Publisher's Synopsis
If you are reading this book, chances are that you are looking for new or different paths to be more successful and possibly happier than where you stand right now. You may be in the right place. Success is driven by clear objectives and a way to define that you reached them. This is no easy task and requires self-discipline, analytical skills and, sometimes, external help.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, summarized several studies on happiness with something so simple that many people may already know, even if they don't realize it. Happiness is not something that you reach. It does not reside in achieving a specific fixed objective. Happiness is a state of mind, it's more the way you live your life with what's inside and the way you define your own objectives and your own successes. It's about living your optimal experience. It's incredible how joyful you can be when you feel that you are acquiring the skills necessary to reach a goal and using them to be successful.We will walk through a framework that can guide you to the personal growth you always dreamed to achieve, and I'll try to help you in defining your path, using some lessons learned from a widely known discipline such as software engineering. It may sound strange, however the most used framework and tools for cutting-edge applications that you use today, could be applied to whatever domain you want, so that you can achieve the best possible results.So, who is this book for? This is for the ones that are brave enough to challenge their "status quo". It is for the ones willing to find a structure that helps them to get out the most of their capabilities. Is this book for everyone? Potentially yes, but I must recognize that some people may find it too "nerdy" and that's fine. If you are one of them, you may just want to know what this is all about and you could find some ideas anyway.Within this book you will find an introduction to myself and why I wrote this book, followed by four sections: the first one is a quick overview of the main concept of agility and Scrum. It won't be something bound to software development or other engineering stuff, but rather something easily understandable by everyone. The second part will be dedicated to focusing on what really matters to you. Finding the value and the domains where this value resides is key to elevating yourself to a new level. The third section is dedicated to defining the boundaries of what you may consider the "product" of your work. When I am talking about "product" I am not referring to something you can buy, instead I mean the output of what you do daily for yourself and to reach your goals. The last section is dedicated to tools and techniques to keep track of how things are going. This is very important since there is no looking back if you don't have the right data to analyse. I really believe in the scientific method and the empiric approach, so I recommend reading that section carefully.Well, is this book the magic wand? Of course not. Is it supported by the most important social studies on self-coaching? No, it's not, even if most of the techniques could be considered as world-experience proven. This can be the first step, a set of building blocks, a trigger or whatever works for you to enable your continuous improvement path. Many books, from Daniel Pink to Patrick Lencioni, passing through Gallwey, have been written on the topics that are discussed in this book. I will try to create an overview on some important aspects that are related to our motivation, the way we live our lives and the structure we give to our days, weeks and months to reach our targets.
