Group items tagged

Interesting article published 1/6/2014 on Second Acts for baby boomers. Quotes Marc Freedman, Elizabeth Isele (who lived in ME for a long time), and mentions Bevan Rogel. The Boomerworks online service for matching BBs with work opportunities is very interesting--wonder how they are doing? And whether we should try to ally with them? "In 1998, living in Maine, Isele created CyberSeniors, a multilingual nonprofit computer training company that eventually trained more than 28,000 seniors in 24 states. She's led numerous nonprofits over the decades and is now pushing public policy changes and forging connections between organizations to create an "entrepreneur ecosystem." That ecosystem is flourishing in Sarasota. Sarasota's Institute for the Ages, established in 2009 to change the conversation about aging as one of deficit and decline to one about enhancing lives, is a lab for companies and services that want to tap into the needs of older adults. In late 2013, the Institute launched Boomerswork.com, a web-based network to connect freelancers with companies seeking seasoned professionals for project-based work. The program started in Canada and the Institute is the first organization to bring it to the U.S. When the Institute convenes a national convention here in February, entrepreneurship and encore careers will be a large part of the agenda. In addition to a keynote address by Freedman, Isele is leading a workshop on entrepreneurship with Bevon Rogel, who runs a Freedman-related Encore Academy in St. Petersburg to help seniors find meaningful work. For Southwest Florida, which has one of the highest concentrations of seniors in the nation, the idea of an "encore" seems natural. As the rest of the country and world grays, branding this life stage as one that brings years, or potentially decades, more productivity and meaning to life has become an imperative."

blog by Chuck Thompson, June 2009, in Men's Journal. To improve your athletic performance and to feel clearer all the time, start with the most fundamental act of life. Excerpt: "We all come into the world with the ability to take full, unencumbered breaths, but as we get older we forget how to breathe properly," says Don Campbell, a journalist turned wellness expert who champions a new movement among doctors and athletes known as "conscious breathing." A host of challenges conspire against our breathing well, Campbell says: "Poor posture, restrictive clothing, bad habits such as smoking, diets that lead to high blood pressure and racing hearts, increasingly rapid and emotionally stressful lives, lack of exercise, multitasking, polluted environments, and slouching in front of computers are just a few of the things that literally take our breath away, creating a lifestyle that's incongruent with proper breathing." Modern life causes the average person to use about a third of his natural lung capacity, while drawing about 15 breaths a minute." Breathing exercises: Relearn How To Breathe Do this exercise five times a day and you'll start thinking and performing better in no time: 1. Inhale deeply 2. Exhale with a short burst (as if blowing out a candle). This helps activate your diaphragm, which most people don't use. 3. Exhale with a long, slow finish to empty the lungs. Breathlessness comes from not expelling enough CO2. 4. Inhale, filling your lungs from the bottom to the top, instead of taking short sips. Most use a third of their lung capacity. 5. Hold for a moment to allow oxygen to saturate the cells. 6. Exhale slowly and completely. 7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 for five minutes. Read more: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/you-re-breathing-all-wrong-20130227#ixzz2t8BfTHcj Follow us: @mensjournal on Twitter | MensJournal on Facebook

blog post by Jennifer Gilhool, 6.4.2013 "You are connected to work 24/7. You don't need your lap top to be connected. You are connected via BlackBerry, iPhone and iPad to name just a few. These devices no longer provide flexibility. Instead, they tether you to the office. They enable you to work all the time and anywhere. And, now, many companies believe that is the definition of flexibility: "'What flexibility means today is not part time,' the head of work-life at one large organization told me recently. 'What people want is the ability to work anytime, anywhere.' That's true if your target labor pool is twenty-somethings and men married to homemakers. The head of HR at another large organization asked, when I described the hours problem, 'What do you mean, how can we get women to work more hours?'" - Why Men Work So Many Hours, Joan C. Williams, May 29, 2013 Harvard Business Review Why Your Manager Doesn't Want You To Innovate Ron Ashkenas Ron Ashkenas Contributor LinkedIn: Busting 8 Damaging Myths About What It Can Do For Your Career 85 Broads 85 Broads Contributor Someone has taken the "human" out of "Human Resources" departments across America. And, this behavior is not limited to operations in America. I work for a multi-national corporation that cannot seem to wean itself from the 24 hour work day. Colleagues in China often begin their day with a 6:00 a.m. meeting and end it with a meeting that begins at 10:00 p.m. or, worse, 11:00 p.m. To combat this problem, the company leadership agreed to a global meeting policy. The policy provides that global meetings should occur only between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 p.m. and that no meetings should occur on Friday nights in Asia Pacific. Further, the policy provides a 10 hour fatigue rule. In other words, there should be 10 hours between your last meeting of the day and your first meeting on the next day. First, if you need a global meeting policy, you are in

