Facebook was born to capture the social or off hours parts of school. Blogs are increasingly becoming a platform that functions as a springboard for product launches, paid membership communities and a tour on the speaking circuit — preferably with one’s own flavor of a program.
How much critical thinking is being developed racing to the popularity charts?
Learning is one of the ways in which the Internet is allowing more people to participate in the global economy, in addition to the conversation. And it’s giving creators and teachers the ability to build a platform to share what they know and attract students. A much improved — and needed — proposition.
Who says you have to give up being social to learn online? Why should you be able to learn only by paying top dollars?
You’re already familiar with TED. They make the talks people pay top dollar to attend available online for free — through a sponsorship model. There are more free resources out there for those who wish to learn and teach. Here are 3.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/y4jjcl3. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
What you are about to read is a mostly lightly edited version of a conversation we recorded to put right here on this very blog. The parts where we talk about my desire to run away with her love interest, the gloriously bekilted Marty Whitmore, were heavily edited.
ND. Okay. Can you please explain in short words exactly what you do?
MEM. What an excellent question! For the purposes of this conversation: I run a positive impact network called Ideaschema. Ideaschema’s job is to provide as much support structure and as many resources as we can to help motivated people grow their ideas. To that end, I do a lot of consulting work, idea catalyst work for special lovely people like yourself — running IttyBiz, in other words — and putting together learning packages to pro-active-ize the mindsets of people with spectacular potential. And very recently, I’m helping people look at normal situations from creative standpoints.
ND. Those were not short words.
MEM. I thought you were kidding.
ND. I thought you knew me better than that. I will translate. You do idea generation, building, and putting projects together, and you either do that by helping people find ways to do their thing, or by actually getting your hands dirty and helping them do it.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/ylkcvwz. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
I am sure that most of us are familiar with this motivational poster with the cute little kitten:
Or, for the more cynical among us, this little gem:
I tend to find more humor the second image myself, as I am not a cat person. In addition, I find the act of “hanging in there” to be antithetical to progress and growth, if not self-destructive. Tying a knot in the end of your rope and waiting for something to happen (or someone to rescue you) is no way to fulfill your dreams, no way to achieve your destiny. What do you do to avoid becoming a pinata in the great game of life?
Change your perspective.
Stop thinking of your situation as dodging the blows of randomness, or as some kind of rope to be climbed. Make that cord in your hands symbolize something else! Visualize that “rope” as a fuse, and You are the bomb! Everything can change once you make the decision to change your perspective. No longer do you have to think of yourself as the pinata swinging at the end of some rope that is beyond your control, pulled to and fro by competing forces. Instead of a rope you hold in your own hands a fuse that needs to be lit in order to set off an explosion of creativity and motivation. You will become a powerful device for change.
What one thing can you do today, what one thing can you do right now, to light that fuse and make a change? Is there something about your job, your home life, your relationships that needs a burst of energy? Look at your Someday/Maybe list, is there something that you have been putting off for no good reason?
Light that fuse,go and do something with that bomb!
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/au98du. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
I have been reading the new book by David Allen, “Making It All Work“, and getting some really powerful insights. The main thrust of the book is that it expands your Getting Things Done practice by emphasizing a couple of points that I have been advocating here for the past year or so:
Get control of your system
Gain perspective on your responsibilities
Keeping things in context has become my own personal mantra, and one way to do that is with a comprehensive series of reviews. I personally recommend a series of 69 reviews over the course of the year:
Weekly
Monthly
Quarterly
Annually
This may seem like a lot, but with some practice and by discovering what is most important to you these reviews do not take a lot of time and the return on that investment of time is invaluable. I use the weekly reviews to keep myself on track with the day-to-day work for my clients and personal projects. The monthly reviews focus on the larger scale of how my business is going and what I need to drill down on in the future.
The quarterly reviews are mainly geared toward measuring my progress toward the big goals, aspirations, and long-term success. These are the times that I really think about where I am headed and what is being done to get there. Last year I kept some fairly detailed notes during these highly introspective reviews and they came very handy recently when I sat down to look at what worked and what didn’t. This made my annual review go smoothly and provided a template for this year’s goal-setting.
Improving Relationships
One of my primary goals for 2009 is to expand and grow my new consulting business. Working for myself is an enormous challenge, with a fantastic reward - I get to work one-on-one with some really cool people. And I learn something new from every one.
Part of my plan to maintain and expand these existing client relationships - and get the new sales year off to a good start - is to schedule an annual review focusing on each of them.
During this review, I will be looking over the past year’s work with the client using this template:
Thank them for their business, and tell them how important they are to me.
Invite them to share their thoughts about the business we did with them - both positive and negative.
Highlight the positive things we accomplished for them, and how we worked together to address their business issues.
Brainstorm with the client on new products or services that I can help them to develop and market.
I am looking forward to building sustained relationships based on mutual trust and professional respect, and being able to ask for referrals to create these same powerful relationships with new clients.
If you found this post useful, please share it with your friends on Twitter using the tinylink http://tinyurl.com/b6duq2. Thanks, I appreciate it! Feel free to comment below, I enjoy discussing these ideas. ~@Stephen
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April 14th, 2010 by Stephen
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One of my primary goals for 2009 is to expand and grow my new consulting business. Working for myself is an enormous challenge, with a fantastic reward - I get to work one-on-one with some really cool people. And I learn something new from every one.
