As I’m sure everyone finds, cycles of time come and go in life and how we choose to spend that time determines everything we get involved in. For the last few months I’ve shifted much of my free time either to work on renovations and home improvements since moving or I’ve put my time in working for clients in my 3D business.  That need will likely continue and when I do make time to spend on my blog much of it makes me realize just how much there is to learn in running a blog. This article summarizes 3 important areas I’ve learned the most about from blogging!

The People Factor

This is definitely the one I like the most about blogging.  Having discussions with people and developing connections and friendships online is definitely a great value.  I’m afraid that many people get into blogging for themselves and so don’t ever spend much time interacting with or even trying to get to know other people through their blog.  I love this part of blogging and knowing there are friends who support me and who have similar thoughts and experiences that visit my blog (and I theirs) on a regular basis.  This itself is a huge encouragement which makes the time spent feel so much more valuable.  I only wish and hope that I’ll be able to meet in person some of the people I feel like I know so well online.  It’s incredible how revealing blogging can be and a person can definitely get to know another person quickly when they share a lot of their thoughts and backgrounds on important subjects.  I find this especially true for personal development blogs since the subject is so often rooted in underlying beliefs, morals and life principles, you find out quickly what matters to a person and yourself and talk about those items.  If only we could have those conversations with everyone we meet in our work and day to day interactions, image how much quicker we would get to know people.

Online Marketing

Online marketing and promotion is another huge area for learning as a blogger.  I definitely knew a few things about online marketing before I got into blogging from operating my own online freelance graphics business but I never ventured into nearly as much marketing and promotion as I did once I got into blogging. I knew a bit about web design and HTML coding but knew little about all the variety of things you find in a marketing glossary. Words like SEO, adsense, click fraud, CTR, CPC, affiliate marketing, conversions, page rank, social media, and literally hundreds of other words for marketing your content and site I’ve learned as I’ve explored this vast world of online marketing.  I will say however that while all this learning has occurred naturally as I’ve been reading and involved with other bloggers in their own search for learning to market their content better and better.

Not only has this helped me with my blog, but also my business websites and my day job also gets the benefit of my knowledge now put to use for new online marketing programs that had never before existed.  I’m confident this media will only continue to expand so there is definitely value in knowing how to use it effectively for your business and personal life.  There is much more to learn and it seems to ever be evolving, the perfect recipe for someone who doesn’t ever want to stop learning!  Ha!

Learning from the Content

Written content is continually valuable for yourself and others as reference material.  I find myself referring to articles and series I wrote quite a while ago now very often and they are always valuable to me to pass along to people asking about those subjects.  I’m constantly surprised by how much shear volume of content that accumulates from blogging and how useful it can be in a variety of situations.

The other great thing to be learned from the content is in writing it itself.  I write about subjects I am interested in but I certainly don’t only pick subjects I already know about.  I go out and research my topics, I read books and articles to gain some insight and varying perspectives on the subject and then I write my own version and opinions on the subject based on what I’ve learned and experienced about it.  Sometimes this is over the course of years or even my whole lifetime and sometimes it’s over the course of a few hours.  There is something I learn, reinforce or realize every time I write any new content.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 19 Comments »

I’m a quick learning of software applications and I’ve done this by venturing into complex programs when I was very young from my interest in 3D graphics and video editing.  In spending much time in these types of applications over the years I have developed the skills to quickly learn any software application and I think I can help others to develop some of those same skills if practiced.  So these are the things I find work best to learn a new application and become more productive in it.

Understand the Software’s Purpose and Usage First

This is the first step because if you don’t know what an application is supposed to do, it is very difficult to learn and apply to how you think it might or should be used.  Depending on how you come across a new application, there are usually additional resources available to quickly get familiar with the application.  If you don’t know, look it up online, ask others who might use it and find out from the manufacturer or author who the software was built for and why?

If you know the applications purpose, you can look at it from the perspective of the intended user and that is the first step to quickly learning it.  If you attempt to learn an application from a user’s perspective it wasn’t designed for, chances are, you will become frustrated much easier or disappointed.

Test Out All the Options

The first thing I do is go and find the options.  I don’t try it, explore it, start some simple project or doing anything else first.  I always check the options.  I’ve learned that this tells a lot about an application and it also typically quickly shows some functionality of the software that you may not find out about with general use.  Often options hide things like advanced menus or toolbars that you’d have a hard time finding otherwise.  I love an application that has lots of configuration options and it always helps me to learn quickly what I can do with it.

Options often reveal ways to add, configure or setup the software to your own personal liking as well.  The quicker you do this, the more comfortable you will feel with the application and it will help to make you feel like you are in control of it, instead of it in control of you, which is exactly what you want when learning an application.

