Reflecting on goals from 2008

Last December I stumbled across the Personal MBA, self-paced business education program. I came to know about the PMBA through Lifehacker. In January I made the commitment to "start" the program and gave it a decent amount of attention throughout the year. While I did not go into any details around my commitment, internally I was thinking 1 book per month and active participation in the PMBA online community.

I am happy to say that I exceeded my personal goal and actually read 20 books, 18 from the PMBA recommendations and 2 of my own picks. The online community participation part was a little less successful. I gave it a go, but it does not seem like people are all that interested in sharing all to much...I gave up on the community in about April. I will have to get back to that in 2009.

Part of my other commitment was to blog "book reports" as I progressed throughout the year. Well the blogging part never made it passed February. I hope to make amends to that goal and blog about the books that I missed from 2008 this January.

Here is my completed list thus far:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Dip by Seth Godin (book summary)
  
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath (book summary)
• The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way by Jeffrey Gitomer
• The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
• The Practice of Management by Peter F. Drucker
• All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin (book summary)
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss
• 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner & James Harter (book summary)
• First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman (book summary)
• Growing Great Employees by Erika Andersen (book summary)
• The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig
• Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath (book summary)
• The Personality Code by Travis Bradberry (book summary)
• Seeing What's Next by Clayton M. Christensen, Erik A. Roth, Scott D. Anthony
• Bit Literacy by Mark Hurst
• Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got by Jay Abraham
• Getting Things Done by David Allen (Audiobook)
• Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
• Raving Fans by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles (book summary)

So has the PMBA program helped me thus far? You bet! My attitude toward business and work greatly improved, so much that I quit my dead-end job at CDC Software, and leveraged my new found skills to land a position at Salesforce.com. I have to say that I am much more positive and feel like I grew professionally as part of my participation in the program.