books

  • January 31, 2021

    5 Insanely Impactful Books That Helped My Business

    I feel like I’m getting this in just under the wire (as in, published in January), but the new year has a lot of folks thinking about their business and how they can improve, or they are thinking about starting a new business. While some of the best business knowledge comes with experience, I feel like there’s more advice out there than ever before. It’s hard to know what’s good and what’s bad.

    With nearly 20 of freelancing under my belt at this point, there’s lots of things I learned the hard way (through experience), and lots of things I learned through books. To help you cut through the cruft, here are 5 of the most impactful books for my business.

  • September 14, 2020

    Learning HTML and CSS (with My New Book, Out Now!)

    I’ve always been a learn-by-doing kind of guy. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about other things when something is explained to me, or maybe people are bad at explaining things. But either way, a concept doesn’t really sink in until I do it, or until I see an immediate application for it. When I learned HTML and CSS, I learned it by doing it. I’d make a page in Microsoft Front Page one then see what the generated source looked like.

    Eventually, when I moved to using Notepad (or more accurately, Notepad++), I’d try something and see what happens, or copy someone else’s source and modify it. It wasn’t ideal, and today there are lots of great alternatives. I’m happy to add a new one to the fray: my new book, HTML and CSS: Visual QuickStart Guide.

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  • July 1, 2019

    Books Recap for June 2019

    In June I finished 3 books and read about 750 pages. That brings my grand total up to 17 books on the year, and 4 away from my goal for 2019. Given that I’m going to the beach this month, I’ll likely hit that by the end of the summer (if not sooner).

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  • April 1, 2019

    Books Recap for March 2019

    I finished 4 books this month (about 1,200 pages!), and it was a pretty diverse set. I’m now on the 10th book of the year, which makes me just about half way to my goal (of 21 books) at the end of Q1. Very exciting! Let’s get to the recap.

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  • March 1, 2019

    Books Recap for February 2019

    It was another good month of reading. I finished 2.5 books and read about 830 pages this month. I’m only slightly down from last month as I didn’t travel anywhere, so I didn’t have quite as much dedicated reading time. The 2 books I finished are Educated and This is Marketing.

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  • January 31, 2019

    Books Recap for January 2019

    This year I committed to reading 18 books, and I’m well ahead of schedule at the end of January – I’ve read 3 books and about 870 pages this month. So I don’t forget what I’ve read as we move through the year, I’m going to wrap up each month with a recap of what I’ve read. Here’s January’s.

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  • January 21, 2019

    Eliminating Slack as a Distraction to Work Better

    It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at W work

    One of my goals is to read 21 books this year, and I’m doing super well so far. After finishing the super dense (and very thought provoking) Homo Deus, I’m flying through It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy at Work. While the hubris of Jason Fried used to drive me crazy, I’ve read all of his and DHH’s books, and they’ve all been excellent. The hubris is well-deserved. In any case, I’m almost done with that book and I’ve decided to take my first action: turning off Slack notifications.

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