Today I'm dusting off the board to show how much has been accomplished so far in the sprint.
There's a lot more blue than previous sprints showing a lot more projects are ongoing but not necessarily completed.
From the business and career development I felt accomplishment from completing the fiction book and updating my CV whilst slowly increasing the amount of positive business audio content. Challenges so far include setting the time aside to complete tasks which require focus and dedication. Learning to code with Khan Academy is progressing at a steady rate when I get to do it however I'm currently struggling to find dedicated hours I can carve out for myself to progress.
Headspace app is still proving an issue, again for similar reasons, I prefer to do it in the evening but just end up falling asleep, I plan to make a concerted effort to complete this in the morning.
Fitness is rolling along and although I am not losing a significant amount of weight I am showing signs of improvement and have interesting plans going ahead into next sprint.
I've officially paid my Toastmasters membership and currently awaiting to see when I can deliver my first speech which I have already started to draft.
Hopefully I'll make more progress to complete everything in this sprint up to a point I'm happy with. The countdown is on...
As part of this sprint I've been watching some TED talks. For those that don't know what TED talks are, they are short talks, often no longer than 20 minutes where an expert in a field discusses an idea in an accessible and engaging way. The talks can be powerful, funny and interesting, taking the individual on a journey.
For this sprint I decided to watch 5 TED life hacks.
Instead of exhaustively documenting the talks in a boring and unengaging way, I thought the best way to share would be embedding the talks and then pulling some interesting resources to accompany them.
1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
"This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that
their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see
how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured
even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to
choices they had made, or not made. Health brings a freedom very few
realise, until they no longer have it."
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
"This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their
children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of
this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the
female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed
deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a
work existence."
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.
"Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with
others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never
became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses
relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
"Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends
until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them
down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let
golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets
about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved.
Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the
end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns
and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their
emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them
pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when
deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their
life again."
Happiness inspires productivity! Work should promote a cohesive and positive culture, and being happy in life will lead to a more successful and fulfilling career.
The 'memory palace' and memory journey is not particularly life changing or earth shattering, as many students employ this practice to learn. However, this talk is engaging and demonstrative of how a simple idea can be used to accomplish a difficult task. Narratives are powerful learning devices!
How to start a movement? Look a bit like a weirdo but have followers! As soon as there are early adopters, you aren't a weirdo anymore. I also enjoy how this talk denounces the importance of leaders at some point, community is key.
Choice can be crippling. Why not offer less choices, but make them better? Fantastic qualitative analysis of overwhelming quantitative choices. Focussing on engagement and celebrating differences as opposed to splitting hairs.
Cut!
Concretize!
Categorise!
Condition!
I've been reading Happiness by Design: Finding Pleasure and Purpose in Everyday Life, by Paul Dolan.
This book was recommended to me by a coworker and has started some interesting questions for me, in essence; what is happiness? How can happiness be measured? How can I improve my own happiness over time?
Dolan's definition of happiness is that of 'experiences of pleasure and purpose over time.' This sets up an interesting proposition, if happiness can be measured in two simple ways, how can I improve my happiness in both quantitative and qualitative ways?
Reviewing the potential pleasure and purpose happiness dichotomy I have realised that recently I have focussed primarily on purpose as opposed to pleasure and this has in effect had a potentially negative impact on me.
I constantly strive to do all I can and be as productive as possible, getting all work done thatI can, prioritising my minutes based on what I value as productive/purposeful as opposed to what is pleasurable. I need to take more time to look at pleasure more, to take the time to just relax and take pleasure from life as opposed to trying to find purpose in everything, justifyingmy actions.
As I continue to read this book I hope to develop a framework for happiness and how I can improve my general wellbeing. 'But AT,' you cry,'in the paragraph above, you tell yourself to not be a paranoid overly obsessive idiot and to take time enjoying yourself with mindless fun'. And to that I say, 'Yeah, but this isn't going to happen overnight'.
