes, so I’m in. To quote from Christer’s page:

1. Pick up the book closest to you
2. Open page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence…
4. …and publish the next three sentences
5. Link to 5 other bloggers and tell who linked you

Well, the closest book as I were reading quietly along on my RSS-reader was “Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions” by Gary Klein. We’re heading over to page 123 right now! Searching for the fifth sentence (hey, the chapter is called “Nonlinear Aspects of Problem Solving! I like where this is going!):

Constructing a course of action is the component most people think of as the output of problem solving: generating a plan for achieving a goal. Regardless of how the option is generated, it will need to be evaluated, often using mental stimulation. The evaluation process can lead to adoption of the option, result in selecting between options, or identify new barriers and opportunities, thereby triggering additional problem solving.

So there you have it (in fact, it was a complete paragraph. Yey for that!).

I’ll hand the meme over to Kristian, Ole, Jan-Petter and Thomas (see Christer, I even have more people to hand it over too. I pwnz0rz.).