How Do We Take the Guesswork out of Learning?

Popularity doesn’t equal impeccability. Gurus can be wrong. A post with hundreds of comments oohing and aahing an author’s conclusions doesn’t necessarily make them accurate. I’ve found lots of excellent research and compelling arguments in fairly obscure places. Focus on the ideas, not the atmosphere.

Check your facts. When you accept an isolated statement as fact, you’re really taking it on faith. In journalism, checking sources has always been the norm, and it should be observed by writers in an any medium, including blogs. We do readers a disservice by publishing another person’s opinion as fact without corroboration: it amounts to spreading gossip. I’ve made the mistake myself on more than one occasion, usually because I’m too busy to be careful (a lame excuse) or too mentally lazy to bother (a lamer excuse). I’ve regretted it every time.

No matter how much checking you do, you can still be wrong. What is truth? In SEO, it’s often hard to tell no matter how careful you are. The search industry is designed in such a way that experts are not supposed to know how search engines operate. There’s an element of mystery and guesswork involved, which for me is frankly where the fun comes in. I suppose this state of affairs is true for most disciplines – what do you think? The point I want to make is this. Real authorities seldom state their conclusions stridently. They do not refer to their recommendations or interpretations of data as laws or unbreakable rules.

Learning is a process, not an event. I say the same thing about SEO to clients. Most JJL readers surely know how quickly and radically the playing field changes in search marketing and social media. If you make a mistake or draw the wrong conclusion in a post – admit it. If one of your axioms falls apart because Google changes the rules – be quick to alert your readers. Bloggers in the SEO space who make a practice of doing these things gain my respect and trust. I’m not looking for perfection, just honesty. And as a teacher or a student – aren’t you really looking for the same thing?

Over to You

What inspires you to trust an authority? How do you gain confidence that what you are reading has real value?

Brad Shorr

Follow Brad on Twitter

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at the typewriter and open a vein.

~Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

I sit at my keyboard and open a vein, regularly.

And before computers, I’d sit with pen and notebook as I poured out the contents of that vein in the desperate attempt to staunch a bleeding somewhere deep inside me.

There is something therapeutic about writing that transcends the act itself. Sometimes this writing will be fit for public consumption, but most of the time, the mess and gore that ends up on the page is for my eyes alone. As it should be.

I’ve always had a outlet for my wilder emotions. Two outlets, in fact. The first, as a classically trained pianist, is obvious. Making music, hand to keyboard and monkey-mind disengaged, has always calmed me. When I was a teen, my Mother often commented that she knew the state of my emotions by what I was playing. That when particularly disturbed, I’d play loud, fast, insistent pieces – loud and fast. As I grew calmer and closer to my inner equilibrium, the pieces and the playing would mellow, quieten, and become sweeter.

But it hasn’t always been convenient (or even possible) to play piano in times of stress and high emotion.

And that is where writing enters the picture. Opening a vein on the page became a way for me to learn who I am. And a way for me to make sense of my life.

When my elder son was born – 20 years ago in January! – his birth was traumatic. The feeding was traumatic. The mothering was traumatic.

I’d gone from uber-successful business woman to a blithering pile of mush in the course of one day.

When I finally made my escape from the hospital with my week-old son, the only way to make sense of the madness was to write. It was either that or hide under the bed and hope it would all go away ;)

I opened vein after vein, pouring my thoughts into the notebook that a scant few weeks earlier had held my Christmas lists.

As the blood words flowed, I finally remembered all the details. As I recalled my husband’s protectiveness as he yelled at the Doctor in the delivery room, and his relief as he sat heavily in the chair beside me upon hearing our son’s first wail, and his voice as he named our son… I felt a peace steal over me.

I kept writing that whole summer, and on into the Autumn. Making sense, coming to terms, coping and processing it all… this wonderful battle called motherhood.

And in the writing of it, I taught myself to cope. I learned of my devotion to my son and my deep, abiding love for my husband. And I learned deep respect and admiration for my Mother, and mothers everywhere.

There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes.

~William Makepeace Thackeray

Most of all, I learned about me.

