I am pleased to introduce this guest article by Mariana, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her site where you can also find more articles.

Going back to school after you’ve graduated from the traditional undergraduate age and lifestyle is a decision rife with positives. Generally, older students — even those who are still in their 20s — are more focused and ambitious than they were in their late teens and earlier 20s. Think about it: when it’s your money and your direct choice to go back to school, you’re more likely to invest your whole self in learning quite a bit more. Going back to school after you’ve had some work experience also helps you understand the value of education and the direct relation to what you learn in class to how it can help you in your career. You’ve hopefully learned how to relegate your partying to after-hours only, and even if it’s still not pleasant, you understand the importance of adhering to a regular sleep schedule and waking up early each morning.

On the other hand, if you’re unable to give up your current job to pursue a degree full-time, you’re going to face some unique struggles that you didn’t encounter as a traditional undergraduate. Even if you worked on campus in college, the stress, responsibility, and often times inflexibility of a “grown-up” job in the real world will interfere more with your academics than your gig working in the library or engineering shop did. How are you supposed to study the way you want, attend classes, and impress your boss in the office?

An example school that offers mechanical engineering courses is Conestoga, visit there website for more information.

• Set up a study plan for each class: With such a hectic schedule, it would be foolish to assume you can set up a rigid study plan for the entire semester, but you will need serious structures to get it all done. As soon as you visit your classes and get your syllabi, decide when and where the best times for you to study are. Look ahead so that you can set aside extra time for tests, papers and projects, and talk with your boss about adopting a more flexible work schedule — staying late one day and coming in later the next — if you need more time before an exam.
• Talk to your professor: As an adult student, you’re still going to need face time with your professor. At the beginning of the semester, speak with your teachers about your strenuous schedule so that they can better understand your study habits and ability — or inability to meet during office hours and extra review sessions. Also try to e-mail or Skype with your professor throughout the semester if you feel like you’re falling behind. Even a ten-minute, one-on-one meeting can clear up complex concepts and prevent you from stressful study sessions all alone.
• Meet with others in your class: Depending on your program, you will probably have a mixed class of younger students, full-time, non-working students, and students with similar schedules as yourself. Make a point to study with the others when you can to facilitate discussion and make sure you’re not missing anything from lectures or the readings. Associating yourself with other students will also help you feel more connected to the class and have a more positive, productive attitude towards studying.
• Review notes online: Most college and graduate professors use online tools like Blackboard to post notes, extra discussion and other study materials that they may or may not go over in class. Review these for convenient, supplemental study help during your lunch break or off-time.
• Know how and when to bring your academics to the office: If your boss is helping finance your education, he or she will probably be more understanding about your added workload. But if you’re going to school on your own time, you shouldn’t bring your homework to work. Know how to apply the concepts you learn in class to the job you’re doing in the office, but don’t chat with classmates or use the office resources for homework.

I am pleased to introduce this guest article by Mariana, who writes on the topics of online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her site where you can also find more articles.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 2 Comments »

How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back if You Lose It!

Author: Marshall Goldsmith with Mark Reiter

Overall I must say that I was disappointed with this book as it didn’t seem to excite me, spark any new ideas or even capture my attention well with ways to build what the author’s topic is all about, your mojo.  You mojo is described that inner spirit or drive we have to do what we do best starting from the inside and expressing that outward.  I think this is because I actually really love the concept of mojo and internal motivation that drives us to excel, unfortunately, this book just didn’t draw me in at all to that.  It is however, still a good book that outlines many of the important factors that are necessary to build mojo and maintain it so for someone without an already high level of inner drive, I think the book would be far more useful.

This was the first of Goldsmith’s books I’ve read using audio version and Goldsmith read this one for the recording himself, which personally I felt was a disaster.  His tone and continuous pausing and repetitive upward tones at the end of every single sentence was incredibly distracting and it would never listen to another book he’s read directly because of this.  His reading style kills the flow completely for me and his repetitive pitch change never seems to match the content he is ready, so I found it was actually quite hard to listen to, and that is very rare for me since I mostly listen to audio books and love them since I’m an audible learner!

