Get your Identity out of it

Get your "I"dentity out of it when you want to make a change.  I fully believe in the concept of this, but also realize that it is the essence of major spiritual practices (Buddhism, Jesuits) so assume it's not all that easy to do.

And changing these actions is as simple as… changing your actions. One action at a time. Forget labeling it. Forget social accountability (in fact, research has found that sharing goals with others can often backfire). Forget making a big hoo-ha-ha about who you are or what you are or what the fucking Pope thinks about you.

Because he doesn’t. And neither do most of the rest of us. And neither do you, for that matter. Your identity is this made up thing that you’re emotionally attached to. It’s a mirage in the desert. A ketchup bottle in an empty fridge. And the quickest way to change yourself is to realize that there’s no real self to change.

Tidying in a more Maximalist Interior

Another British powerhouse
Lots of tips for tidying and organizing.

Heuman’s mantra is to streamline, streamline, streamline. The only way to stem the tide of detritus, she says, is to have constant clear outs. She instigates fortnightly office “streamlining sessions,” continually sorting through her own papers and questioning her team about the buildup of boxes or packages.

Organization, lists, and keeping track of ideas

Anya Hindmarch  
I find these British women entrepreneurs incredibly inspiring.  And she has 5 kids.  I'm sure there's a back story with some craziness, but I think we can all learn something from women like this.

“Brains are brilliant at having ideas but not holding them, so having systems in place is the key to creativity for me,” she says. “I have my best ideas at a clean table.”

House redo

Posting here for inspiration

Virtues of Being a Polymath

Amazing how you can not see something in front of your own nose.  I've tried to curb my own interest in lots of different things because "jack of all trades, master of none."  And then recently from Tony Robbins who insists one can only be good at maybe two areas in life, maybe three.  AND of course the current reverence for geeks and nerds who focus intensely and then make a millions of dollars.
I just love this treatise on the virtues of being a polymath.  I feel like I've been set free.

Quote on being memorable

Now, I don't have the source.  Ben Franklin?
"If you will not be forgotten after you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing."

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.