Any good IT professional probably has a bookshelf/e-reader full of technical books. O’Reilly books on everything from DNS, TCP/IP, Windows, UNIX, Linux, NAS, SAN, and whatever else you can think of are certainly a big part of my personal library. A well written technical book is great! Reading only well written technical books is not so great though.
Technology books only cover one half of IT; Technology books need to be complemented with books of useful information!
“Technology books do contain useful information!” You might be saying right now. You are correct, except that the information is only useful to you as an IT professional. Even the usefulness of that technical information is limited to a small portion of your work.
Are you reading books with information that is useful to your customers? Are you reading books with information that is useful to your growth and development as a person? Are you reading books that are giving you insights into the future of technology and not just the operation of today’s technology?
Read books on sales. Read books about how the brain works. Read books about people who challenged the status quo and won. Read the books that your customers are reading, and understand why they are reading those books to begin with. Read non-technical books about the people who invented all of this wonderful technology.
Remember – we are Information Technology professionals. The technology is useless without some information to deliver, work with, transform, and create. Read books that will address not just one but both sides of the IT coin.