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Podcast and list of actions to take to overcome the resistance that most of us have when starting a new project or improving our lives, Michael Hyatt. Excerpt: In order to deal with the Resistance, you have to first understand what it is. It has four attributes. Attribute #1: It is invisible. Attribute #2: It is internal. Attribute #3: It is insidious. Attribute #4: It is infallible. But what can you do about it? You can only defeat the Resistance by understanding its three primary strategies and applying appropriate countermeasures. Strategy #1: Fear. The typical response to this strategy is procrastination. The countermeasure is to START. Strategy #2: Uncertainty. The typical response is distraction. The countermeasure is to FOCUS. Strategy #3: Doubt. This usually occurs at the end of a project, and the typical response is to quit and leave the work unfinished. The countermeasure is to FINISH.

Blog post by Jeff Cobb, February 2011, Tagoras site, on adults' self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions and how this is as odds with their frequent relapse into their K-12 expectations/habits/behaviors in adult learning situations. Explanation of Malcolm Knowles's concepts of the Adult Learner: 1. Adults need to know why they need to learn. 2. Adults have a self-concept of being responsible for their own decisions - they have a psychological need to be seen by others as capable of self-direction. 3. Experience is often the best foundation for adult learning activities - often the "richest resources for learning reside in the adult learners themselves." [66] 4. Adults tend to be most interested in learning that has immediate relevance to their jobs or personal lives. 5. Adult learners tend to be life-centered (or task-centered, or problem-centered) rather than subject or content-centered. 6. Adults are typically more responsive to internal motivators (job satisfaction, self esteem, quality of life, etc.) than external motivators (promotions, higher salaries, etc.). Excerpt on how online learning environments are not always recognized as such and how facilitation of learning networks is critical: "Finally - something I have been arguing in one way or another for years - the problematic side of "self-concept" pretty much flies out the window if you remove the obvious, traditional labels like "seminar" or "Webinar." This is a key reason why social networks are so powerful as learning environments - people tend not to consciously acknowledge them as such even though learning is typically the key social object in any professional community that survives and thrives over time. Educators must recognize this and learn to facilitate learning within networks if they want to truly lead learning in their fields and industries."

Karen Lawson Consulting writing for Edward Lowe foundation identifies three elements of delegating: giving someone a responsibility that's not part of their job description but yours, authority, and accountability

taking responsibility for your own learning

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

Mattel is using AI to turn Barbie into a young girl's friend. Hello Barbie is the new incantation of the doll that appeals to 3 - 10 year old girls. Hello Barbie can react to what a young girl is saying to her, and is programmed with thousands of responses. Unlike the toys that had pull strings, Hello Barbie transmits via wifi so the girl's voice is read and then sends Barbie a response to the keywords in the voice data within a second. Hello Barbie has thicker thighs to accommodate the batteries necessary for all this. Interesting research on girls who play with Barbie have lower self esteem than those who do not, and feel they have to be think, have large breasts, and be blond and blue eyed. Scary!

Article published 10/3/12 in Medical Economics by Brandon Glenn. "Nearly one-fourth of physicians use social media on a daily basis to scan or explore medical information, according to a recently published study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research. The researchers behind the study set out to examine physicians' level of social media usage for the purpose of exchanging advice, ideas, reports, and scientific discoveries with other physicians. The study was based on emailed survey responses from 485 primary care physicians (PCPs) and oncologists, and it had a response rate of 28%. They found that, whereas just 24% of physicians use social media to "scan or explore" on a daily basis for those reasons, that number jumps to 61% when measured on a weekly basis. Physicians who use social media to "contribute," rather than merely scan information, stood at 14% daily and 46% weekly. "

blog post by Natalia Castaneda, 8/28/14, at Leadership Learning Community. Good reminder of how to take strategic plan and use it as a guide to implement. "1.View planning as an ongoing process It may be that you have to focus on the process first, trying to see what is the best way to implement an agile strategic planning process in your unique context Set 90 day goals, to keep the process dynamic 2.Keep it simple: "Simplicity allows people to act"[2] The plan should have three main components: identity (organizational vision, mission and values), goals (strategies and goals), and implementation (the actual plan) In terms of the implementation, it is helpful to think about not only the team members who will be implementing a given task, but also a 'champion' who is basically a project manager who is responsible for ensuring that the task gets completed 3.Create accountability among the organization's leadership team Organizational leaders should make strategic planning part of their responsibilities and develop accountability systems to ensure that the process is running well"

Personalized Learning Blog Love the responsibility vs accountability pyramid and the description of how they define the process of personalized learning system (PLS) vs. a PLP.

Harold Jarche continues to rock my world! October 21, 2013 How do we keep an informed citizenry when we are already choosing TV news sources that affirm our existing points of view? His post began to worry me until I saw that it was ultimately a plug for his PKM workshop. Excerpt: With the consolidation of web media companies, where many, and soon, most of us will be getting our information, it will be increasingly important to build diversity into our own personal and professional learning networks. This may get difficult as more mainstream sites amalgamate their feeds and sources into something similar to Googlezon. Therefore, in this emerging network era, we will need to connect to other people, not centralized information sources, for our own sense-making. Diversity of people in our networks will ensure diversity of thought. This is something that even web media companies cannot control, as long as we maintain control over who we connect to.

wonderful article on differences between networking, coordinating, cooperating, and collaborating drawn from work of Arthur Himmelman.  They add up:  exchange information, alter activities, share resources, enhance capacity for each player. 

blog by Dave Kerpen, January 28, 2013, that came to me via Linkedin in my daily mail on 11 simple concepts to become a better leader. Offers a pyramid of traits/behaviors starting with listening, storytelling, passion, and team playing as the foundation, surprise and delight, responsiveness, and simplicity on the second tier, authenticity/transparency and adaptability on the third tier, gratefulness on the fourth tier, and Golden Rule for treating others as you like to be treated at the top..