In the trials and tribulations of my life, writing has been a balm for my soul. I’ve turned to a succession of notebooks to open that vein – often. And in the pouring forth, I learn anew about myself and about the things that really matter.

What about you? Does writing help you find your soul? How do you staunch an inner bleeding and start the healing process?

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Káren Wallace found that opening a vein so helped her through first-time motherhood, she went back twice more for a daughter and another son. She wouldn’t give up the experience for anything! When she’s not raising her family you can find Káren at The Calm Space – helping you to go from stress to serenity, one step at a time.

You’ll have figured it out by now: at JJL we *love* to learn.

And that includes learning from all of you.

This month we’re exploring the idea of writing to learn. What’s the difference between that and writing to broadcast, advertise or publish? What specifically can we do to improve the way we write to learn?

We know there’s a wealth of ideas out there, and we’re inviting you to share them by taking part in this JJL Group Writing Project.

The idea of a blogging group writing project is simple: one blog acts as host, and issues an invitation to others to write about an idea, a question or a theme.  Those who take part link back to the original post as a way of spreading the word to their readers (and giving back a little bit of link love).  The host blog then compiles a list of all the posts that were written in response and publishes it.

There are lots of benefits to group writing projects both for those who host them and those who contribute to them.  It’s a way of exploring ideas, getting to know other people, and learning together.

You can read more on the benefits of group writing projects here:

How Group Writing Projects Help to Build Community

How Do You Write to Learn? Group Writing Project

Enough of the preamble: how do you get involved in this group writing project?

All you need to do to take part is

1. Post something on your own blog on this theme:

Writing to Learn

The floor is pretty much open, but here are some more questions that might get your creative juices going:

• How do you write to learn?
• What have your learned from writing?
• How have you adapted your writing in order to learn more, better, faster?
• What do you want to change in order to learn through writing in the future?

2. Link back to this post

3. Leave a comment on this post to make doubly sure we get it

4. Post your contribution by 22 November so there’s plenty of time for the round up post

We’ll do a round up of the posts before the end of the month.

Anyone is welcome to join in: you don’t need to have written here before, or left a comment, you just need to be a joyful learner!

We look forward to learning from and with you.