What Mojo Offers

Mojo offers a very straight forward easy to digest set of tools and questions to discover your mojo. Having your mojo is described as having work that simultaneously makes you happy and has meaning to you.  Marshall explores a number of effects of mojo and negative mojo or nojo as he names it and he explores the sources of one’s identity.  These are:

• remembered identity
• reflected identity
• programmed identity
• created identity

I found this useful yet at the same time, rather simplified and I was not convinced of how it was actually useful through application, it was simply information and I never connected with the point of it.  There is a useful mojo scorecard and tips throughout to examine your activities and to measure the level of mojo you experience.  It can certainly help to draw you to discover what activities affect your mojo so is quite useful.

More insight is given through a series of stories and questions that Marshall uses to explore your mojo further.  I thought these were a bit disconnected and not really supporting what I was hoping to get from the book as far as experiencing mojo and putting it to work for you more often.  There were many tips but I never got the sense that I really had a clear idea since even Marshall says repeatedly that mojo is all internal and has to come from within.  After hearing that a number of times, I wonder why he wrote the book then?

Also, there are lots of good pieces of information and stories about mojo and many tips on how to discover it.  There is an excellent section on maintaining your mojo and being consistent with yourself and others to ensure nothing prevents your mojo and he explores 10 reason you can quickly lose your mojo which are particularly useful to avoid.  He covers through repeated example a concept of ‘change it’ or ‘change you’ which is really saying that you must decide to change something about your situation to move towards more mojo or you have to change yourself to have different motivators or expectations.  And finally in the book, mojo is explored by using a technique of framing it and naming it.  If you recognize bad habits that kill mojo and give them a name to remind you of that, you can use that name yourself or teach others to use that name to help point that behavior out when it occurs and snap you out of a situation killing mojo.  This is a useful tip and I have always liked the idea of framing associations around behaviors and actions so this one is particularly useful to me.

So overall, this is a decent book and explores many areas of mojo, that anyone who is interested in a lot of self analysis and reflection can benefit from.  I had a number of reason listed above why I rated this lower.  I’d definitely recommend the printed version over the narrated one by Marshall himself and if you haven’t read his other book, ‘What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There‘ I would definitely say you should start with it, as it is a better book all around and similarly helps you to assess yourself and discover your limiting actions prevent your best work.

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 4 Comments »

Relationships are not easy but they are absolutely worth every ounce of effort you put into them.  They are the most rewarding area of life and the one thing that lasts despite all other things.  With the fun I’ve had in writing several 100 lists and my recently released ebook on “Building Better Relationships“, I knew the next 100 list would have to be about relationships.  My ebook is about relationships in general and doesn’t get into romantic relationships, so neither does this list.  These items can be used to improve any relationship and there easily 100 more things that would be more specific to romantic relationship, which I have not going into.  So here it is: 100 ways to improve your relationships!

