Scan barcode
Reviews
Realizacja genialnych pomysłów: Jak sprawić, by nie skończyło się na gadaniu by Scott Belsky
jenni_schaub's review against another edition
5.0
So many great tips and a quick and easy read. I walked away from this with not just a set of action items and boilerplate ideas but a path forward to improve my creative and collaborative process, time management skills and deeper respect for the power of appreciation.
rlinnyc's review against another edition
3.0
biggest takeaway was the beginning section which motivated me to articulate my to-do's in actionable language. probably a great read for project managers and higher ups.
candyfm's review against another edition
4.0
loved this book! so much in it....done walls...visual organisation, mind mapping up, the action method and pointing me in the direction of Behance! loved it. only gave it 4 not 5 stars because it's slightly more relevant to management than an individual artist.
chantelreadsallday's review against another edition
1.0
Honestly, I didn't finish it. Maybe my ideas just won't happen.
wesbaker's review against another edition
2.0
While this book has plenty of good points (taking responsibility, using your time wisely, improving teams) I feel that it's more of a rehash or a summary of recent rediscoveries. It's worth a read if you've been out of touch with productivity, time management and team dynamics, but if you've been paying attention, I wouldn't take the time to read this book.
jregensb's review against another edition
3.0
Entrepreneur and Behance founder Scott Belsky offers his take on bringing ideas to fruition. Eschewing the step by step productivity systems popularized by Steven Covey and David Allen, Belsky offers a more holistic approach. He suggests that ideas become reality when we're able to focus organization and execution together with communal forces and leadership.
The result is a book that's heavily reliant on anecdotes, stories, and sometimes contradictory messages. Sprinkled throughout are the now-obligatory references to Zappos, Google, IDEO, and the author's own projects. It occurred to me as I was reading this book that if Zappos didn't exist we'd probably have to invent it, if only to provide something for business writers to write about.
RIYL Seth Godin, PSFK, Rework, The Progress Principle, Stories about successful people being successful.
The result is a book that's heavily reliant on anecdotes, stories, and sometimes contradictory messages. Sprinkled throughout are the now-obligatory references to Zappos, Google, IDEO, and the author's own projects. It occurred to me as I was reading this book that if Zappos didn't exist we'd probably have to invent it, if only to provide something for business writers to write about.
RIYL Seth Godin, PSFK, Rework, The Progress Principle, Stories about successful people being successful.
harkinna's review against another edition
5.0
Mr. Belsky, of www.behance.net, does a great job explaining to artists, photographers, and writers how to go about organizing their work flows to maximize their output. I read the book over the last few weeks and have already seen the results. My boss mentioned I was getting a lot of stuff done and asked if I felt overwhelmed with work. Cute.
The book is organized broadly into three areas: Organization and Execution, Community, and Leadership Capability.
So his organizational system goes something like this:
Get a notebook or note cards, whichever you chose, but make sure that it is on paper you like. (You are creative and so find fine paper to be important, so much so that you have a lot of it lying around and don’t really know what to do with all of it.) In the alternative, Behance sells books that are set up to work with the action method.
On the cards/in the book, set up a page for each project you are working on. For each project, write out action steps to take to complete the project and the date that you wrote down the step. The idea is to help you stay on task. Then set up a section for backburner projects that you don’t want to forget, but are not yet working on. These projects might eventually move to the front burner.
I have found that outside of work I can only have two other projects, max, to spend my time on. That said, I set up my system for both work and home. My projects currently are:
* memoir
* photography business
* screenplay (halfway on the backburner)
* personal to do's (dr appointments, etc.)
* section 2 of report
* section 4 of report
* backburner projects/ideas (my fiction book is on this list)
I have started carrying these cards with me everywhere, so I can jot down action steps to do, new projects for the back burner, or other stuff.
Mr. Belsky makes the point that people take a lot of notes, and then files them away. He wants you to stop saving all of these notes and other items. Filing everything away is taking too much time. In my case, I end up with piles of stuff to organize all of the time. Instead of working on my projects, I often decide to get organized first, letting my projects further languish. So, I bought a box with a lid, and put everything from my desk into the box. Now, I just sort through the box once a month while watching crime shows.
The author also spends a lot of time explaining how projects don’t get done without help. Without the support of your community, you are unlikely to get very far with your creative endeavors. He lists out a few websites to find like-minded people.
Finally, he talks about leadership and the qualities of a good leader. This chapter and the others are peppered with stories that have had success in their lives from their personal projects.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I think he makes some excellent points about how to get your work done when you are your own boss. The book does slow down a bit at the end, but I suppose that always happens with these kinds of books. On a strange note, the book jacket feels funny. I mean the paper itself.
The book is organized broadly into three areas: Organization and Execution, Community, and Leadership Capability.
So his organizational system goes something like this:
Get a notebook or note cards, whichever you chose, but make sure that it is on paper you like. (You are creative and so find fine paper to be important, so much so that you have a lot of it lying around and don’t really know what to do with all of it.) In the alternative, Behance sells books that are set up to work with the action method.
On the cards/in the book, set up a page for each project you are working on. For each project, write out action steps to take to complete the project and the date that you wrote down the step. The idea is to help you stay on task. Then set up a section for backburner projects that you don’t want to forget, but are not yet working on. These projects might eventually move to the front burner.
