Learn more about Will McNelis:
Twitter: //twitter.com/willmcnelis
Linkedin //www.linkedin.com/in/willmcnelis/
Books:
I have teenagers that sometimes think that the decision what they will study is the most important decision of their life.
I disagree. Here is the top ten career choices I already made in my life:
1) volunteer in a youthclub, some of my friends, turned it into a job
2) worked in a children playground
3) DJ at the youthclub and even worked a full summer as a DJ, in the south of France
4) Wrote songs for some local bands
5) software support
6) developer
7) software trainer
8) agile coach
9) Wrote & published + 30 books
10) Blogger & Youtube
And I don’t plan to stick only to these choices for the rest of my life. Here are some of the books that helped me and friends to think about designing our life.
| Book name | Author | Tip |
|---|---|---|
| Range | David Epstein | |
| So good they can’t ignore you | Cal Newport | |
| Designing your life | Bill Burnett & Dave Evans | |
| Show your work | Austin Kleon |
What books would you add?
If you like this book list: have a look at the bottom of this page for more book lists…
Coaching and managing people is first and foremost about listening to people.
A skill we don’t learn in most schools. The listening we learn in school is about being able to reproduce (at worst) and to think (at best).
The listening I’m most interesting today is to feel and empathize.
What books would you add to this list?
Full transparency: most links on these list use amazon affiliates links.
At the bottom of my own bookpage, you can find all the bookslists I have gathered since 2010.
On my website, you can find many lists of books.
Until a few weeks ago, all these links have always been direct links.
During a recent coaching session, we talked about options I had to create multiple income streams. During that conversation I decided that I want to start a few experiments.
One of these experiments is adding amazon affiliate links to book links. In an earlier brainstorm around my website, I had been thinking about this. There were two reasons against it.
– I don’t think this will make serious money
– It feels less professional.
In my coaching session, I realized that the first sentence is rather strange. Partly because it’s a kind of big design upfront, how would I know how much money would this bring in? Partly because it feels like minimizing myself. (Imposter syndrome someone)
After the coaching session, I also remembered a comment I received from my friend Chris Matts in 2011. In that comment Chris that told me “Yves, it’s time to uninstall the morality software” It’s a quote that struck a chord with me. That statement has guided /helped/haunted me a lot the past 10 years. It’s also the main reason why I said, ok I should just experiment and try to work with amazon affiliates. Especially as I do spend a fair amount of time on creating and maintaining these book lists.
The experiment:
From now on, new links will contain an amazon affiliate code. And I will gradually update old links to amazon.
I have no idea how much money I will make with this. I don’t expect big money, yet I buy a big amount of books each year, even if this pays back only a piece of it, it’s worth playing with it.
So if you are here for books, let me know in the comments, what do you think about amazon affiliate links?