Scott Belsky

I've been torn between giving this 1 or 2 stars, or 4 stars, so 3 it is. The good parts are fascinating, and I think potentially very useful to me in work and at home. Some smart techniques and interesting quotes. I may even recommend it to my colleagues.

On the other hand...it's hard for me to take seriously a book that uses "thought leader" non-ironically. And so it has a lot of that sort of thing going on: oh, look, there's Chris Anderson! Malcolm Gladwell! IDEO! etc., etc. And plenty of show more eye-rolling material for sure.

So if you can get past the eye-rolling, it's probably worth reading. Thankfully, it's pretty short. (I read it in an afternoon while sitting in the park.) show less

Whilst there are probably better books writtennaboutvgettingborganised, I thought the premise of 'Makimg Ideas Happen' was a breakthrough - Belsky breaks it downnpretty clearly, that creativity without action is, pretty much close to useless. That there are millions of people wandering th world with great ideas, but pointless if they don't harness the discipline to execute them. I got a lot out if his book in terms of developing focus and not using 'but I'm creative, I hate operational show more work'. Lke all of these style of books, lots of it didn't appeal directly to me, but essentially only need one good idea to make it a worthwhile read, and this book had it for me. show less

I couldn't get through this book. It was half sales pitch for the Behance Action Method, half thinly-backed admonitions. It felt like I was reading a laundry list, a series of thought processes and planning tools I was supposed to somehow use in order to more capably translate my ideas into reality. A third of the way into it I gave up. There are plenty of good tidbits in the book, but many of them were contradictory, and the whole felt like less than the sum of the (many) parts.

Overall, I found this book frustrating. The first part of the book was an action management system that was David Allen's GTD with some names changed; yes, he does sort of credit Allen, but he's not adding anything to Allen's system, just copying it.

As for the rest of the book, there are a few good ideas in it, but nothing I haven't read in other books about design thinking or productivity. There's plenty of name-checking of internet celebrities, but not a lot of substance. The writing's show more decent, and I kept reading in hopes of finding a new insight or a good kick in the rear, but I'd have been better off spending that time working on bringing my own creative ideas to fruition. show less