1. Make breakfast for someone in bed
2. Send someone a hand written thank you note for something they did
3. Leave a message or note telling someone what you appreciate about them
4. Make time commitments that are realistic and possible
5. Ensure you do everything you can to meet your commitments
6. Don’t take promises lightly, be honest and keep them
7. Turn the TV off and have a real conversation
8. Upgrade your communication style
9. Talk about what you both want out of a relationships
10. Find a chore you can do with another person
11. Offer to do a regular activity together
12. Buy groceries together
13. Go Shopping together
14. Organize a meal out with someone for friends
15. Go camping together
16. Take a road trip together
17. Have a staring contest
18. Have a picnic together
19. Schedule 10 minutes everyday to talk (with NO distractions)
20. Be spontaneous and energetic
21. Spend time researching great relationships
22. Learn from relationship masters
23. Read biographies of great relationship builders
24. Buy and read books on relationships
25. Put your relationship time BEFORE work, overtime or chores
26. Buy and gift a simple gift that reminds you of that person
27. Keep in touch with friends at least monthly even when living afar
28. Actually phone in person your facebook friends
29. Limit your online friends lists to those you want to be friends with
30. Don’t make lame excuses for things, be honest
31. Use encouraging positive words instead of negative or critical responses
32. Learn some cellphone etiquette and shut your phone off once in a while
33. NEVER be negative or critical in an email - its too dangerous and easily misinterpreted
34. Be a “yes” type of person when doing things for others
35. Learn to say “no” to keep your priorities in check
36. Teach someone how to do something
37. Exercise together
38. Make friendly competitions for achievement
39. Support each other in your actions / challenges
40. Take up a new hobby together to build a common interest
41. Never eat alone
42. Take and print photographs of activities together
43. Ask for help when you need it
44. Opening share your beliefs and values
45. Stick to your beliefs and express why
46. Know your moral principles and stick to themT
47. Share your spiritual personality
48. In challenging situations, ask yourself, “What would Jesus do?”
49. Learn behavioral models (like DISC) to communicate better
50. Learn personality models (like Meyers-Briggs) to apply personality tips
51. Be willing to have those necessary and crucial conversions
52. Create your own bucket list, share it and do many of them together
53. Improve your telephone skills
54. Give a gift that is more than a purchased item
55. Give genuine compliments on a regular basis
56. Surprise someone with a kind act towards them
57. Have conversations where one of you actively listens and ONLY repeats what you heard in your own words
58. Share your spiritual beliefs with each other
59. Pray together
60. Take up learning a new sport together
61. Take responsibility for your own happiness in the relationship without burdening or expected the other person to do that for you
62. Tell one another why and how they make you a better person
63. Identify and compliment anything you see them improve
64. Be gracious and quick to give an apology
65. Forgive one another quickly and completely
66. Stop complaining and start appreciating
67. Laugh together
68. Cry together
69. Serve others
70. Conquer a fear (like heights or fear of a certain animal) together
71. Never participate in gossip
72. Don’t share private relationship information that deserves to be kept private
73. Be spontaneous with activities and have fun
74. Never try to change someone else, change yourself instead
75. Avoid blaming others
76. Take time to think about your relationships in order to improve them
77. Make relationships priority and make time to work on them
78. Set some goals and work specifically on your relationships
79. Expose your vulnerabilities
80. Socialize with friends of friends
81. Compromise to resolve disputes
82. Be generous with expenses and money
83. Live below your means so you can save money and prevent money stress in your relationships
84. Be humble, not boastful
85. Take a weekend retreat together
86. Attend a relationships course
87. Put your self in other people’s shoes to gain perspective
88. Keep in touch often
89. Value what you have in each relationship and be grateful for it in conversations
90. Highlight and recognize every person’s specialty
91. Avoid assumptions by voicing questions and paraphrasing
92. Value your own time and don’t waste other’s time
93. Use humor and don’t take things too seriously
94. Building relationships takes time so be patient
95. Change things up with variety and by getting out of your comfort zone
96. Have empathy and express it
97. Study and improve your body language
98. Listen to music together
99. Tell the truth (in a kind way) even if it might be hurtful
100. Put the level of effort in, that you want to get out!

Do you have more to add?  Please add them as a comment for others to enjoy as well.

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 22 Comments »

A Leadership Fable About Restoring Sanity To The Most Important Organization In Your Life

Author: Patrick Lencioni

Lencioni is one of my favorite business authors and his fables make his message interesting to read as a story and easy to learn from.  This fable resonated for me since it looks to apply business skills and strategy to your home life, which I’m often finding myself striving to do anyway.  This book is based on the premise that even successful  business people with well structured knowledge and strategy business practice typically lack the application of any such strategy or even goals for managing their own families.  As a result, we have frantic families with nothing more than organized chaos and no clear direction or strategy for being operated.  This story explores that from the point of view of a stay at home mom, Theresa, of one of these successful business strategists.

The family of Theresa and husband, Jude, is introduced showing all the classic signs of family overload with the Jude having a busy work life and some travel away form home while the 3 kids in the family consume enormous effort with all their programs, volunteering and sports they are involved in which of course, create a hectic daily schedule.   As day to day life seems to get in the way of what Theresa and Jude wish their family to be like, an argument erupts and Jude makes the statement, “if my clients ran their companies the way we run this family, they’d be out of business.”  This sets Theresa off on a mission to discover what really is it then that Jude’s strategy consulting firm gives clients and she looks to apply that to their own family.  She discovers and applies a set of questions from the strategy consulting to the family model and uses these to shape a new found purpose, control and direction for her family.  This is all shaped into 3 big questions.

