One of the decisions I have made, and acted upon, after reading the book Deep Work is this: I am more intentional about reading “Kindle sample pages” of business books that look interesting and useful. I have always wrestled with the perennial problem: so many books, so little time. But, with the Kindle app, I can read those first/sample pages for a lot of books.

So, I’ve just finished the sample pages for two books: Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, and Rebels at Work: A handbook for leading change from within by Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina. (Carmen Medina plays a prominent role in a section of Adam Grant’s new book Originals).

Both of these are books that I might choose to read more fully. They both make sense to me:

Sprint – come up with a new idea, churn out a prototype, and evaluate — all in one week.
Rebels at Work – whether you are a rebel or not, be sure to champion the “good rebels” at work.

Consider these excerpts from Rebels at Work:

Organizations being what they are, people often have to wage a minor insurgency to have their voices heard.
Not everyone in an organization needs to be a rebel, but every organization has and needs its rebels.
At the most basic level, good rebels are for creating new, better ways to do things, while bad rebels just rail against what isn’t working. It’s easy to complain but much harder to figure out what could be done differently.

Get things ramped up, and in working order, very quickly. Make changes by being (or supporting) a good rebel at work. Pretty good lessons from a few short excepts of two books worth considering.