標籤彙整：nonfiction

Book review of “Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better”

Practice Perfect: 42 Rules for Getting Better at Getting Better

Book introduction:

“Practice Perfect,” as the title hinted, is a how-to method book. I really enjoyed it and highlighted many notes. However, it couldn’t be half-long. The book chapters are not well-organized. Lemov, the author, breaks the core concepts(rethinking of practice, how to practice, using modeling, feedback, culture of practice and post-practice) into smaller and repetitious portions so that I could not connect every chapter in a straight way.

Below were some of the rules I felt applicable in this book:

Rethink practice and isolate your skills:

Practicing in a hustle and bustle environment sometimes distracts me from recognizing I’m learning in the wrong way. So I participate in the learning workshops or study groups for getting feedback from the other members. I could re-examine what skills to be sharpened through rethinking. Then I break the difficult paths for isolated skill development.

Bright spot:

Focus on your strength. Improving your weakness is a waste of time.

In the past, I tried to learn different domain knowledge and skills for the sake of proving myself. However, these skills didn’t turn out to be a competitive work advantage. As a knowledge worker, you must make effective contributions to your cooperation.

However, honing my weakness only makes me a mediocre worker. Why do I spend more energy    on my strength?

Shorten the feedback loop:

Implementing a small and easy change right away can be more effective than a complex rewiring a skill. So I usually try to post my thoughts on my Facebook after reading.

Replace your purpose with an object:

I love to make a New Year’s resolution to improve myself over the next months. Unfortunately, after only a few short weeks, most of them failed. By writing a reflective journal, I know it’s not realistic. So I adjust my goals to make them specific and measurable. For example, I want to speed up my writing, so I use Excel to record my word count every day.

Tell a story like a script director, book review of “Storytelling with Data”

Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

Tell a story like a script director. Present a slide like a designer.

The author, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, uses simple examples and explains to every reader about how to communicate to audience using data.

You could implement these concepts by hand. Learning how to use PowerPoint well doesn’t mean you could give an excellent presentation to the audience. You must display your idea like a well-trained designer and tell a story like a Hollywood script director.

So, the author borrows some professional elements from design and script-writing such as affordance, acceptance and storyboarding. In the chapter of “case studies”, the author demonstrates how she would fix the not-so-good graphs by the concepts covering in this book.

Telling an emotional or persuasive story using data is a hard work. If we don’t consciously recognize that this takes time to do well. We run the risk of losing the potential opportunity to drive change and action.

This is the final step the audience will see. We should devote our time to storytelling with data.