Month: November 2014

Is this technology worth learning?

Those in technical industries are easily overwhelmed with the plethora of opportunities to learn and use new technologies. I frequently hear people ask how to go about deciding what to learn next. It’s a question I struggled with for a long time too. Combine this with a passion and excitement for learning and you’ll find someone who is constantly juggling…

The spectrum of expertise

When you treat learning as an investment, you want to minimize unnecessary efforts. With the advent of the internet, learning seemingly became a free endeavor. You can learn just about anything online. And this is a great opportunity. However, it doesn’t come without a cost, albeit non monetary. You have to have an eye for what is and isn’t applicable.…

Help yourself

Take a look at the things you do day in and day out to help others improve the work they do. What skills are involved? What are the typical outcomes you help people achieve? List three things you would like to improve about the work you do, that would have a measurable impact: Are any of these improvements similar to…

Tactical institutional learning

Once you come to the realization that learning holds the potential for dramatic organizational improvement and that it should be a part of what people do with the first 40 hours of their week, you might wonder how to get the most out of it. First, let’s differentiate spontaneous learning from intentional learning. Every day you have to look things…

Aligning interests

My childhood home has two bathrooms upstairs, one in the hallway for everyone. And one in the master bedroom. They shared common water lines. If Mom was taking a shower in the master bedroom and I didn’t hear the water running, I’d hear about it when I flushed the toilet in the hallway bathroom. We shared a common interest, needing…

Make it second nature

A natural extension of using mental resets is to establish a mechanism to revisit really important things on a basis appropriate to help make them second nature. Even if retain something after a month, we still risk losing it. If it’s not that important, that’s not a big deal. But if it is, then we need to revisit it. This…