My 5 favorite books for my personal & professional development
I love to read books, especially on topics I am specialised in, like User Experience, Design and Front-End Development. In addition to that I also decided to improve my communication skills (especially in English). To do so, I’ve asked a co-worker of mine for some book recommendations, as he is a native English speaker. He was surprised that I asked about improving my communication skills, as he thought I am communicating quite well. After a short talk we found out that my problem might be my confidence about my English communication skills and not the skills itself; that’s why I’ve read a few books about confidence last year, and I loved them.
I decided to share my favorite books of the last year (2017), because I always rely on book recommendations, so here are mine:
A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas
The book from Warren Berger (2016) analyses the power of a question. It outlines different examples about how questions helped innovation. I especially like the part where he analyses when and why we usually stop asking questions and how we can prevent that from happening. It’s not the easiest book to read. It actually took me some time, as you cannot scan through the books, but it’s worth every minute. I learned that you can never ask to many questions and that there is no such thing as a “dumb” question.
Atomic Design
Atomic design from Brad Frost (2017) outlines how to create and maintain a successful design system for a project. After a couple of blog posts and talks on this topic, Brad Frost really nailed the topic in his book, where he describes how to create a pattern lab and a style guide. For me the most interesting part was the last chapter about “Maintaining Design Systems”. I’ve already created a few design systems before, but maintenance is a thought part, he offers some good tips on it.
User Experience Evolution: A practical battle plan for placing the user at the heart of your business.
The book User Experience Evolution from Paul Boag (2017) is a great read for designers (and anyone else) that want to convince co-workers and management about the importance of user experience. I love all the concrete examples about when improving the user experience payed off for the business. The book helped me to improve my argumentation that user experience it s not only a designers responsibility, but more a team effort. You want to pitch a UX project to your team? Read this book and you will be well prepared. Also I love the cover design of the book :)
The Confidence Code
The book about the “Science and Art of Self-Assurance — What Women Should Know” from Katty Kay and Claire Shipman (2014) analyses how we develop confidence. The authors outline the impact of the genetic code, as well as a lot of other factors. Fact is it does not matter, how you are born or raised, you can train to become more confident, which is the most important outcome. I especially liked that they interviewed a lot of different people to get as much details as possible. In addition to that they include a lot of research about differences between men and women, and that you do not need to act like a man in the business world to be successful.
Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office
The book from Lois P. Frankel is about “Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers”. While “The Confidence Code” is a good book to get started with the topic and understand it’s roots a little better, this book gives concrete tips on how to avoid unconscious mistakes and to become more confident and successful. The book starts with a self-test, which gives you scores in different categories. Depending on your scores you can then start reading the chapters that will help you the most. Each “mistake” includes an example about a woman making the mistake and also tips on how to avoid the mistakes in future. I noted down 20 different mistakes I want to work on in 2018.
So that’s it — I am currently working on my reading list for 2018, if you have any recommendations let me know.
