A Soldier First and Still Alice

Over the holidays I finished two non-business related books.

One of them was General Rick Hillier's book A Soldier First - Bullets, Bureaucrats and the Politics of War. I know Rick so the book was doubly interesting to me. I also have a daughter and son in law in the Canadian Navy.

At one point in the book he talks about expecting to have a break between postings of six weeks and what he planned to do is golf in the mornings and putter on his household chores and get his house all in order before his next posting. Then what happened is he got a call on Monday saying that he was going to have to leave on the following Monday to start his new mission.

So we can guess what happened, he then threw himself into accomplishing his list of chores and sure enough he got them all done. Then ironically he got the call that he wasn't needed for another 4 weeks, so he was able to truly relax having finished most of his "work" list.

One thing I noticed about productivity is when we absolutely need to get things done, we can be tremendously high productivity and like the old saying goes, "the work expands to fill the time available".

The second book I read was Still Alice by Lisa Genova which, although it is a novel, it is a well researched book written in the first person about a woman who has early onset Alzheimers. She is a Ph.D who advances through multiple phases of dementia. A very moving story.

Both books were entertaining, thought provoking and interesting.