PS Any questions, please just ask

~~~

Written by Joanna Young, on behalf of the JJL community

There’s a magic which takes place when one writes, particularly when the subject is close to one’s heart, be it of a story taken from life experience or of a person who has influenced the writer.

It’s the kind of thing which happens to anyone who delves into the meaning of his own pile of experiences, her own collection of days, their own lives. As the memories are called forth, the feelings come along.

Both blessing and curse it is, don’t you think? We human beings are able to call up events from the past and ponder them. In doing so, we can learn more from them today than was evident in the moment. I know from time spent in the vaults of my own history that the painful moments can be even more painful when considered years later.

To what good purpose, then? In reconsideration, we stand the chance to suffer anew, or to suffer some and learn a lot. It’s a choice, and it is not an easy one to push toward, knowing that it may be hard and reveal unflattering images of ourselves.

Yet, the value is there to be harvested. You see, we learn from our mistakes far more than we can ever learn from our small victories. And, we learn the most in the rehashing of it, the stories we birth from the experiences. It is only a potential for learning, though. If we are willing to see the stories with fresh eyes, we open the door.

The choice is a simple one: do we tell the story the same way, pulling out the brushes and painting the same perspective, over and over, or do we look for the lesson? It’s there. There are no experiences which come without a lesson.

Writing about it frees the learning from the amber of the past where it has lain frozen since the moment took place, locked away and quietly waiting. For, in the writing of it, we can break the bond and see with wiser eyes. I often end up somewhere I may not have consciously intended to go when I sat down and placed fingers on the keyboard. It’s the willingness to go where one is guided which sparks the lesson and unfolds the mystery.

How do you process your life experiences? What have you learned? What have you thought about a thousand times that you might finally be able to release if you decided to write about it?

Are you open to learning what your own life has already taught, but you have yet to hear?

Rick Hamrick

Rick Hamrick is a Sufi mystic masquerading as an IT manager-in-waiting. He writes semi-irregularly on his own blog and is chief information officer and head cheerleader for his author wife and immensely proud dad of his four daughters. While not yet clear on the connection between shoveling snow and learning, he shovels nonetheless.

How I Failed to See the Obvious.

On Halloween Saturday while washing pots at my kitchen sink it suddenly occurred to me that I am a writer.

Go ahead and laugh if you know me but it seems we are often the last to find out things about ourselves.

I wrote well over 1200 blog posts, I  wrote published curriculum, I wrote university study guides, I wrote two distance courses for 5 Western Canadian universities, I wrote journal articles for  referred psychological journals, I wrote a humor column in education for 7 years, and I write notes and lists just about everyday of my life for the past 43 years.

Anyway you get the idea, I have written quite a bit. Yet never once, have I referred to myself as a writer. Now we Canadians are a humble lot and heaven forbid anything we say sounds like self-aggrandizement but not realizing you are a writer when you write everyday seems ludicrous.

Something shifted while scrubbing pots in a cleansing epiphany that I, David Zinger, am a writer. Of course we will assume I was of sound mind and body when I was struck by this revelation 43 years in the making.

I like being a writer but  it has taken a lot of writing to take ownership of it inside myself. I don’t just write to learn I write to live and writing can be laborious or daunting but it always makes me feel alive— even when that it is the mental pain or anguish to unlock the word that will not come.

So if you write a list, a book, a memo, or an email, I hope you will lay claim to the writer that resides in you…it only took me 43 years.

Question: If you call yourself a writer, when was the moment you owned that term for yourself and said not only to others but to yourself, I’m a writer?

I would love to read your “moment” in the comment section. Thank you.

Thanks to Letitia Sweitzer for inspiring this question in the early comments to this post.

Write On!

David Zinger is a writer living and writing in Winnipeg, Canada.

How do we understand what we’ve done and what we’ve learned without reflection? We act, we react, but how often do we reflect? Through reflection, we find the wisdom we need to make better decisions, to understand ourselves, to change the world—both within and without.

Keeping a journal is a powerful way to reflect. It gets our thoughts out of our head and onto paper and, during that transformation, we can discard the crazed thoughts that somehow seemed so rational sitting inside our brain – and find the flecks of genius hidden beneath the inanity.

“Keeping a journal will change your life in ways that you’d never imagine.”
– Oprah Winfrey

I’ve kept a journal in some form, off and on, for the past 19 years. And, if I had to, I think I could find most of my journals – either lying around on the computer, or boxed away somewhere. I must admit, life has gotten way too busy over the past couple of years to actually keep anything going on a regular basis, but I periodically return to journaling when I find myself troubled or overwhelmed. And the result is always a refreshing take on my situation. Maybe not the answer I was hoping for, but a useful one, nonetheless.

A challenge to (re)start the journaling habit

Hearing about the JJL theme this month, I decided I would stop waiting for the right opportunity to kickstart a journaling habit and just make it happen. So, to help me get back in the habit – and introduce you (or re-introduce you, as the case may be) to the power of journaling, I’ve setup a challenge on Ruzuku as part of JJL’s Writing to Learn month and you’re invited to join me.

What is Ruzuku? Ruzuku is a learning community built around support and encouragement. You commit to a challenge and then report periodically on your progress all the while supporting and being supported by the community going through the same thing you are. Read more about Ruzuku here.