Post in WP discussion forum on how unhelpful so-called help discussion forums really are. Excerpt: "I signed up for WP AT Godaddy,com and have the same question, so I have to come here and do whatever I can understand of what i'm told. my universal experience with forums like this - here at WP and at the forums which serve as the ONLY assistance for non-paying users of third party design businesses -is that genuinely inexperienced people are not-so-subtly encourage to self-select out. people who need help make it very clear that they are really inexperienced, beg for step-by-step directions and get responses they cannot decipher or use. And if they have the temerity to say so, well, here's the first forum i clicked under this topic: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/email-set-up-on-wordpress-site?replies=3 the forum was simply shut down. lol? I don't understand why experienced users who know how to do things bother to make such replies. Is there some club somewhere where such things are on display for the amusement of our betters? Because unintentionally or not, it seems gratuitously mean. "

"The convenience of having a computer in our pocket 24/7 has radically changed how we interact with the world, and the grand experiment is changing how we feel about ourselves and others. Perhaps it's time for us to start using technology more responsibly; not as a pacifier, but as a way to actually better ourselves." cartoons about technology

Letter to the editor in response to a NYTimes article by Bill Keller that touts the benefits of online learning, and the need to adapt to new technologies, not just teach the same way and put it online.

Good argument for online learning and the use of new teaching methods when using technology.

An interesting assessment of how stage fright was picked up and reported in thousands of tweets elevating a single appearance into an epic disastrous event, and how absence from Twitter by the presenter, compounded the error. If anyone thinks that social media can be ignored, they need to read this blog post. Love the quote below from Chris Taylor about how the communications game has changed: It's Twitter, the Internet's first responder, that is primarily responsible for changing the laws of media physics. There are just too many witty things to be said in the space of 140 characters, especially with a moment as shadenfreude-filled as this. Thousands got the Bay-bashing bug, and I certainly wasn't immune. (Hey, it's not every day that a parody of that Aerosmith tune from Armageddon pops up complete in your head.)

Once again, Jarche comes through for me. Tuesday, January 14, 2014 "The keys to motivation at work are for each person to have a sense of Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. This is a network management responsibility." Could we do a play on RAMP-R-----Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose in the Studio? Another excerpt that I buy to a point--I don't think networks are the new companies but short of that, I agree with his premise: Most management practices today still focus on 20th century models, such as Henry Fayol's six functions of management [look familiar?]. forecasting planning organizing commanding coordinating controlling I heard these same functions discussed by a workplace issues consultant on the radio as recently as yesterday morning. Notice that there is no function for enhancing serendipity, or increasing innovation, or inspiring people. The core of management practice today has not changed since the days of Fayol, who died ninety years ago. "But the new reality is that networks are the new companies. The company no longer offers the stability it once did as innovative disruption comes from all corners. Economic value is getting redistributed to creative workers and then diffused through networks. Knowledge networks differ from company hierarchies. One major difference is that cooperation, not collaboration, is the optimal behaviour in a knowledge network. In networks, cooperation trumps collaboration."

Linda Stone's blog, April 20, 2012. Runs something called The Attention Project. New terms: conscious computing, email and screen apnea, continuous partial attention Excerpt: "Thirty years ago, personal computing technologies created a revolution in personal productivity, supporting a value on self-expression, output and efficiency. The personal communications technology era that followed the era of personal productivity amplified accessibility and responsiveness. Personal technologies have served us well as prosthetics for the mind, in service of thinking and doing. Our focus has been on technologies as prosthetics for the mind, and human-as-machine style productivity. This has led to burn-out, poor health, poor sleep, and what I call email apnea or screen apnea. We wonder where our attention has gone. Turns out, it's right where we left it - with our ability to breathe fully. We can use personal technologies that are prosthetics for our beings, to enhance our lives. I call this Conscious Computing. We can use technology to help enable Conscious Computing, or we can find it on our own, through attending to how we feel. For advice from a musician on how to do Conscious Computing, I interviewed the organist, Cameron Carpenter. Conscious Computing with the help of passive, ambient, non-invasive Heart Rate Variability (HRV) technology is poised to take off over the next few years. It has the potential to help all of us learn the skills that musicians, athletes and dancers have, that immunizes them from email apnea."

Excellent Blog post by Chris Munch, July 11, 2013 on stopping his dopamine addiction with graphic mainlining-technology image. Excerpt I have an addiction that cost at least 18 months of my life… This was not an addiction with drugs or alcohol, and in-comparison the 'high' was mundane, just avoiding life and responsibility. Months went by, lost to an addictive and bitter procrastination. Nobody was worried, on the surface I looked busy and hard working, yet around me life passed me by while I was infused in a dopamine haze. I'm a recovering addict to email, Skype, Facebook and so many little fun distractions online. My First Step to Recovery I lost about 1.5yrs of my life to email and chat. And then one day I read something which said turn off all auto-checking of email and IM notifications so that you won't get disturbed when you have work to do. I felt pretty dumb having spent the last couple of years doing the opposite, allowing myself to be constantly interrupted. After I made that little change things began to get better. That's when I realized I had an addiction. Even without the auto-alerts I found myself constantly being drawn in to see the latest unimportant message I had received.