Would you like to create more but feel like you’re not all that creative or talented?  Guess what – lots of other people do too, so don’t feel bad (it won’t help you anyway).  But, there is one thing that you can do that will help you create.  You can admit (to yourself) the reason why you are not creating.

You’re Scared

The reason you’re not creating might be different than what you think.  It’s probably fear, a fear of yourself. Before you dismiss this, think about it for a moment.  There may be other symptoms (e.g., lack of time, motivation, skills) but those are usually masks to the real issue. Even talking about fear being the cause is fearful.  Nothing bad will happen because you’re thinking about being scared of creating. In fact, nobody needs to know.

You’re Already Good Enough

When you create something that didn’t exist before (e.g., painting, writing, coding, etc), you’re putting yourself out there.  When you put yourself out there, you invite feedback for your creation (from yourself and others).  When this feedback isn’t what you want it to be, it can lead to a host of emotions (anger, hurt, anxious, etc) that usually leads back to feeling “not good enough or as good as.”

But the thing is, you are already good enough to create.  There is no good or bad, it’s creation.  All you have to do is try.  Pick up that paintbrush, pen, computer or whatever it is for you and start.  You begin learning and growing when you start creating.  You won’t know what you’ll learn until you start!

“I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” ~Stuart Smalley

Your Personal Growth is Irrelevant to Others

When you begin creating, don’t compare your creation to an ideal state.  Just start and experience your creation “flow.” You’re not competing against anyone – learning and knowledge are personal.  We learn socially but each person has to do their own learning and growing.  If you create, you will learn and that learning experience is yours to keep and apply in future.

If you want to create music with a piano – play piano.  Comparing yourself to Billy Joel is irrelevant to the growth of your piano skills.

If you want to draw better, draw.  Comparing yourself to Hugh MacLeod is irrelevant to your drawing skills.

When You’re Not Feeling Good Enough  

Think of a cave drawing.  What thoughts come to mind?  Do you ever think “that is not good enough?” Or does it invite you into someone else’s wold through their creation.  Think of the learning and stories that took place through the drawings (during their creation and through time).  They had no special training and had everything they needed to create. So do you…get started!

Harold Jarche just posted To learn, we must do.  This is especially true in the age of social media.  You actually have to do something in order to learn.  The more you do, the more you’ll learn.

Another word for doing is “tinkering.”  Tinkering means you can’t wait until all conditions are perfect to begin and you don’t know what you’re going to get.  You use your curiosity and begin exploring by doing.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ~Theodore Roosevelt

Kids are great examples of tinkering. Here’s an inspiring story of Caine Monroy (a 9-year old) who built a cardboard arcade in his dad’s used auto parts store.

What’s holding you back from doing what you want to do or learn?

This is part of my 50 quotes series: 50 Quotes About Knowledge, 50 Quotes About Learning, 50 Quotes About Teaching

“There is no failure.  Only feedback.”  ~Robert Allen

“Life’s real failure is when you do not realize how close you were to success when you gave up.” ~ Anonymous

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~Thomas A. Edison

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” ~Henry Ford

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” ~Winston Churchill

“Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.” ~Confucius

“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is a step forward.” ~Thomas A. Edison

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” ~Albert Einstein

“Remember that failure is an event, not a person.” ~Zig Ziglar

“The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.” ~Napoleon Hill

“Don’t be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.” ~Lily Tomlin

“In order to succeed you must fail, so that you know what not to do the next time.” ~ Anthony D’Angelo

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”  ~ Abraham Lincoln

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” ~Michael Jordan

“I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”  ~Thomas Edison

“If at first you don?t succeed, think how many people you?ve made happy.” ~H. Duane Black

“Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts. ~John Wooden

“My reputation grows with every failure.” ~George Bernard Shaw

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.”  ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” – Steve Jobs

“You always pass failure on your way to success.”  ~Mickey Rooney

“An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made in a very narrow field.” ~ Niels Bohr

“Have no fear of perfection – you’ll never reach it.” ~― Salvador Dalí

“Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.” ~John Dewey

“To be wrong is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”  ~Confucius

“Act as if it were impossible to fail.” ~Dorothea Brande

“Do not fear mistakes, there are none.” ~Miles Davis

“I failed my way to success.” ~Thomas Edison

A man’s doubts and fears are his worst enemies.” ~William Wrigley Jr.