In this case, our challenge is to journal for 15 minutes every day for 15 days. Sounds easy, right? I think that’s been my problem. Because it seems so easy, it’s just too easy to skip. But not this month. This month, we get serious.

Here’s how the challenge will work

1. Every day, write a journal entry for 15 minutes. You must write for 15 minutes. To get the most words possible, turn off your inner critic and just write. If you find yourself wanting to edit, resist. You have to write and keep writing without looking back.

It might help to set a common time. This may not always be easy to do. I know some people who’ve been successful journaling whenever they feel like it while others have to journal at the same time every day.

Date every entry and  at the end of each entry, sign it. Own your words.

2. There are 2 types of journal activities. The first is the most common: freeform reflection-style journaling. Reflect on your day and the people you’ve interacted. Write out your feelings, thoughts, frustrations. Just write.

Or, if you find that freeform writing for 15 minutes to be daunting–after all, it’s just you and the blank page–consider using one of these exercises to get your words flowing:

1. Write down everything you see/smell/hear/feel.
2. How do you feel right now? Use the “5 Whys” technique to explore why you feel that way.
3. List everything that went well for you today, describing how each thing made you feel.
4. Describe what makes you happy. Use the “5 Whys” technique to explore why each thing makes you happy.
5. What’s something that you’ve always wanted to do, but something was holding you back? Why is the thing holding you back? Describe what your life would be like if you could do this one thing.
6. What’s the last movie you saw? How would you make it better?
7. Describe the kind of person you want to be to someone in your life. Your child, mother, friend. Now, describe the type of person you are. Compare and contrast the differences.
8. Something really bothering you today? Try this: Describe the problem objectively using as few words as possible. Write as many solutions as possible to the problem. You must get at least 15 solutions. The more fanciful, the better.

If you want to make these any of your journal entries more interesting, consider one of the following twists: 1) Write with your eyes closed 2) Write with your off-hand 3) Use a crayon instead of a pen or 4) Draw your entry instead of writing it out.

3. Tell us how it’s going and what you’ve learned. As part of the Ruzuku Challenge, you’ll be prompted to update your progress on the journaling activity. Report back to the community any insights you gained, anything you’ve learned, or questions you have. Unless you want to, there’s no need to talk about the content of your journal entry. The point of the Challenge community is to provide support and accountability to ensure that you are practicing the journaling habit and so that we can learn from each other.

I’ve scheduled the journaling challenge to start on Wednesday, November 4^th. So, you have today and tomorrow to gather your pens and papers. Registration will remain open until midnight your time November 4^th, but know that the first journal assignment is also due November 4^th, too!

What are you waiting for? Sign up and let’s get journaling!

Rick Cecil

Rick Cecil is a proud papa and lucky husband. His company, MoreBetterLabs is alpha testing Ruzuku, a learning community built around support and encouragement. Shoot him an email if you’re interested in participating in the alpha or join one of the current challenges. You can also follow Rick on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Photo Credit: Homage to Babsi by Stompy.

Aloha e Nowemapa kākou; welcome to our JJL November!
Mahalo nui loa; thank you for choosing to greet this day with us.

In 24 hours time we’ve moved from Day Last to Day First: If you are newly arriving here, Day One of each month we introduce our learning theme and make our community shout-out for contributions to the JJL editorial calendar.

November 2009 is here, awaiting our Joyful Learning

During November, we reach into our learner’s toolbox to grasp a well-worn tool that feels familiar and sure in our hands.

It is one which can make us feel strong and sure, and more than ready to shape and create. Other times we pause, and wonder if we are ready, for it makes us feel weak in the knees and unsure of our footing. Yet we still grab onto it as the life raft we know it will be for us until our feet are grounded once more.

That tool is one we call Writing to Learn.

Those who contribute to JJL so generously are writers and authors. Don’t be intimidated by that word, for being published here makes you an author!  While we have sprinkled these pages with voice, video and other learning venues, our primary confidence is in the written word.

However there is an important distinction at play here: We WRITE TO LEARN versus the more common writing to broadcast, advertise or publish: What is the difference? How can you groom this practice of writing specifically to boost your learning process? What happens when you wield this tool alone, needing more than both your hands? How might the learning differ when writing becomes a tool you must share with others? Is there such a thing as taking turns, or does everyone bring their own tool to a type of barn-raising for learning?

These are some of the questions our contributors may choose to tackle, yet I know the tools they have called Writing to Learn are exquisitely crafted in highly personal ways, and I look forward to the possibilities they will share this month.

And how about you?

There is a writer in all of us, just as surely as there is a learner. They play together, and create together somewhere inside you… will you let them out this month?

Would you like to practice with us, and WRITE TO LEARN on these pages? If so, consider reserving a posting date on our editorial calendar: Write of your thoughts on “writing to learn” then lead a joyful conversation here with your learner’s voice. Read through our FAQ if you are new to JJL, then contact me via our Community Mailbox or Contact Page and I will help you get started.

“I am a THOUGHT. Your thought… Write to learn about me.”

