Mario Carrion
One of my “unofficial” resolutions this year is to re-develop my reading habit. I used to read a lot, like really a lot, specially when I was in High school and College, mostly technical books and stuff like that. But after I started my professional career, I kind of stopped… and that is not good.
OK OK I would be lying if I say that I don’t read anymore; that’s actually not true, I still read but not as much as before and not as much as I really want to. That is what I want to change, besides I want to focus on more “general” stuff, not only learn about new technologies and software but also learn about how to improve general things/normal things, you know like better ways to express yourself or how to develop better habits.
I kicked off this year with a book titled Soft Skills by John Z. Sonmez; if I recall correctly I finished reading it 2-3 weeks ago. Let me tell you something about this book: it is great, there’s no other way to express how cool this book is. As a matter of fact this book reminded me a lot of when I finished reading The Pragmatic Programmer, 10-12 years ago, all I could think of was:
Why didn’t THIS BOOK exist after I graduated?
Soft Skills is not technical at all (technical in a sense of you won’t learn a technical skill if you read it) more important it focuses on Soft Skills (obviously!!) and even more important it is aimed towards Software Developers, which to me is what sealed the deal.
So, what is Soft Skills about then? In this book John Sonmez shares his personal experience about different topics, topics that are not that common for us developers, topics you probably never thought about learning but are extremely useful in the long term, like finance, stock market, savings, fitness or freelancing, just to name a few.
I won’t spoil the book at all because that’s not the point of this post, this post is more to share what a cool book this is, and obviously to make “public” this unofficial resolution.
My goal is to read at least 1 book every single month and this was the first one. Highly recommended.