I have found that outside of work I can only have two other projects, max, to spend my time on. That said, I set up my system for both work and home. My projects currently are:
* memoir
* photography business
* screenplay (halfway on the backburner)
* personal to do's (dr appointments, etc.)
* section 2 of report
* section 4 of report
* backburner projects/ideas (my fiction book is on this list)
I have started carrying these cards with me everywhere, so I can jot down action steps to do, new projects for the back burner, or other stuff.
Mr. Belsky makes the point that people take a lot of notes, and then files them away. He wants you to stop saving all of these notes and other items. Filing everything away is taking too much time. In my case, I end up with piles of stuff to organize all of the time. Instead of working on my projects, I often decide to get organized first, letting my projects further languish. So, I bought a box with a lid, and put everything from my desk into the box. Now, I just sort through the box once a month while watching crime shows.
The author also spends a lot of time explaining how projects don’t get done without help. Without the support of your community, you are unlikely to get very far with your creative endeavors. He lists out a few websites to find like-minded people.
Finally, he talks about leadership and the qualities of a good leader. This chapter and the others are peppered with stories that have had success in their lives from their personal projects.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I think he makes some excellent points about how to get your work done when you are your own boss. The book does slow down a bit at the end, but I suppose that always happens with these kinds of books. On a strange note, the book jacket feels funny. I mean the paper itself.
larrys's review against another edition
5.0
I started reading this book on 08 April and finished it today, on 07 August, which is no reflection on the book, and everything to do with how much I personally need a kick in the pants -- nothing I start seems to get finished lately, not even books I'm really enjoying!
But once I picked this book up again I remembered how well-written it is, and with chartreuse highlighter* in hand, I went through this paperback like I sometimes go through an Alain de Boton book -- impressed at its truisms and insight, finding many, many one-liners that could easily form the basis of all those motivational posters you see coming through your Facebook feed. (That's not just me, is it?)
*Not a library book. I bought my own copy.
Scott Belsky is a truly wise man, and I would encourage anyone embarking on a longterm creative project to read this book first. We completed our first longterm creative project last year, and through trial and error had already learnt to work with 'action steps'(though I'd never thought to call them that). I also know exactly what he means by scope creep and my own weaknesses have now been clarified for me, including my own tendency to see marketing as dirty, somehow. It's sobering to hear that for every hour spent on a creative project another hour needs to be spent on marketing and networking. I guess I've learnt that already, but I don't like to hear it. I doubt I'll ever get that ratio right, but this book is motivational enough for me to put in some more hours marketing and promoting next time we release a storybook app.
Interestingly, this is the second book I've read lately that is connected directly to a website. (The first was Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint.) I came to both of these books via blogs. This says something interesting about the publishing world, I think.
I haven't yet published a portfolio at the Behance Network, but I guess I'll go and add that to my list of action steps...
But once I picked this book up again I remembered how well-written it is, and with chartreuse highlighter* in hand, I went through this paperback like I sometimes go through an Alain de Boton book -- impressed at its truisms and insight, finding many, many one-liners that could easily form the basis of all those motivational posters you see coming through your Facebook feed. (That's not just me, is it?)
*Not a library book. I bought my own copy.
Scott Belsky is a truly wise man, and I would encourage anyone embarking on a longterm creative project to read this book first. We completed our first longterm creative project last year, and through trial and error had already learnt to work with 'action steps'(though I'd never thought to call them that). I also know exactly what he means by scope creep and my own weaknesses have now been clarified for me, including my own tendency to see marketing as dirty, somehow. It's sobering to hear that for every hour spent on a creative project another hour needs to be spent on marketing and networking. I guess I've learnt that already, but I don't like to hear it. I doubt I'll ever get that ratio right, but this book is motivational enough for me to put in some more hours marketing and promoting next time we release a storybook app.
Interestingly, this is the second book I've read lately that is connected directly to a website. (The first was Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint.) I came to both of these books via blogs. This says something interesting about the publishing world, I think.
I haven't yet published a portfolio at the Behance Network, but I guess I'll go and add that to my list of action steps...
citizenkahn's review against another edition
4.0
In this book Belsky offers solid advice on cutting through the truism "creative people can't be organized" and many other myths. Belsky explains how action based organization births ideas into reality and how the creation of tight implementation/test loops allows for tinkering. If many ideas turn out to be duds then increasing the efficiency of the idea launch pad offers a good way to find the gems. He also covers how identify idea thrashing and when to block it. Finally, there's solid advice on working with teams and gaming the nervous aspects of our consciousness to counter self sabotage.
I don't work in a "creative" discipline but we're all designers all the time. Any solution to any problem represents a design of sorts. I face complex problems that require solutions that scale and can be adopted easily by my user community. Taking a design approach and applying lessons from this book seem to offer a good way to involve the larger team to grow and harvest adoptable innovation.
By the way, don't let the Goldman Sax references get you down. Goldman may not have had great ideas of late but they have been very effective at seeing them through (even if we wish they hadn't).
A very worthy read.
I don't work in a "creative" discipline but we're all designers all the time. Any solution to any problem represents a design of sorts. I face complex problems that require solutions that scale and can be adopted easily by my user community. Taking a design approach and applying lessons from this book seem to offer a good way to involve the larger team to grow and harvest adoptable innovation.
By the way, don't let the Goldman Sax references get you down. Goldman may not have had great ideas of late but they have been very effective at seeing them through (even if we wish they hadn't).
A very worthy read.