I have a habit of skimming our JJL archives when I am looking for learning triggers, and I happened upon a 2007 posting that I suspected might help a bit if you are sitting on the fence about getting on our editorial calendar this month. This was written by author and successful businessman Bob Conklin:

I can make you rise or fall. I can work for you or against you.
I can make you a success or a failure.
I control the way that you feel and the way that you act.
I can make you laugh … work … love.
I can make your heart sing with joy … excitement … elation.
Or I can make you wretched … dejected … morbid.
I can make you sick … listless.
I can be as a shackle … heavy … attached … burdensome.

Or I can be as the prism’s hue … dancing … bright … fleeting
… lost forever unless captured by pen or purpose.
I can be nurtured and grown to be great and beautiful
… seen by the eyes of others through action in you.
I can never be removed … only replaced.
I am a THOUGHT.
Why not know me better?”

You may only need to ‘un-shackle’ your writing with private journaling. However if you want to take that leap of faith, and experience the joy of publishing here within our collaborative community expectations, reach out and give us the honor of helping you with that new learning too.

I am expecting great things this month, because I know most of you. I may not know you personally, but I know the learner in you. I do know that a chain reaction starts within us, we lifelong learners, where when we begin to write, WRITING TO LEARN comes to us as naturally as breathing. This month, we explain it, or at least we try to. We learn about it.

With much sweet anticipation for the days to come,
Rosa

Rosa Say

About the author:

Rosa Say is a manager, writer and workplace culture coach who is honored to have another very important role, as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning. Rosa is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business, and the Talking Story blog.

Photo credit: lost treasure by rattyfied on Flickr

So what is this again?

There is a “Day Last” to each JJL month

“Day Last” is fairly new in our JJL language of intention; we just started it at the end of July when we made a blog platform change (from TypePad to WordPress) and figured an end-of-month breather might be good for a whole variety of possible reasons:

We have a “Day One” each month categorized to capture our learning theme introductions, and we’re thinking of having a “Day Last” on the calendar going forward.

The idea is to resurrect an old category of postings we’d called “JJL Community Profiles.” It’s a chance for you to get to know some of the people who write, read, comment, teach and learn here. It’s still virtual, of course, but maybe a little bit more in-depth than what you can discover in the blurb at the end of a post.

We thought it might also offer a bit of winding down time, a chance for some conversation and a virtual meet-up of sorts in between ending one month’s learning theme and starting the next.

You can use the comment conversation on “Day Last” to comment on the Community Profile post itself, or about anything else which comes to mind about all of us as a learning community.

No Tricks, just Treats!

For some of us, today is also Halloween.

It’s “an old pagan festival, now with some imported American traditions.” “Halloween is about play, magic and connection to the spirit world… even adults get to dress up, ‘play’ with death, eat a lot of candy…”

Before the day gets dark and spooky where you might be, let’s sit beneath the canopy of this tree, and enjoy each other’s company for a bit.

In the Say ‘Ohana (family) the 31st of October is also our patriarch’s birthday – a grand event we also celebrated for JJL this month, our 3rd birthday. So, I am liking the simple get-together and birthday party-ish theme we can have for the day, to celebrate the month for what it has been, then say a fond Aloha to it.

Is there anything you would like to share with our joyful learning community in the spirit of the day, anything at all?

Some of you may be sitting under trees which look more like these, and that’s fine!

One of the things I have always loved best about JJL is simply knowing it is our place to come to, finding each other here. That is the birthday gift I think about most right now.

Do feel free to use today’s comments to share any announcements or happenings for you: This post is about you, and about us and you as the Joyful Jubilant Learning Ho‘ohana Community.

Rosa Say

About the author:

Rosa Say is a manager, writer and workplace culture coach who is honored to have another very important role, as the managing editor of Joyful Jubilant Learning. Rosa is the author of Managing with Aloha, Bringing Hawai‘i’s Universal Values to the Art of Business, and the Talking Story blog.

Photo credits:
“Into the Blue” by WOBBLYMOL (better now thank you), “Heliotrope in the Clouds” by Rosa Say, and “country road” by joiseyshowaa.

I need your help.

I had a kerpow moment the other day. You know what I mean: one minute you’re happily ambling along the highways of the internet and then you read or see something which goes

KERPOW!

I was reading this post. One link had led to another to another and here I was at the Levity Project reading Daily Levity: The Fun Theory.

And because they seemed like nice people, and because it was only short (1 minute 48 seconds – I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to videos online) I watched the video too.

It’s called piano stairs.

It’s fun to watch… (go on, it’s only 1 minute 48 seconds after all) and it asks a big question.  (The sort that makes your brain go KERPOW)

If fun changes the way that we do things… how can we add more fun to what we do?

That was my version of the question anyway.  And since it was also Rapid Fire Learning day I thought about this in relation to learning, and challenged myself this way:

I need to have more fun. I have a drastic tendency to be over-serious. What more could I do, love, learn, become… if I looked for ways to add more fun to the everyday?

And I need your help in answering these questions.

What more could I do if I looked for ways to add more fun to the everyday?

How can I learn to have fun?

How can having fun help me to learn?

How have you learned to answer these questions?

Granny by Kettukusu on Flickr

If you’ve a moment to spare… can you help?