Run Full Screen so you Have no Distractions

Most software nowadays has an option to run full screen, and if not, it can at least be maximized.  This is simply a good way to eliminate other computer distractions so you can focus on learning that application, and that application alone.  I have a bunch of tips in this previous article on how to maximize your productivity on your computer and most of those can be helpful in this step as well for learning this new app.

Read the Quick Guides and Manual if its Complex

Simple software might be easy enough to pick up on your own just by playing with it for a few minutes or perhaps an hour or two.  However, if you cannot master an application in a couple hours, it is likely complex enough to have a user manual and that user manual will usually be quite helpful.  Yes, there are some bad user manuals out there but most have useful tips or at least they are a good reference to browse through to find any features or areas you haven’t yet explored or learned on your own.

The 3D software I use has hundreds of pages of user manuals and they ar e jammed full of useful tips, workflow suggestions, details and examples on how to do certain things, shortcuts and many other useful bits.  They are always worth browsing and reading straight though if the manual has enough good content in it.

I also recommend you make your own notes for items you think you will use in the future or want to try.

Check Online for Tips on that Software

Many applications have there own communities of followers or fan sites or forums online now a days.  These are excellent resources for finding additional tips for a piece of software.  They sometimes have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section that might answer some common questions you have.  Forums are great places to ask questions as well or to get support from the manufacturer or author if you need some help with the software.

Another often overlooked method of learning software is to search for and follow free tutorials.  There are literally hundreds of tutorial sites out there and thousands of applications that have tutorials written for them.  Many of these are free and can be easy to find for your application by doing just a few Google searches using keywords with your software name and “free tutorials” or “tutorials” or “help guides”.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This one is definitely my favorite.  I love keyboard shortcuts for applications and is actually one of the first things I learn if I know I will continue to use that application often.  Shortcuts allow you to run commands, open windows or navigate the options and features in an application much quicker than having to mouse to those locations every time.  When I’m working in an application, I keep my left hand on the keyboard pounding out all my known shortcuts and my mouse can stay in hand doing the mouse actions, instead of all the menu and options work.

I use a 7 button mouse and actually put man y keyboard combos and commands right on the mouse buttons using its driver software.  I can customize this on a per application and it makes it must faster to access what I without moving my hand away from the mouse.

You can often find keyboard shortcuts and shortcut cheap sheets online as well that people have build if you want a quick reference card for all the shortcuts.  Some user manuals and applications have this built in so you can easily refer to it for learning the shortcut keys.

Don’t Be Afraid to Explore

Last but certainly not least.  You must not be afraid to explore in an application.  You will never learn how to use it, if you don’t use it and the more you explore and learn about the application, the more likely it is that you will know that tool or feature when you really need it and can then immediately be useful with it.  Often there are multiple ways of doing things and if you explore an application, you can often find quicker alternatives to complete the same task.  The last thing you want is to be repeating a task using some difficult slow process just because you don’t know how to use the application.  I see this everyday with common applications like excel and word where people struggle with formatting options and simple features just because they have never taken the time to learn a few features that are designed to help in those areas.

Watching an others use an application is often useful as well since you can see how they use it or what features they use that you can learn from.  I love it when I notice someone do something in an application that I didn’t know was possible and then can ask them and quickly adopt that method myself.

So, I hope these techniques will help you to master an application and ultimately, be more productive with it.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 4 Comments »

Author: Norman Doidge, M.D.

Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science

Well I read this book on several recommendations after a brief bit of research on the plasticity of the mind.  I was definitely not disappointed and to be honest, I really loved this book. It was a fascinating, revealing look at how how thoughts and actions can truly change the structure of our mind and it does so in a hopeful examination of many brain changing breakthroughs.

Doidge is an amazing Canadian author and he simplifies the most complex of sciences into clear, vivid stories and experiments that demonstrate the astonishing changes the brain can make and in turn, transform the people housing them.

Neuroplasticity

Neuroplasticity has been formed by the discovery that the human brain is extremely malleable. Scientists have long known this is true with infancy, but the science now extends well into old age. In classical neuroscience, the adult brain was considered to be hardwired and a continuous working machine once formed.  Specific brain areas and maps were labeled with a specific purpose and little was known about if or how these areas could be replaced or repaired so it led to the common belief that you can’t easily mold the brain.

Who is the Book For?

This book drives home a paradigm shift in brain study and it has great value not only to those with a neurological disease, but for any human being with the curiosity and willingness to discover more about the makeup of their own abilities to learn, which is what interested me so much!

