30-Day Book Blog Challenge - Closing Thoughts

One of the TO DO items I came up with during this challenge was to close the series with a map of key insights.  Presumably something interesting might come out of the exercise and I should try to capture it.  The map below is the result.  You will need to click on it to open it in a separate window to read it.

Map # 26 - Key Insights from a 30-Day Challenge

[ See the Insight Map Collection ]

And a final insight not included in the map......

The combined TO DO list has 53 items, which I have now prioritized.  More than half of these items will be addressed in the coming two months (August-September).  Some items on the list are highly specific and can be closed easily.  Others require acquiring a new habit, or establishing a new routine and demand a different approach. Setting up a 30-day challenge which forces me to give daily attention to one specific practice is one possible way of establishing a new routine or habit. Perhaps I could come up with a challenge every other month.

Insight Mapping 201 - Mapping for Creatives

Insight Mapping 101 is doing well with 55+ students.  To be honest, the target was 25 students in the first two weeks, so having doubled that, I am wondering if 25 wasn't a very low threshold.

I'm working on the second class now, which is going to be a little more advanced and tackling three different insight maps.  Since Skillshare is a platform primary designed to allow creative types to share their knowledge and learn, I've decided to develop something that is going to help all of them, whether they are students, teachers, or both: Insight Mapping 201: Mapping for Creatives.

Here's the outline for the class:

Outline for Insight Mapping 201; Mapping for Creatives

Key insight from the process of creating Insight Mapping 101:  There has to be an easier way to put the videos together and a better way to manage the audio stream.

Yes!  The learning curve is steep at this point, so the leaps ahead are quite interesting.  Instead of creating "slides" which I can then narrate, I am creating each video lesson using the concept mapping tool's presenter mode and recording all of it as a screencast. After about 8 hours of working with the presenter tool, I think I know what I'm doing.  Each slide in presenter mode is a "view" that can be used the same way a step in animation can be used in PowerPoint.  Individual presentations (a set of related animations) can be easily hyperlinked and they will transition automatically in presentation view.  I had no idea this was possible until I tried.

Here's what it looks like for the introduction video.

Coming up

• Insight Mapping 101: Workshop when I reach 75 students
• Insight Mapping 201: Launch early March 2016

Anatomy of Aha! Moments

I have come to define a aha! moment as an insight, a moment during which you suddenly realize something, you make a connection between something you knew and something new.  The key, as in any learning,isthat it is new to you.  A aha! moment is a personal insight.

After much consideration and one key aha! moment, I've decided to keep this blog going primarily as a reflection of work-in-progress or a venue for working out loud.  Except that these expressions, with the word "work" in them, do not really apply to what I am doing here.  I shall call it "learning in progress" and "learning out loud."

This particular decision came slowly but was consolidated as a result of reading a LinkedIn post about whether it was better to post on LinkedIn vs. a company blog. While technically,this is now a company blog (Fillip Consulting,LLC), the company is me and it will likely always be a "personal blog" in that sense.  As a result of some reflection based on that LinkedIn post, I realized that I could and probably should keep this blog for more regular, somewhat half-baked insights and ideas, and if/when I come up with something worth more attention,I could always post it on LinkedIn in or attempt guest blogging.  There is a great deal of value to half-baked insights and ideas. Capture them somewhere!  You never know what other half-baked insight will collide with them and inspire you.

Let's consolidate this approach by sharing a couple of aha! moments from yesterday:

To Study and to Learn
The question "How do you study?" is not the same as "How do you learn?"  It is not the same for two reasons:  1) you can study efficiently for a test and forget almost everything soon thereafter, resulting in very little long-term learning.  That's what cramming is all about; 2) When we talk about lifelong learning, or workplace learning, informal learning, or learning by doing, we are not talking about "studying", we are talking about a more organic form of learning [I'm not sure "organic" is the right word here]. It is that form of learning I am most interest in understanding better. 

Paradox of Knowing

I am most inclined to write about whatever it is that I am currently exploring and learning about.  It's much more exciting. The neurons are connecting.  I can almost feel the electricity.  When I try to write about things I (think I) know well, it feels boring and totally uninteresting.  Mature connections in the brain don't feel that exciting.  So,the excitement comes from learning,not knowing.  The good news is that the more you know the more you can connect new things to that knowledge.  The more you know the more you can learn.