Learning important things is not easy; learning important things requires effort; learning important things is ultimately worth the effort since doing so leads the learner-practitioner to not only acquire knowledge and skills, but also to tap a vein of meaning that can be self-reinforcing over time.
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If you want to raise someone’s understanding, you have to find ways to spread the learning over time. You can handle some of that seeding during class and some of it with an effective homework instrument; then, you can return to the understandings that matter in later assignments, later homework. Layer after layer after layer.
Or like baking bread, baking anything, you have to expose the ingredients to heat over a period of time. "As immediacy moves from a nice-to-have to a need-to-have, from a distant frequency of leadership to a core dimension, the leader doesn’t have to know everything about it or even how to leverage it him or herself . . . but knowing that it is possible, and knowing how to ask questions around it or promote it – or pay for it – is a necessary instinct."
"Increasingly, many of us live and work like this: utterly connected and increasingly fluid as a result. But we do not often slow down to describe how we work like this . . . or to tease out the implications.
If you are focused on certain outcomes, you can leverage the immediacy available to you as you travel, as you work in your office or home, and even as you play. Producing genuine, original product – of thought, of thinking, in writing, on stage, in classrooms – basically requires such a shift. In our increasingly networked world, interruptions in momentum, or a failure of context to generate the right resources at the right time, erode excellence. Immediacy, properly channeled, heightens it." "Learning important things is not easy; learning important things requires effort; learning important things is ultimately worth the effort since doing so leads the learner-practitioner to not only acquire knowledge and skills, but also to tap a vein of meaning that can be self-reinforcing over time."
Yesterday, as I was just sitting down and getting ready to start a call with one colleague, I noticed that a Slack message had come in from another colleague a little earlier. That message was an important one and would certainly require some discussion. I could have tried to engage in a text message exchange on Slack while also having the call with the other colleague, but that would not have served anyone well. I asked the colleague on the call for a few moments while I sent a response message in Slack. I simply asked the person who had messaged me if there was a time later in the morning when we could connect. When it became time to give the surprise issue my full attention, I felt that conversing over text-based chat was not going to be suitable given the topic, and a voice call or video chat could also leave possibilities for misunderstanding. We needed to reach mutual understanding rather quickly. Using a collaborative whiteboard (I used the Explain Everything Slack integration) with voice chat allowed us to talk through the issue while also brainstorming possible solutions.
"There is a saying in the teaching profession: whoever is working the hardest is learning the most. Too often, it’s the teacher.
If you don’t want people to be passive “on the job,” then you cannot allow them to be passive during the training for the job." "Move as the line moves – a formula for happiness and success? Not quite. But it won’t hurt to think about what computers are good at and what humans are good at, make peace with the fact that the line in the sand will constantly shift in the years to come, and then work to make sure that the human part of yourself, your team, your company, even your family, shows up – by default – when it’s going to make a difference for a relationship or transaction."
On a seesaw, you can’t always control the ride. The power shifts back and forth, depending on when you’re on the bottom, with your feet firmly on the ground. And if you’re the kind of person who jumps off the seesaw when you’re on the bottom, in that power seat, then it’s very possible that, after a while, no one on the playground will want to be your seesaw partner. This is play, yes, but serious play. You burn your trust and you pay the price. Playground rules – forever. There is a saying in the teaching profession: whoever is working the hardest is learning the most. Too often, it’s the teacher. If you don’t want people to be passive “on the job,” then you cannot allow them to be passive during the training for the job.
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