So I bought a new book over this long weekend: The 5 Essential People Skills, by Dale Carnegie Training. The book is about, well, people skills, namely rapport building, curiosity, communication, ambition, and conflict resolution. I’m only up to Chapter 3 now, on Assertive Rapport Building, but I already know I’m going to be happy with the whole book in general.

The first two chapters were on Assertiveness. Assertiveness, according to the book, is the basic core element at the center of each of the five people skills. The book defines assertiveness thusly:

Assertiveness is the middle ground between the two extremes of reckless aggressiveness and defeatist passivity. The genuinely assertive person is neither of these. Aggressive people are self-centered, inconsiderate, hostile, and arrogantly demanding… Passive people are weak, compliant, and disrespectful of his or her own interests.

I’ve always maintained that in a professional, business setting, there is no excuse for rudeness of any sort, that you can stand your ground on a point of discussion without having to resort to raising your voice. And I’m glad that this book validates these points very nicely.

One mistake I seem to have made, though — which I only realized from reading the book — was that sometimes during discussions and meetings, I delve into the psychology of a person. I’m pretty good at reading people, since I’ve been actively observing myself and the people around me for more than twenty years already. But whether my observations and opinions on people’s motives behind their actions are accurate or not, I still do not know their motives as fact. Therefore, I really shouldn’t be bringing my guesses (because that’s what they really are) as to why a person does something, into business discussions.

At any rate, as I read the book, I’m taking inventory of myself, noting situations where I got stuff right, and where I got stuff wrong. Hopefully I’ll get more stuff right as I try to improve my own people skills. And I promise to use my superpowers only for good!

So I’ve taken to actually reading business books. I’ve read management books before, but what I mostly took away from them were a validation of the leadership skills I already apply in managing geeks. Now, I’m reading to actually learn more about business. To help me along, I’m reading The Ten Day MBA, 3rd Ed., by Steven Silbiger. I’d bought this book a while back, but now I’m determined to actually read through the whole thing.

Apart from The Ten Day MBA, I’m also reading some marketing books as well, which I borrowed from my brother, who happens to be graphic artist with a BS-Marketing degree. I’ve started reading Selling The Wheel, by Jeff Cox and Howard Stevens. This dovetails nicely with the first chapter of The Ten Day MBA, since the book begins with Marketing as well.

Why the sudden interest in sales and marketing? I need to bone up on the topic to round out and complete my management skills. I can lead my devs through victory in war, but I need to have a firmer grasp of the psyche of the more non-tech management types. Plenty of leadership skills I already got — most of the devs I’ve actually managed will attest to that — but I need to be able to get inside the heads of business people as well. I guess you could say, my goals have finally and truly shifted from perfection of my technical skills to perfection of my management and business skills.

One thorny question I have is, is it acceptable to start selling something that doesn’t yet exist and pass it off as something that’s existed for years already? I mean, I’d always thought, perhaps naively, that lying was bad and that you’d go to hell for it after you’d died — but then again, I’m no business expert, so what do I know, right? Hopefully I’ll find answers to my questions in the course of my self-study in the coming days, weeks, and months.

Hey, checkit — I’m getting traffic from alphainventions.com. Before you go clicking over there, you should take a look at this first: http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?client=Firefox&hl=en-US&site=http://alphainventions.com/

Yes, boys and girls — that there’s an attack site. It aggregates blog updates and consequently drives traffic towards those blogs it aggregates. Naturally, it attracts traffic to itself first. However, it also tries to make you download and install malware. To wit:

What happened when Google visited this site?

Of the 3 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2009-07-30, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2009-07-30.

So if you’re one of those suckers hapless victims who browsed there, be sure to get your system checked for viruses and change all your passwords to all your accounts. Good luck!

Every so often, I go through one. Sometimes it creeps up on me, sometimes it’s suddenly there, and most times it lasts many days, or weeks, or even months. This time around, it built up over two months, and then suddenly came overwhelmingly to a head during the last week, threatening to drown me, to crush me. And everytime, I have an out-and-out, no-holds-barred, drag-out, no-rules, life-and-death  fight with The Dweller on the Threshold — my Dweller on the Threshold. I get knocked down, ground down to dust, then I pick myself up, pull myself together, overcome the Dweller this time around, and I come out knowing something more about myself. And always, always, that Self-Knowledge gives me more Strength than before the Long Dark Night started.

There are no words to describe what I just went through. But then again, there never is. Even if you know me, or think you know the circumstances around this, the outer events are only ten percent of the total picture. Again, there simply are no words.

To Soulmate, my Twin Ray, my Best Friend, my Better Half, the Love of My Life, with whom I have shared The Path’s most difficult Initiations, and who has stood by me through the years, even when she had absolutely no reason to — to my Beloved, Beloved Treasa, a most Happy Birthday to you!

via email

ARGH.

Image by vgm8383 via Flickr

I’ve never been one to make lists just for the sake of making lists. I just need to say some things and it just so happens that they could probably be put in a list. A list of things I will never do again, to be exact:

1. I will never, ever program while simltaneously filling a management role in a company. I can code, and I can manage, just not at the same frickin’ time!

2. Corollary to this is, I will never fulfill more than one role in any project for any company again. I cannot do sales/pre-sales on my own while simultaneously doing technical management and/or coding.

3. I will never work on weekends again.

4. I will never pull 16-hour weekdays again.

In tagalog, itaga nyo sa bato yan!

Or, just joelsleep. Or better, Samildanachsleep.

Odinsleep is the healing sleep that Odin, and later, Thor, go into after getting gravely injured in battle. That’s what I just slipped into this afternoon, a deep, comatose-like healing sleep. After four weeks of working a minimum of 16 hours a day, and sleeping for a maximum of only 5 hours a day, I finally had to pay off my sleep debt. I’m still taking stock of my mind and body, to see if I’d actually made up for all that sleep deprivation and exhaustion. Hopefully it was enough to normalize things again, so I can be more productive at work.

I’m having second thoughts about still putting in some work today. It is, afterall, a Sunday, and I really have worked too many hours already for the past four weeks or so.

Speaking of Odin, Thor, and all things Asgard — I finally got Thor Vol. 1 and Vol . 2! I also got Astonishing X-Men Vols. 1 and 2 as well! I used to collect comics back in college, but not I tend to collect hardbound volumes and graphic novels instead. I’ll see if I can blog about my newly acquired eye-and-brain candy sometime.

In the midst of all the rush for this new project we’ve been working on, I received two resignations from the team deployed on-site with our Clever client. I just wish I wasn’t a zombie when I got their resignations last Friday; maybe I would’ve reacted more normally. Instead, I think I didn’t react at all. I was just numb from not sleeping for over 24 hours.

Actually, it wasn’t really unexpected. I’d warned management about the Clever situation months ago. And the “special” announcement they were waiting for in July didn’t happen. So yeah, this was expected. I really can’t blame them either. Hostile client environment, stupid tech, and stupid use of tech, and… well, economic downturn and all that… I’m actually grateful they lasted this long at the oxymoronic Clever client at all!

If my spidey-sense is anything to go by, there are potentially a couple more who are looking to file their resignations soon as well, both from our on-site team, and from among the guys in the office. I wish it weren’t so, but that’s just the way it is. The entire big-picture scenario is kind of complicated, and its a pity we (management) haven’t had a good enough job of convincing everyone to keep the faith just a little bit longer — at least not good enough to convince these guys to stay.