Step One: The Email Problem

I'm the girl who hates to go to bed because I might miss something. I also tend to subscribe to everything, because who knows where my next best idea ever might come from. But as a result, my in boxes, both personal and work, are stuffed with notifications about anything and everything. If it's a social media site, a newsletter, a specialty store, I'm getting email from them.

So today, as the first act of the new simply my life regime, I unsubscribed from almost everything. It's interesting -- I didn't have "Plunder" or "SOCMedia" in my life 2 years ago, and somehow managed to stagger along through life. I feel no distress at all as I unsub, unsub, unsub.

Tomorrow I will start deleting old emails, and along with that, old email folders. Hopefully this will mean that I will spend less time reading and deleting email in the future, and will begin to not find it necessary to obsessively check email even when I'm not working.

Welcome 2012! and 2011 -- Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Ass on Your Way Out!

When I evaluate my progress towards my goals for last year, I have to admit I didn't do very well at all. In fact, I would have to say this was the worst year ever, in terms of accomplishing my goals. Here's what I said I would do:

1. Using a methodology I describe here, perform an analysis of the skills and experience that I need to develop in order to determine what I need to do to maintain my position. I did exactly nothing on this. Well, I take that back. I did find a job posting that I would describe as "perfect" -- but that's about it. And I only found that by dumb luck.

2. Learn to use InDesign and complete a project using it. Nope, not a bit.


3. Work on understanding what I can do to maximize the creativity and innovation displayed by my team. Write an article or give a presentation on leading a creative team. Sadly, I didn't do anything on this as well.

4. Develop an idea for a mobile device app that I recently came up with. I did find out that my idea wasn't original. So I didn't go any further with this.

5. Investigate moving this blog to WordPress that I host myself.  Didn't do this either.

Why was this year such a flop? Usually, I am the queen of list making, and generally follow through with my plans. Why not this time?

I thought a lot about this at the end of last year, and I think what it boils down to was I didn't have any real passion about those goals. They were things that I thought would be good for me to do ( and probably they would have been) but in my busy and crowded life, they didn't demand any attention. They couldn't compete with the other demands on my time. So they were abandoned.

I read a great blog post that helped me understand what went wrong, and how to create goals for myself that will actually be accomplished.  It was written by Leo Babauta and you can read the whole thing here. Here's a brief quote that I think really sums it up:

A simple life has a different meaning and a different value for every person. For me, it means eliminating all but the essential, eschewing chaos for peace, and spending your time doing what’s important to you.
It means getting rid of many of the things you do so you can spend time with people you love and do the things you love. It means getting rid of the clutter so you are left with only that which gives you value.

I started thinking about my life, and all the things that fill my time. What is really important to me?

1. Doing my Buddhist practice.
2. Maintaining and improving the important relationships in my life: My partner, my daughter, my family, my sangha.
3. Maintaining and improving my physical health.
4. Writing and other creative work.

Everything else is really just clutter. So my goal this year is to reduce the emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual clutter in my life so I have the time and space to do the things I love, to be with the people that I love. I will begin to ask myself: Is this important to me? And if it isn't, I will let it go.

Let's see how this turns out!

Prezi about My Team's Work

EDR at NTID on Prezi

New Tools

Last week I had the opportunity to visit Philadelphia and attend the Educause 2011 conference. Educause is perhaps the biggest conference for higher education and technology, both in terms of quantity of presentations and also quality. While there, I attended an excellent half-day session on Instructional Design presented by Ed Bowen. Here are some new tools that came up during that session:

Glogster – This is a tool for making interactive posters. Think collage meets Web2.0. I think this could be very interesting for elementary school teachers to use with their students.

PassTheNotes.com–  “PassTheNotes.com is a SAAS (software as a service) for educators, students, and developers to create, manage, distribute, and monitor interactive themes and content.  We are passionate about revolutionizing education through our platform and realize there’s lots of work to be done.  We’ve created the foundation and now we’re opening it up for the world to start working together to make it great.”

Splashtop –  “Travel light and have full access to the computing power of your main PC or Mac. Access your files and multimedia content on a remote computer with exceptional audio, video, and real-time interactivity all from a Mac.
FEATURES:
• Connect from anywhere via local network or across the Internet
• Access important files or photos on another computer without worrying about syncing, converting, or compatibility issues
• Use MS Office, Silverlight, and other Windows software without having to install it on a Mac
• Play HD movies and music from your central media libraries without the hassle of transferring files
• Run graphic-intensive PC games on a powerful machine and play them from a portable Mac
• Save energy with Wake-on-LAN”


Wall wisher – “Wall Wisher is a web tool that allows you to have an interactive cork board. Imagine the ability to post notes with reminders about class trips, even the PDF file for the permission slip, as well as photos and other great items for your peers and students. Wallwisher is simple to use and can be shared or kept private. It is an easy way to share a workspace either with students or colleagues.”

Poll Everywhere –    “Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print — anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.”

Lead with the Why

I've wondered why I do so well when I interview for a job. I'm not good looking, only average smart, have had only average experiences. I am hard working, and creative, but so are a ton of other people. But somehow, if I interview for a job, I get an offer about 80% of the time, and almost 100% of the time if I actually ask for the job. Why is that?

Today I found out why. I saw an 18 minute TED video by Simon Senek. Simon Senek presents a very simple idea that he calls The Golden Circle. It's a simple idea -- three concentric circles. The outside circle is "What".  The next circle in is "How". The inner circle is "Why". Simon Senek says the what are the features of your product, or perhaps the facts of your resume.  Everyone in the company knows What the company does. Most of the people know How the company does it. But maybe very few know the most important thing, the Why.

Simon Senek says that the conventional way to sell something is to start with the what and move in. So we describe the features of the product. But the exceptional people start with the Why and go from there. People are attracted to the why.

I know this is true from my own experience.

When I interview for a job, I have naturally focused on the Why I do what I do. At this point in my life, that seems to be the most important part, maybe the only important part.  I don't care so much about the money. I don't care so much about the fame or the power-- but I do care a whole lot about what the Buddhists call "ending suffering" -- my mission. And that's what I talk about. I figure at this point that if the company and I don't share the same mission, then there is no point in me working with them at all.

Think about your own Why and when you are interviewing or selling or leading. Start with the Why and see if you don't experience greater success. I know you will.

Sharing the Dream

Watch this video, and think about how we can use this idea to develop better business skills content.  To see the video with subtitles in English, please go here.

Don't You Wish You Had This?

Here's something amazing: A shared Google spreadsheet of all the TED talks!