“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” ~Ken Robinson

“The only real failure in life is one not learned from.” ~Anthony J. D’Angelo

“Failure doesn’t mean you are a failure… it just means you haven’t succeeded yet.” ~Robert Schuller

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” ~Scott Adams

“Failure cannot cope with persistence.” ~Napoleon Hill

“I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones. ” ~John Peel

“There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.” ~ Hank Aaron

“The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try.” ~Peter Drucker

“The only time you mustn’t fail is the last time you try.” ~— Charles F. Kettering

“When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.” ~Napoleon Hill

“What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” ~Robert H. Schuller

“There was never any fear for me, no fear of failure. If I miss a shot, so what?” ~Michael Jordan

“When one door closes another door opens, but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” ~Alexander Graham Bell

“You never fail until you stop trying.” ~ Albert Einstien

“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.”  ~Lance Armstrong

“There are two kinds of people in this world: those who want to get things done, and those who don’t want to make mistakes.” ~John Maxwell

“Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.” ~Zig Ziglar

“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” ~Colin Powell

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.” ~Elbert Hubbard

“You can’t have any successes unless you can accept failure.” ~George Cukor

“An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.” ~Charles F. Kettering

Have you ever seen the show “Undercover Boss?”  The CEO goes “undercover” within his/her company as a regular employee to see how thing really work.  The CEO is treated as a regular employee and sees the good and bad without filters from employees.

You think things are a certain way but how do you know if you are removed from the day-today? You could ask questions but you might be given answers based on how others see you (e.g., CEO, learning and performance professional).

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ~Bernard Baruch

Or  – if people see you as a hammer, they’ll show you nails (or anything else needing a hammer).

So, how do you gain an independent perspective on “what the work is really like” with the least amount of bias? How about experiencing the work as a worker?  When was the last time you performed the job or role of the people for which you are providing your learning expertise?  If performing the job isn’t possible, how about job shadowing as an apprentice?

Take a moment and ask yourself the following questions before your next project:

• How do your customers, partners, peers view you?
• Are you missing pieces of the picture because you’re viewing situations from a learning perspective?
  • Are you seen as a hammer, tool box or general contractor?
  • How do you see yourself?
• How can you go “undercover” to see things from a different perspective?

Imagine that you’re going on a trip in your car.  You’re in the driver’s seat behind the wheel rolling down the road.  So far everything is normal except that you’re looking through the rear view mirror to see the road behind you in order to predict what the road in front of you looks like.  So, you’re looking back to move forward.

• Would you recommend driving like this?
• What would you say to someone driving like this?

The Road Changes too Fast to use the Rear View Mirror

If you keep driving forward using the rear view mirror, you’re going to:

• Drive off the road and get hurt
• Only drive on safe, straight known roadways
• Not drive at all

None of these scenarios are going to help you learn and make a better future.  The past may feel comfortable or familiar but is it getting you where you want to go?  Are you taking in new experiences through your windshield?

Opportunities are Endless Through the Windshield

The windshield is where the fun and learning takes place!  If you don’t think this is true, have you ever brought a child from the back seat to the front seat so that they could see better?  What was their expression?  Usually amazed at this whole new world that didn’t exist.  So much possibility.  The same could probably be said for someone learning something new for the first time.

You Can Still Use the Rear View Mirror

Reflection is an important part of learning so there are times when you need to look back. Just don’t use the past as your primary means of moving forward.

Go clean off your windshield and see what’s out there!

Here are the most popular posts on Learnstreaming.com for 2011:

How Social Learning is Like Gravity

Joining is Important to Social Learning

The Future of Work

50 Quotes About Learning

7 Resources Explaining the Learning Styles Myth

Social Learning in 3 Words

You Need a Social Identity and Space to Join

Don’t Forget the YOU in Social Learning

21 Resources to Become a Better Listener

What if Chuck Norris was in the Training Department

Here’s a copy of my learnstreaming presentation that I gave for the eLearning Guild Informal and Social Learning Forum

I’m happy and honored to have my  learnstreaming article featured in eLearn Magazine.

