Learning How to Learn

I never did complete the course "learning how to learn", but they have consistently, and persistently send me info.
It's not all stuff I care about, but some is.

Our top book this month is Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives, by Tim Harford. We love this book, which speaks to the extraordinary power of serendipity and seeming sloppiness. One of our favorite writers, Adam Grant, summed Messy up this way: “Utterly fascinating. Tim Harford shows that if you want to be creative and resilient, you need a little more disorder in your world.” Adam’s own terrific complementary book is Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World.

Barb at DevLearn

Barb will be at one of her favorite conferences—DevLearn, in Las Vegas, on November 14-16th. Unlike many more academically-focused conferences, DevLearn is eminently practical and has marvelous sessions and pre-conference workshops. Along with giving her own talk (check out the 45 second video), Barb will be taking the pre-conference workshops on the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite and on Mastering the Visualization of Storyboarding for eLearning. We must always keep learning, after all!

Help in discovering “Super-learners” Scott Young is an intrepid “Marco Polo of Learning.” (We featured him in the bonus interview at the end of week 2 of Learning How to Learn). Scott is looking for superlearners—people who have completed, interesting, aggressive self-education projects in the past. If you fall into this category, please email Scott at personal@scotthyoung.com.

Books and More Books

Always open to recommendations.  I've read most of the books on this list, but the "Celestine Prophecy"?  That's a new one.  And Ayn Rand?? Please...

How to talk and think about your project

This is from Seth Godin's blog.  I love these types of lists that make you think, and I've found they take much more time than what we want to allot to them.

How to talk about your project

Not in a marketing sense, but strategically, to yourself, your partners, your coaches, your investors:
What is it for? When someone hires your product or service, what are they hiring it to do?
Who (or what) are you trying to change by doing this work? From what to what?
How will you know if it's working?
What does it remind me of? Are there parallels, similar projects, things like this that have come before?
What's the difficult part?
How much of your time and focus are you spending on the difficult part?
What part that isn't under your control has to happen for this to work? (Do you need to be lucky?)
How much (time and money) is it going to take to find out if you've got a shot at this working out?
What assets do you already own that you'll be able to leverage?
What assets do you need to acquire?
After the project launches, what new assets will you now own?
From which people will you need help? Do they have a track record of helping people like you?
Is it worth it?
Successful project organizers are delighted to engage in a conversation about all of these questions. If you're hiding from them, it's time to find out why.

Ways to manage stress

There are a few in this list that were new to me.  I wasn't aware that coffee actually might help stress(?!)  Another reason to like my favorite vice.
I also like the reminder to see tasks and projects as a game.

Habits for 2016

Good tips

design inspiration from Houzz

http://www.nanettewong.com/portfolio_page/houzz-tour-taylor-hoff/
The basic tidiness and functionality really appeal.