Dolan argues that we are guided by the conscious and the unconscious, with many actions planned by the unconscious mind, essentially you're on a conditioned autopilot. So many things in life we do become second nature to us, that the the individual consciousness no longer pays attention. Think about when you move something in your house, say you decide instead of just leaving your keys on the table next to the door, you decide to store them in a cupboard for safety, how many times do you imagine you'll check the table for your keys before heading out?
Behaviours becomes automatic and must be changed through processes. With this in mind I am planning to actively take a greater effort in structuring my happiness.
Since I've attended three Toastmasters meetings as an official guest, I now have to pay to play. You get three official visits as an individual to a Toastmaster group before you have to officially join.
From winning two 'Table Topic' sessions I was uncertain whether I needed to do this, riding a high of confidence following my previous sessions was I already a competent speaker? Potentially. However I need to understand how to speak better in public and slay my nervousness.
So, I've decided to officially join the Toastmasters group and work through their course to become a competent communicator. One day that ribbon will be mine!
So what lies ahead for me when I embark on this Toastmaster journey?
'Toastmasters International's Competent Communication contains
10 speech projects each focusing on a specific area, such as organizing
your speech and using body language. An evaluator offers feedback on
each of your speeches, helping you to improve. Earn a Competent
Communicator award by completing all the speech projects in Competent Communication.'
Speech 1: The Ice Breaker — The first speech of the Toastmasters program is about introducing yourself to your peers, providing a benchmark for your current skill level, and standing and speaking without falling over.
Speech 2: Organize Your Speech — Introduces the basic concepts of organizing a speech around a speech outline.
Speech 3: Get to the Point — Clearly state your speech goal, and make sure that every element of your speech focuses on that goal.
Speech 4: How to Say It — Examines word choice, sentence structure, and rhetorical devices.
Speech 5: Your Body Speaks — Shows how to complement words with posture, stance, gestures, facial expressions, and eye contact.
Speech 6: Vocal Variety — Guides you to add life to your voice with variations in pitch, pace, power, and pauses.
Speech 7: Research Your Topic — Addresses the importance of backing up your arguments with evidence, and touches on the types of evidence to use.
Speech 8: Get Comfortable With Visual Aids — Examines the use of slides, transparencies, flip charts, whiteboards, or props.
Speech 9: Persuade With Power — Discusses audience analysis and the different forms of persuasion available to a speaker.
Speech 10: Inspire Your Audience — The last of ten speeches, this project challenges the speaker to draw all their skills together to deliver a powerful inspirational message.
So on the day I'm writing this I turn 27. I have a complicated relationship with birthdays, as I'm often so passive and wanting to please people I really don't like the idea of people making a fuss of me. I do not like being the centre of attention and cower in the spotlight, so a day where people ask me what I'd like for a gift, I kind of dread. Sing me 'Happy Birthday' and I'll run and hide. I have literally done that in a previous job. On the other hand I look at it as a chance to reflect which can often make me feel low as I feel low if I don't feel that I've achieved in the past year.
As previously discussed, my inner voice is not the most pleasant. I hold myself to incredibly high if not impossible standards and when I don't reach them, I'll be gutted and think myself into a pit.
This year I felt a little down but then thought, what can I achieve with this framework and a positive outlook and perception?
Then I remembered the 27 club.
The 27 club is a group of celebrities, primarily musicians who have died at the age of 27, burning out rather than fading away. Usually the cause of death involves drugs and the intense lifestyle of a rock god. I am in no danger of going the way of the 27 club this year, however it does inspire as to what a person can do, no matter how young.
Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are all members of the 27 club, think about their back catalogues for a moment. They gave all that they could give and have this influence, reverence and relevance long after their deaths. What could they have done give a few short more years?
With this in mind I wonder what I could accomplish with the focus they had.
This year I will be more aspirational. I will seriously consider and potentially start my own business.
For this post I thought I'd wrap up my Thinking Digital 2015 experience in one handy post, with links, top takeaways and all that jazz.I was able to listen to some thought leaders in the digital landscape. Speakers included professors on machine learning, hacktivists, startups and even a Technical Director from Pixar.