Commencement speeches at different colleges, June 15, 2014 Harvey Mudd College Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist "Your unique education has prepared you for careers at the cutting edge of innovation. This is both good news and bad news. It's good news because you're probably going to find a job, it will pay well, and it will be intellectually fulfilling. It's bad news because whatever you thought you were training for when you started this exercise might not actually exist anymore. Five years ago, when you guys were deciding where to go to college, there were very few mobile-app developers or big-data architects, and there certainly weren't any chief listening officers for social media outlets. It's hard to imagine where the next five years will go, but it's kind of fun to do so. ... Who knows, but you guys are going to be among the people that are actually making it happen. And it'll be awesome, as long as you're willing to take some risks and step outside of your comfort zone. When an opportunity arises, take it." UNC at Chapel Hill Atul Gawande, doctor and writer "Ultimately, it turns out we all have an intrinsic need to pursue purposes larger than ourselves, purposes worth making sacrifices for. People often say, 'Find your passion.' But there's more to it than that. Not all passions are enough. Just existing for your desires feels empty and insufficient, because our desires are fleeting and insatiable. You need a loyalty. The only way life is not meaningless is to see yourself as part of something greater: a family, a community, a society. ... the search for purpose is really a search for a place, not an idea. It is a search for a location in the world where you want to be part of making things better for others in your own small way. It could be a classroom where you teach, a business where you work, a neighborhood where you live. The key is, if you find yourself in a place where you stop caring - where your greatest conce

Offers three tips for managing work life--Unplug, Take real vacations and dive into hobbies away from work, use your energy wisely, by Katie Bascuas, May 14, 2015

by Kelly Wallace Finding work life balance needs to be reframed as a person, not working Mom, issue, especially since we are all connected 24/7. Companies are becoming less flexible, not more, especially after Yahoo banned working from home. Men want flexibility as well, and statistics show more men than women telecommute, which defies the popular conception of working moms being the highest percentage of telecommunters. Until the conversation includes everyone, not just focuses on women, there will be no change in perception of the issue in the c-suite.

Interesting study on social media users by Pew Internet and American Life Project, December 2012, released February 2013, by Maeve Duggan and Joanna Brenner Summary Twitter attracted 16% of all internet users. They were more likely to be younger (18-29), African American, or Hispanic, and urban. Pinterest attracted 15% of all internet users. They were five times as likely to be women as men, more likely to be wealthier, and rural. Instagram users make up 13% of all internet users. They are more likely to be younger, African-American, Hispanic, and urban. Facebook has 67% of all internet users participating. They are more likely to be younger and more urban. Tumblr has only 6% of all internet users. They are 4x more likely to be younger than older.

Good information on who's using social media by age group and gender, and race/ethnicity. Looks like Facebook at 67% is the highest (and at its prime?). Pew Internet and American Life Project. December 2012.

This month marks the nine-month anniversary of the most natural and obvious, most joyful and energizing decision of my life: to fully commit 100% to my life's work.I've spent every day falling more madly in love with how I live my life and spend my time, the contributions I'm making to society, and the discomfort and growth that I feel each day.My journey getting here was both arduous and enthralling.

article in Academic Matters, the Journal of Higher Education, by Stephen Carson and Jan Philipp Schmidt, May 2012 issue. Excerpt: "Expertise will be earned and maintained through ongoing lifelong education, not conferred once and good for life. Open learning systems offer the possibility for the kind of continuous lifelong learning that will be necessary as the pace of technological and scientific knowledge development increases. Like athletes, learners will not just learn once, but will maintain a level of performance ability in their chosen field through ongoing study and participation in learning communities."

Facilitating life long learning should be the goal of every teacher. I think that sometimes it is so cumbersome - passing tests, etc., that the fun part of learning is lost.