~~~

The cat photo is really apropos of nothing… except she made me smile, and that seemed like a good place to start having fun :-)

~~~

Joanna Young

Post Author Joanna Young, author of Confident Writing, is a writing coach who helps people to realise the power of their own words.

She has a tendency to over-seriousness… and trusts you can help;-)

Most Saturdays I meet with a group of spiritual seekers. We do not call ourselves religious. In fact, we might be in this group because we did not feel comfortable in church pews or kneeling on prayer rugs. The topic last Saturday was finding home in relationships. One question we asked ourselves was, “What contributes to our fear or withdrawal in relationships?”

I knew immediately that, for me, the fear was that if the other (friend, adult child, partner, collaborator) really knew all of me, he or she would reject me. I know this is not a unique fear. As I am in my 7th decade, however, one might think I’d gotten over it. But I haven’t. However, I have learned something truly valuable about people, rejection, and relationships in this last year that relates to lighting candles.

I’ve tried, as many do, to minimize my occasional nastiness, tried to smooth over it with charm and intelligence. Most of the time this charm and intelligence is real. But not all of the time. I can be mean, grasping, petty, and underhanded. Some others in my life have not been able to accept me when I’m nasty, or self-absorbed, or competitive. They have withdrawn, given me the silent treatment, or raged at me. My husband, though, has given me the precious gift of “no big deal.” When I’m ashamed of myself for acting out of my own integrity, I slink into his office and tell him what I’ve done. He shrugs. Or he says, “OK.” Or he mutters. While he makes these noncommittal noises, he looks me in the eye. He doesn’t dismiss me or indicate in any way that he thinks less of me. This is even true when I’ve aimed my nastiness at him.

He has taught me something I didn’t know before. It is, as some former colleague described it, a “blinding glimpse of the obvious.” Some people will reject me for my faults. They just will. Some have. Some others can see beyond what I’ve done or said, what I’ve forgotten, or should have forgotten. They can light a candle for my whole self, for the person I want to be, and strive to be, most of the time. They see the dark bits, but hold them as part and parcel of the whole being I am. They invite me to be more, not less, of me. In holding this candle, some people in all of our lives invite us to accept ourselves, accept each other, and celebrate the light illuminating each precious self.

Sara Orem

Sara Orem is a coach and workshop leader for individuals and companies seeking more productivity through better use of their own strengths and enthusiasms. She teaches graduate business courses for Capella University, maintains an active coaching and consulting practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, and leads webinars on positive coaching methods. A new interest and teaching theme is personal change for people over 55. Her book Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change (with Jackie Binkert and Ann Clancy), and her own recent change journey led her to this interest. Visit Sara at her website: www.saraorem.com.