Question #1: What makes your family unique?

This section looks at core values that really define your family to be unique.  Not just any values you want or aspire to, but actual core values that clearly define your family.  The book through both the story and through the model outline at the end give many examples of how to then turn this into a short paragraph that defines the family, its purpose and the values that it adheres to in accomplishing its purpose.

Question #2: What is your family’s top priority rallying cry right now?

Evey family has an area to work on, solve or stress to relief at any time and this section is to define that focus area and get the family working together to make that rallying call happen.  This could be anything from spending more quality time together, to finishing a renovation to getting a kid to college.  Whatever it is, the family should be focused to achieve it and working together consistently to make it happen.  It can also be used to align short term decision making with what is priority for the family, especially when a new activity or event could get in the way of that rallying cry!

Question #3: How are we going to talk about and use the answers to these questions?

This last question is a way to plan the family strategy and make commitments around them.  Setting up some kind of review of progress, communication towards the goals on a regular basis and fixed times to talk or share important events and decisions as they come up.  This should include how to talk about areas as parents as well as with any children in the family or extended family that are directly involved.  Planning the communication strategy to answer questions about priorities and if the family is making progress towards those only helps to bring the family together to achieve the rallying cry.
So, there is lots to learn from all of Lencioni’s books and this book is no exception.  It’s an engaging story that teaches the ideas well and the examples and struggles are easy to relate to and apply in your own life and family. I definitely recommend it!

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 7 Comments »

Favorite Articles

• Adword Reports That can Increase Your Conversions and Save You Money – If you run your own ad campaigns in adwords, this will definitely help you out!
• 20 Time Management Tips – A great list of tips to manage your habits and tasks to get the time in life you want!
• Successful People Traits – Here are some great tips to be successful.  You have be that today!
• 25 Talks to Ignite & Unleash Your Creativity Most of these are from Ted Talks, my favorite video site of all!
• 70 Essential Personal Development Blogs for College Students A fantastic list of personal development blogs that I’m honored to be included in!
• 5 Ways to Attract the Relationships You Want – This is a great article on relationship tips
• Motivational freestyle rap by Armen – He’s been hiding a skill you all deserve to hear! Impressive!

Favorite Long Lists

• 100 Best Blogs to Help You Find Happiness
• 100 Excellent Lifehacks for Your Long Commute

From the Archives Here at LearnThis.ca

As I look back at older articles here I realize just how much content and useful articles there still are from early on here at LearnThis.ca.

• Oct 26, 2008: How to Mediate Difficult Communication Situations
• Dec 18, 2008: Want More Influence? Give to Others First
• Dec 29, 2008: Life and Work Balance
• Jan 12, 2009: Leadership: Skill Development

Off topic Fun, Stumbles and Curiosities

I wanted to highlight a few sites I’ve found from my own interests and hobbies.

• Earthship Biotecture – these homes really intrigue me from the point of view of how self sustaining they are, I love plants and especially the idea of growing so much inside your home and all the renewable resources used for these excellent new sustainable homes.  I have a strange feeling I will have one of these at some point in my life, something about them really interests me.  Anyway, have a look at the site and some videos about the technology behind every Earthship.
• Remote Control Vehicles – this is a wildly popular hobby and there are so many excellent models now available it can be a really fun hobby to get into.  I learned how to fly (barely since I’ve not practiced much) a 6 axis helicopter and it is quite a challenge.  If you are at all interested you can check out moe helicopter models here.  I strongly advice running a simulator though before starting with any real models to see if you like it and can learn to fly first. Or fly with a friend or local club first before spending much money on fly models, as they are much more difficult than land vehicles.
• With my love for extreme mountain unicycling I’m always looking for new hiking/riding trails and I’ve found a site that is just a fantastic resource for trails all across north America so I figured it would be useful to many readers who share interests in related areas.  Anyway, the site is called TrailPeak and you can search for all kinds of trails anywhere in NA including specifics for Earth, snow and water style of trails.  It’s quite a fantastic site and provides community based collection of pictures, maps, descriptions and trail ratings and is by far the biggest and most accurate site I’ve seen for this.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 11 Comments »