Great article on really working smart from Harvard Business Review. Meredith Fineman states complaining being too busy seems to be the new power status: I'm busier than you so I'm more important. She goes on to give examples from her life and experiences of what working smarter, not harder, really means in this world of overwhelm

Great article on really working smart from Harvard Business Review. Meredith Fineman states complaining being too busy seems to be the new power status: I'm busier than you so I'm more important. She goes on to give examples from her life and experiences of what working smarter, not harder, really means in this world of overwhelm

This page lists on demand webinars and fact sheets available only to AWIS members. Nice layout and treatment of life transition topics.

reprint of blog post by Katie Bascuas at Associations Now for how & why to turn off the connecting technology, May 14, 2015.

Wonderful explanation of the power of pull and its exploration in books written by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown (Social Life of Information author among many other foundational books), and Lang Davison (former director of Deloitte Center for the Edge and editor-in-chief of the McKinsey Quarterly). Endorses community of practice and "socially embedded practice in driving knowledge creation and performance improvement." From April 9, 2010

very nice list of apps for work and life enhancement

from Inc. Good first reason: life is too short Good last reason: you don't think you can do anything else - time to trust your creativity, perseverance, and effort to take you to a new, happier, more fulfilling place.

from Inc. by Jeff Hayden Good first reason: life is too short Good last reason: you don't think you can do anything else - time to trust your creativity, perseverance, and effort to take you to a new, happier, more fulfilling place.

nice post by Lauren Levine on her progression in life to her 60+ years to realize a "greater and richer understanding" of things that matter.

Blog post by Lisa Lane in her (Online) Teaching Blog, June 25, 2011 She reviews Pink's book on A Whole New Mind. Excerpt: "Accumulation -> Meaning Pink says the predominance of the baby boomer mentality means that the goal of accumulating meterial goods is changing to the desire to find meaning in life, a kind of "post-materialism"." For each chapter on these aptitudes, Pink provides resources and tips to develop your own brain along the new lines. Thus we go from theory in Chapter 1 to a series of storied examples, then each chapter ends with self-help advice. (It's already pretty light - I find it very funny that there's a "Summarized for Busy People" version available.) But the mental yoga commercial was a distraction from the main idea. What's significant here is that right-brained, big picture, contextual, design-based thinking will likely be increasingly respected in our culture.

Newsletter by Ann Mehl, a life coach, 1.26.13. Justifies Studio's raison d'etre. Excerpts: "The workplace has changed enormously in recent years. Gone are the days when some benevolent company would direct and manage your career for you, while you dozed off at the wheel. Now more than ever, it is incumbent upon every employee to proactively manage his own career. We have become in essence, a nation of free agents. A company of one. And all successful "companies" must identify and set their priorities in such a way that our goals can be achieved. In the humdrum of work, it's often easy to find yourself adrift, floating aimlessly downstream without clear intent or destination. The days blur into each other, until you have no idea where you are going, or what it was you hoped to achieve. But ask yourself this question: if you're not steering the ship, then who is?" ..."Are there any personal development classes that would make certain parts of my job easier? Should I be speaking with other industry peers in my field so that I remain current? Is there anybody I can identify who might be willing to mentor me while I navigate this tricky next phase of my career?"

Fascinating article by Marina Gorbis on Fast Company site regarding how we must be able to learn online in micro-learning episodes that may last minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc. far removed from schools, MOOCs, and other structured and semi-structured curricula. Excerpt: "We are moving away from the model in which learning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that, for better and worse, have served as the main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is a new system in which learning is best conceived of as a flow, where learning resources are not scarce but widely available, opportunities for learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dip into and out of continuous learning flows. Instead of worrying about how to distribute scarce educational resources, the challenge we need to start grappling with in the era of socialstructed learning is how to attract people to dip into the rapidly growing flow of learning resources and how to do this equitably, in order to create more opportunities for a better life for more people." In the comments, this summary: "It doesn't matter if you are a physicist, chemist, sociologist, welder, mathematician, teacher, economist, lawyer, restaurant owner, farmer, trucker, whatever, the information most relevant and valuable to your employment is up to you to find! The task requires you find and digest information, on your own. This task used to be a pain, but now we have near-instant access to the entirety of information across the planet. The author is talking about making this access actually instant, not near-instant. Its really just an inevitable thing. "