Click here to read the article

This is post 1 in a series about preparing for the future of work and learning.

When you jump into a heated pool or get into a warm lake in the middle of a hot day– this usually feels nice, right? What about when you jump into an unheated pool or a cold lake? Is it usually a gets your attention, even if you knew the water was cold.

When you think about the future of work, did it ever make you feel like you were jumping into cold water?  If not, you probably haven’t considered what this means for you.  It’s a big change.

Most of us are experiencing the changing workplace environment at some level while others are fully immersed.

In order to build your skills or the skills of others for work of the future, you need to understand how the future of work is changing.

Here are 19 Resources to help to gain a better understanding of this change.

The Future of Work is Now

Welcome to The Future Work

The Future of Work

Forces Changing Our Lives

Lynda Gratton says that five forces that are changing our lives (and already have, in most instances) are:

1. Technology (not just IT but all kinds of technology)

2. Globalization

3. Demography and longevity (people living longer)

4. Society (values, policies, families, the role of women, institutional roles)

5. Energy resources (and environmental impacts)

Good-bye to the Job - David Houle provides his perspective about the “job”

The social concept of jobs, careers and companies really developed over the last 300 years in the Industrial Age. Before the invention of the steam engine, the centralization of industry, and the urbanization of the developed countries, people were artisans, cobblers, blacksmiths and farmers.

The 100 years from the Civil War through the 1950s was a time of scale, mechanization, centralization and the creation of vertical hierarchies that rapidly became bureaucracies. People started at the bottom, or if they had a college degree, slightly above the bottom

The 1970s ushered us into the Information Age – with computers and communications satellites – and started the transition from production of goods to the generation of information at ever-increasing rates.

The last decade of the 20^th century, with the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, unleashed globalism and the global economy. Work began to transcend national boundaries. The birth of the Internet launched the connectivity revolution, which is playing out to this day.

In the Industrial Age, machines replaced manual or blue-collar labor. In the Information Age, computers replaced office or white-collar workers. Hardware and software replaced people doing jobs.  The Internet connected the world, so the lowest-cost producer became ascendant. Now in the Shift Age, all is in a state of shift. 

Gartner research identified 10 key changes that they see shaping the world of work during the next decade.

1. “De-routinization” of work. “Non-routine” activities that cannot be automated, such as innovation, leadership and sales, will dominate employment: By 2015, 40 percent or more of an organization’s work will be “non-routine,” up from 25 percent in 2010.
2. Work swarms. Rather than traditional teams of people familiar with each other, ad-hoc groups or “work swarms,” with no previous experience of working with each other, will become a commonplace team structure. Gartner’s “work swarms” concept sounds similar to the Noded philosophy, which describes how groups of individuals, often but not necessarily geographically distant, come together to form temporary or recurring project teams.
3. Weak links. Weak links are the cues people can pick up from people who know the people they have to work with. Exploiting our own networks will help us to develop the ties that are required for participating in wider “work swarm” opportunities.
4. Working with the collective. Being able to influence the complex ecosystem of suppliers, partners, clients and customers will increasingly become a core competence.
5. Work sketch-ups. Informality will define most “non-routine” work activities; the process models for these activities will be simple “sketch-ups,” created on the fly.
6. Spontaneous work. Seeking new opportunities and creating projects around them is likely to be an opportunistic, rather than strategic, activity.
7. Simulation and experimentation. The culture of Google’s “perpetual beta” is likely to spread to other industries, with rapid prototyping taking place in very public environments.
8. Pattern sensitivity. Extrapolating from history and experience will become less reliable; the ability to detect and parse patterns and trends in society will provide better insights.
9. Hyperconnected. With formal and informal work diffused across organizational boundaries,  the support mechanisms for workers (healthcare, HR, IT) will need to evolve to support fuzzier, ad-hoc relationships between people and departments.
10. My place. The boundaries between home and work life are already blurred. Balancing almost 24/7 availability against burning out will become a critical skill.

PwC believes that 3 worlds will co-exist.