Whilst I could exhaustively list off everything I learned at the conference it'd likely be a very long list of nerdy things that may not make for the most interesting blog post. So as a happy alternative I'll leave the link to the sessions which you can view in full, including the Reframed.tv comments.
There is a serious boom in the tech market and it's only going to continue to grow; whilst Moore's law may be proving true at the moment, physics say that advancement has to slow from it's current rate.
Digital solutions are continuing to replace tasks undertaken by people - automation is going to continually improve efficiency
An unforeseen impact of an automated future is the impact on the job market - if we all live in a digital world automated by machines, how will people earn a living?
The digital future ran by machines may not necessarily be what we imagined from 'The Jetsons'.
Robots will be part of our daily life, but then again they already are. A Roomba for all intents and purpose is a vacuum robot, it is capable of doing one task, automatically, and to a high standard. Whilst the Roomba is a robot that can 'think' it is not able to think of anything other than the task it was designed for.
The Roomba is not going to make you a cup of coffee, nor is it going to try to kill you whilst you sleep.
Our robotic and automated future will consist of many machines that can do a limited set of jobs, but do them quickly and to a high standard
Agile principles are spreading:
Most speakers alluded to agile development without mentioning the process outright
The idea of iterative development of services is exciting to many as they can interact with customers during the process to help them build a product consumers actually want
If you build a product, are you sure your targeted customer wants it? If they do, does your vision match their needs?
It is better to find out what your customer requires and use their needs to develop a product throughout the development process as opposed to finishing a masterpiece that nobody wants.
Consistent user testing allows creators to understand their choices, whilst not everyone can test, everybody should be invested in the outcomes of the research
The Government Digital Service envisages a future where a service becomes a platform unto itself with functional services.
Boring is awesome:
Linked to the agile principles, boring is awesome and should be a basic goal for everyone. When you think about what boring is; is it actually a bad thing?
Boring things work exactly how you think they do
Boring things are reliable
Boring things have no nasty surprises
Boring things are accessible
Boring things have an easy point of entry
Boring caters for an essential need
We could make a really cool interesting product that was half functional and really complex, but would that suit our customer?
I’d rather have a functional Nokia 3310 than a faulty Blackberry, would you?
Just because something is boring does not mean it can’t become more interesting and exciting down the line,
STEM education is going to explode:
STEM is growing at a fantastic rate within schools with coding being pushed front and centre combined with the Internet of Things.
A problem that has previously stunted the growth of coding in schools is finding a method to truly engage students and teachers. Showing physical changes such as lights changing colour, robots moving or even live coding music can help engage and motivate everyone to code.
STEM education is going to become more diverse with teachers and students gaining access to new tools and free open source programmes to encourage to get involved in coding.
With this in mind it is clear that ed tech companies may need to review their approach to STEM assessment and cater for the new classroom.
Play with everything:
If you can do it, why not?
In direct contradiction to what I said earlier, maybe boring isn’t so good. Maybe we should play with everything and be open to experimenting with concepts, tools and theories to see things in new ways. For example, data visualisation can be shown in incredible ways if we just separate ourselves from conventions.
3D printed jewellery of the weather forecast?
Facebook interactions charted and interpreted into a hopscotch board
Small playful changes help you stand out from the crowd.
Basic experimental tweaks to UX can engage a customer competitors don’t
A hidden animated owl on a website added mystery and kept user engagement to ensure visitors stayed on that webpage
Subverting expectations whilst meeting all criteria to provide a service can unlock a new engaged and loyal customer base.
Google’s doodles, how many times do you click on a doodle to learn something about a subject you know nothing about
#LJTunes mashes together songs with contrasting genres to bring new music to life
Whilst you can play with products, expectations and services, don’t forget to have fun within your teams. A positive competitive atmosphere allows individuals to excel.
A key point to remember is to try and enjoy what you do as it will be a good tool to get others to buy in. Just do it, and if it doesn’t work try something else.
So there we go; an awesome, inspiring and intelligent conference highlighting how individuals will interact in the future. Tech is spreading but the principles behind the growth remain familiar:
