I’ve started to publish a few of my posts on LinkedIn as well as here on my blog.
Today I posted an article titled Google Leads The Way regarding Google’s recent announcement that they will no longer use college degrees as a screening requirement for their job candidates.
Check it out and let me know your thoughts, either here or on LinkedIn.
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I live in San Francisco where there is currently a culture war in full swing between those who have been labeled economically “wealthy” and “privileged” and those who have been labeled economically challenged. This has come about due to quickly escalating housing prices, neighborhood demographic changes, and other factors.
My more left or progressive friends, many of whom relate to the economically challenged category, decry the changes to our city and often assign the blame directly on those they have labeled wealthy and privileged. On some level this rings true, but today I had an experience that made me rethink all of that.
Today I was chatting with a friend who works with incredibly poor people including those in third-world countries where poverty is beyond what most in the U.S. can even fathom. Against the backdrop of that conversation, I saw things in a new light.
I walked around in my neighborhood today and bumped into many friends who place themselves squarely in the economically challenged category, many of whom are rather vocal in their opposition to the local tech industry’s influence and other people they see as wealthy and changing the city they love. Then I noticed a few things.
These friends were all carrying iPhones or the latest Android phones. Many were carrying laptops. Most were dressed rather well. A few had in their hands lattes and other costlier coffee drinks. One mentioned buying tickets to a show and spending $90 for each on them. One had just come from his $25 haircut. Another had just booked a cruise with a friend. None of this appeared to represent anything approaching poverty or anything remotely close to economically challenged.
In many (most?) parts of the world, these people would be considered incredibly wealthy and privileged. And relatively, they are. People in impoverished countries would be shocked that my friends are calling others wealthy when they themselves appear to be quite wealthy too when looked at through the lens of deep and entrenched poverty.
I say this to give the local conversation some perspective. Yes, I know the issues are complex. Yes, I know each side has an argument to be made. Yes, I know that those of us in countries with robust economies and opportunities will always be seen as wealthy as compared to many others. But still, I think it’s worth noting that in the grand view of the world’s population, most of my friends in San Francisco would be seen as wealthy, even the most left and progressive of friends.. Maybe this observation will cause all of us, myself included, to look at the disparities in wealth and how that changes neighborhoods and cities from a broader perspective, accepting that such shifts are far more complex than simply pointing fingers at who we perceive as wealthy.
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I have been a vehement proponent of introspection for most of my adult life. As Socrates first espoused, I’ve always considered introspection, looking inward, the path to a good and wise life. The “know thyself” adage is something to which I’ve always aspired. And I still do.
In the RSA Animate video, The Power of Outrospection, Roman Krznaric flips the introspection directive on its head and encourages a shift to a new age of outrospection for the 21st century to replace, or at least supplement, the age of introspection that has been so popular during the 20th century. Outrospection encourages looking outward to other people’s lives, cultures and world views to better understand ourselves.
Krznaric considers the ultimate art form for the age of outrospection to be empathy. Along the road to understanding ourselves through outrospection we hopefully develop a deeper sense of empathy. Empathy has been a popular concept in recent years and the need for empathy has been touted by many social thought leaders such as President Barack Obama as well as others such as marketers and research scientists.
For Krznaric, empathy isn’t just something that expands your moral universe, but it can indeed be the foundation for a philosophy of life. Empathy has the power to make you a more creative thinker, improve your relationships, and generally create the human bonds that make life worth living. Empathy can also bring about radical social change and bring about a revolution of human relationships.
Watch the video for a beautifully concise explanation of why Krznaric believes so strongly in the need for the age of outrospection and the development of deeper and broader empathic perspectives to make us better and the world a better place.
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Every so often I run across a spoken word piece that speaks to me. In this brilliant spoken word piece by Suli Breaks he tells it like it is regarding formal schooling’s squelching of intelligence, talent and dreams. I won’t tell you more. Just watch the video. It says it far better than I could here.
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“I’m a very organised and rational and linear thinker, and you have to stop all that to write a novel.” Hilary Mantel
Most of us were programmed early on starting with our very first day in school to think of learning as a linear process. In other words, the predetermined curriculum says first you learn this, then you learn this, then you learn this, and so on. Sometimes that is a fine way to learn things, but it is not the only way.
We are all innately curious and exploratory human beings. It’s built into our DNA that we quite naturally explore our world and learn as we explore. If you think about our more primitive ancestors and how they learned, it was not in a linear, planned fashion. Instead, they learned amid often tumultuous and challenging environments in which they had to react and adjust to the information they gathered along the way. In other words, they continually experienced something, decided if that was a good or bad thing, self-corrected if necessary, and tried something again until they got it right.
This is also why real-world experiences often teach us better than classroom-based instruction or other more formal methods of teaching. Real life situations engage that total immersion, self-correcting style of learning that’s an incredibly effective learning method. That is why things like apprenticeships are such great ways to learn something.
A modern variation of this learning approach is often termed reflective learning. Reflective learning is a kissing cousin of experiential learning. Reflective learning is the process by which you internally examine and explore an experience and the information inherent in that experience and that develops deeper meaning and context for the information learned. Through this approach to thinking deeply during your learning you are able to break information and experience down into its significant aspects, create meaningful links between theory and practice, improve your performance by using the results of your reflection to inform your future practice, and more deeply incorporate the learning by realizing the personal value of that learning. In short, reflective learning deepens and improves the learning experience.
So feel free to learn things in any order and manner that works best for you.
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I just finished reading Tyler Cowen’s interesting book, Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
The constant references to the game of chess are a bit too frequent (used as his metaphor throughout the book), but that’s nit picky compared to the brilliance of the content.
In addition to some of the obvious changes regarding the contemporary workforce, the underlying economy that supports the workforce is changing also. Some economists and trend pundits believe that the United States, and indeed the entire world, will see an adjustment to the very foundation of our economy in terms of wealth distribution and fewer jobs being created.
Cowen details why the widening gap between rich and poor means that from now on if you are not at the top, you’re at the bottom. What does he mean by that?
Based on his research and economics experience Cowen contends that the global labor market is quickly changing due to growth at both the high and low ends of the spectrum. Low wage job creation has been robust while jobs at the higher end are leveling off or retreating. Amid all this the number of American millionaires and billionaires continues to skyrocket.
Due to flourishing machine intelligence high earners are taking advantage of data analysis and achieving ever-better results. At the same time, low-wage earners who have not jumped on board the continuing learning bandwagon to make the most of these new technologies have poor employment prospects that will only get worse over time.
Cowen says that what was formerly considered a steady and secure life somewhere in the middle (the middle class as it’s often called), in other words “average,” is over. You will either be part of the workforce that continually learns and adapts to embrace and leverage new technologies and the new realities and do well economically, or you will be part of the workforce that does not embrace learning and rapid adaptation and will not do so well.
What does this mean for the skilled self-educator? In a world where there is going to be an ever increasing need to keep up with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in the job and career market, along with a shrinking number of jobs available, the self-educator has a huge advantage over anyone who relies primarily on traditional formal (classroom-based) learning to learn new things to compete and stay ahead.
Self-education will be the difference in having a fulfilling, meaningful and profitable work life as opposed to a mundane and low-paying employment future. I propose that using only formal schooling to keep up with such rapidly changing technologies, knowledge domains and skills will be cumbersome and ineffective for many workers who must learn and work in sync with the modern realities of our lives.
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Every so often I watch a TED Talk and it just knocks my socks off with how well done it is and how much it impacts me. This is one of those talks and I encourage you to watch it.
Jane McGonigal’s talk is remarkable and worth every second you might spend watching it. Want to live 10 years longer and be happier as you do? Her incredible way of showing us all how to do this is done with such mastery that I’m sure you will watch the video to its end. Enjoy.
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“Walking is the best possible exercise. Habituate yourself to walk very fast.” Thomas Jefferson
Research shows that people who exercise outperform more sedentary people in long-term memory, reasoning, attention and problem-solving tasks. And this makes a lot of sense. Human beings evolved over time as movers. We walked a lot. And as we walked around we learned. So it’s not surprising that our biology is wired to learn best when our bodies are in motion – in other words, exercising. The human brain ended up having the most powerful brains of any living creature under conditions where we were always moving.
I’m not talking about short-term exercise though. I’m talking about ongoing, regular exercise. Researchers discovered the benefits of exercise kicks in as early as four months into an exercise program. Engaging in some form of exercise exertion (aerobic exercise in particular) ends up providing us with many benefits, one of them being that we learn a lot better than if we don’t exercise. John Medina writes “A lifetime of exercise can result in a sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance, compared with those who are sedentary. Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, problem-solving, even so-called fluidintelligence tasks. These tasks test the ability to reason quickly and think abstractly, improvising off previously learned material in order to solve a new problem. Essentially, exercise improves a whole host of abilities prized in the classroom and at work.”
Such exercise need not be complicated. Exercise and fitness is one of my own big interests and I’m always advocating that people adopt the simplest exercise program that they’ll stick to that will reap the biggest benefits. When it comes to aerobic exercise, there is one truly ideal type of exercise I recommend – walking. Yes, simple walking. Brisk, fast-paced walking ideally. When researchers tested out the effects of exercise in the laboratory they discovered that a maximum effect is achieved with about 30 minutes of aerobic exercise done two to three times a week. They also discovered that if you add in some strength training exercises as well you get even more cognitive benefit.
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“Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.” Plato
In instructional design and learning theory circles there is a famous, if somewhat troubling, fact that has plagued educators and instructional designers for years. The person who first identified this troubling fact was Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who was a pioneer in studying memory and how memory ties to learning.
What Ebbinghaus discovered through his research is often referred to as the “forgetting curve.” In short, the forgetting curve demonstrated that students in a classroom tend to forget about 90 percent of what they learn in class within about 30 days. 90 percent, in just 30 days! Even worse, most of this forgetting occurs within the first few hours after class is over. So, that’s the bad news.
The good news is that Ebbinghaus also discovered that a student could improve the length of memory retention simply by repeating the information in timed intervals. And, logically, the more the repetition the more retention.
So what does this mean for the self-educator. Figure out ways you can repeat what it is you have learned regularly. This might mean repeatedly going over your notes, explaining to yourself out loud the information and concepts you have learned, telling others about what you have learned, creating your own flash cards you use periodically, repeating a particular skill over and over, and so on. Do whatever it takes to repeat, and repeat often.
As for when to begin repeating, I suggest you start immediately after you initially learn something. Why? Because research shows that thinking or talking about something immediately after it happens dramatically improves the retention of the information.
Always keep in mind that research shows that memory may not be fixed at the moment you actually learn it. However, if you utilize repetition and do such repetitions at regular intervals, you are much more likely to place that information in your brain in a more long-term form. Also, try to figure out ways to expose yourself to information and repeat it in smaller chunks rather than in huge streams. Optimal learning takes place when we gradually incorporate new information into our memory as opposed to trying to absorb it all in one fell swoop.
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In addition to some of the obvious changes regarding the contemporary workforce, the underlying economy that supports the workforce is changing also. Some economists and trend pundits believe that the United States, and indeed the entire world, will see an adjustment to the very foundation of our economy in terms of wealth distribution and fewer jobs being created.
What does this mean for the skilled self-educator? In a world where there is going to be an ever increasing need to keep up with the knowledge and skills necessary to compete in the job and career market, along with a shrinking number of jobs available, the self-educator has a huge advantage over anyone who relies primarily on traditional formal (classroom-based) learning to learn new things to compete and stay ahead.
Famed economist Tyler Cowen in his book, Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation
Tyler contends, based on his research and economics experience, that the global labor market is quickly changing due to growth at both the high and low ends of the spectrum. Low wage job creation has been robust while jobs at the higher end are leveling off or retreating. Amid all this the number of American millionaires and billionaires continues to skyrocket..
Due to what he terms “machine intelligence” (essentially computerization) high earners are taking advantage of data analysis and achieving ever-better results. At the same time, low-wage earners who have not jumped on board the continuing learning bandwagon to make the most of these new technologies have poor employment prospects that will only get worse over time.
Tyler says that what was formerly considered a steady and secure life somewhere in the middle (the middle class as it’s often called), in other words “average,” is over. You will either be part of the workforce that continually learns and adapts to embrace and leverage new technologies and the new realities and do well economically, or you will be part of the workforce that does not embrace learning and rapid adaptation and will not do so well.
Self-education will be the difference in having a fulfilling, meaningful and profitable work life as opposed to a mundane and low-paying employment future. I contend that using only formal schooling to keep up with such rapidly changing technologies, knowledge domains and skills will be cumbersome and ineffective for many workers who must learn and work simultaneously in sync with the modern realities of our lives.
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