• Blue World – big company capitalism is thrives. Catering to the individual outweighs a focus on collective social responsibility
• Orange World- companies have a powerful social conscience intrinsic to the brand and a “green” sense of responsibility. Consumers demand high business ethics and environmental credentials are a top priority.
• Green World- businesses are fragmented. Most companies are small, lean and nimble, relying on an extensive network of suppliers.

Time Magazine provides their view of The Future of Work – 10 Ways Your Job Will Change

• The Way We’ll Work
• High Tech, High Touch, High Growth
• Training Managers to Behave
• The Search for the Next Perk
• We’re Getting Off the Ladder
• Why Boomers Can’t Quit
• Women Will Rule Business
• It Will Pay to Save the Planet
• When Gen X Runs the Show
• Yes, We’ll Still Make Stuff
• The Last Days of Cubicle Life

A Dozen Surprises about the Future of Work”: Implications for Workforce Professionals

How Work is Changing 

The 2020 Workplace shares 20 predications for the future workplace.  See Future of Work

• You will be hired and promoted based upon your reputation capital.
• Your mobile device will become your office, your classroom and your concierge.
• The global talent shortage will be acute. Recruiting will start on social networking sites.
• Recruiting for the vast majority of professional jobs will start in one of the highly trafficked
  social networking sites.
• A 2020 mindset will be required to thrive in a networked world.
• Human resources’ focus will move from outsourcing to crowdsourcing.
• Corporate social networks will flourish and grow inside companies.
• You will elect your leader.
• Lifelong learning will be a business requirement
• Work-life flexibility will replace work-life balance.
• Companies will disclose their corporate social responsibility programs to attract and retain
  employees.
• Social media literacy will be required for all employees.
• Building a portfolio of contract jobs will be the path to obtaining permanent full-time employment.

The Gig Economy

Tina Brown writes that work will become more project to project based and people will have more of a freelance career.  She refers to a survey where The Daily Beast and Penn, Schoen & Berland Associates surveyed 500 employed U.S. citizens aged 18 and over and found that:

But fully one-third of Americans in our survey are now working either freelance or two jobs, with nearly one in two (45%) taking on these additional positions in the last six months. And, by and large, these new alternative workers are not low-income—they are college-educated Americans who earn more than $75,000 a year.

The Rise of Ronin and the Liquid Economy – Stowe Boyd’s suggests that we are rapidly moving toward an economy where the majority of workers will be freelance.  He prefers the term rōnin which means “wave man” suggesting one who is operating in a more liquid, less solid, sort of connection to the world and others.

Daniel Pink wrote about Free Agent Nation back in 1997

“Citizens are declaring their independence and drafting a new bill of rights”

Sara Horowitz says that The Freelance Surge Is the Industrial Revolution of Our Time

“We haven’t seen a shift in the workforce this significant in almost 100 years when we transitioned from an agricultural to an industrial economy”

Harold Jarche has been talking about The Freelance Revolution for years and has many posts about the topic here  

Workshifting – “ability to work when and where we want to.”

Highlights from The iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report showed that:

• 68 percent of mobile workers occasionally disconnected completely from technology, up from just 47 percent last year
• 75 percent worked more hours because of the increased flexibility in when and where they could work
• 55 percent worked at least 10 or more hours each week
• 64 percent felt they were better able to balance their work load with personal commitments
• 51 percent were more relaxed as a result of this improved balance
• 54 percent felt their productivity was substantially improved

The report also includes a nice Workshifting Infographic.

A McKinsey study Job Creation and America’s Future showed that:

58% of employers said they will hire more temporary and part time workers.

From 2003-2010, there was a net gain of 44,000 contract workers in high-skill professional and technical services, despite an overall loss of more than 600,000 jobs in the contract labor sector.

Key findings from the Telework in the U.S. paper include:

• Based on current trends, with no growth acceleration, regular telecommuters will total 4.9 million by 2016, a 69% increase from the current level but well below other.
• Regular telecommuting grew by 61% between 2005 and 2009
• Forty-five percent of the US workforce holds a job that is compatible with at least part-time telework.

Note:  for this paper telework is defined as those that are not self-employed and are employees that telecommute or workshift.