Doidge has numerous examples of neurologically diseased patients who gain from this revolutionary science to improve their condition.  Cases are studied from many severe conditions:

• Strokes
• Cerebral palsy
• Schizophrenia
• Learning disabilities
• Obsessive compulsive disorders
• Phantom limbs
• many more…

Each of these demonstrate the adult’s innate ability to alter the mind and how specific methods can be applied to reshape the brain.  Whether you know someone with these conditions or are purely interested in the marvel behind this new science, anyone can take away insight about learning and shaping the mind in a positive way.

The Learning Mind

Doidge also covers how the plastic nature of the mind affects not only mental mind maps in trauma but even in every day activities.  Societal differences and behaviors can have as much impact on the mind as a brain injury which he explores several examples of human abilities and specifically, the brain’s ability to mend itself due to social differences or environmental affects.

These implications of rewiring the mind however, are also to be cautioned.  The brain is actually so malleable it is also quite vulnerable to its surroundings and seemingly little impact input to the mind can make a drastic change to the way we perceive and handle the world around us.  The impact of media and television are showing significant impact and damage on the mind leading to disorders become more and more prevalent in today’s young people. This is something to be cautious of as people can highly influence and shape the mind as well.  Parents, peers, and leaders all make a significant contribution to the structure of our brains and while it can be changed, it is not always easy to do so.

Despite these risks of manipulating the mind, Doidge keeps a positive outlook through his fantastic stories of triumph and he walks through cases and ideas on how our thoughts can switch on specific genes and alter our brain anatomy.  He shows how intelligence can be improve with brain exercises, how people can improve their cognition, perception, muscle strength and music talents among others, all by letting the imagination shape our minds for us.  I found these areas and really the whole book, absolutely fascinating, uplifting and amazing to see and put into practice the thoughts, imagination and input for my mind that let me shape it the way I want to.  I can’t recommend this book enough.

Norman Doidge, M.D., is a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst on the faculty at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Centre in New York and the University of Toronto, as well as an award-winning writer. He has presented his scientific research at the White House.  Website: http://www.normandoidge.com

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 11 Comments »

Unfortunately, there seems to be major shifts in the minds of our changing generations.  That shift is leaning people to need more things spoon fed to them with continuous distractions and activities while the mind of every individual is becoming more and more unchallenged.  Kids especially show this as young generations are easily bored and they seem to require more and more toys, games, activities, attention and things to keep them happy.  Funny thing is, this is happening mostly in the highly developed nations.

Learning Keeps the Mind Active

An active mind is a healthy mind so its important to keep your mind active throughout your life, not just when you are young.  One method to really keep the mind truly challenged is to always be learning.  Many people get to a point in their lives where they don’t believe they need to and some even think that they are no longer able to learn new things once they reach a certain age.  It’s this kind of believe that prevents them from learning new things, not their age at all.  It takes years to slowly disengage the mind and many people let their work and home lives become so comfortable and repetitive that they have no need to learn new things.  They don’t take on new experiences, they never go out looking to read or learn new things and they do the same job for many years!  This kind of lifestyle will quickly give someone the belief that they can’t learn any longer and its that believe then that prevents them from ever taking on new learning activities.

I recently wrote an article about empowering others to become learners and every step in that article applies to ourselves as well!.  The practice of learning new skills, studying new material, and building new skills and knowledge to apply is a powerful mind enhancer.  It strengthens your neural connections in the brain and exercises the mind’s memory.

Creative People Don’t Get Bored

Creativity is a trait that usually goes hand in hand with learning.  The most creative people in history and even those I know in my life are also the people that are constantly learning new things.  Think of famous inventors, artists and teachers; they are all creative and people who are constantly learning.  Creative thinkers are able to find new activities with very little or even no stimulation.  They can take their surroundings or current activity that might be very boring to one individual, and they can find new things to do, create and to think about.  Its doesn’t seem to matter where they are, who they are with, or what the environment has in it to spark the creativity and learning attitude to expose itself.

Using the signs of boredom is a very powerful tool in life.  Its useful to parents, teachers, and leaders in all areas of life.  Parents and teachers can use it as a sign that they have students or children with untapped potential just looking for more challenging studies and activities.  It’s a sign that the creative side of a person is not yet that developed either so bringing more of creative learning, games, hobbies and activities can improve that creative thinking.  Leaders can use it to easily identify their most creative thinkers and those who can handle more challenging work.  Learning should be an important part of everyone’s lives and at least in these areas, you can make a huge difference to yourself and others by making learning continuous and a bigger part of life!

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 17 Comments »

The desire to learn is not an easy trait to pass to others and while I have many of my own approaches to learn new things, there are countless other methods for learning that others use as well. None of those can simply be taught to anyone you cross since everyone learns with their own methods.  Not only that, but the desire to learn is something that has to come from an individual and cannot be expected without that person accepting to learn new things.  I believe that anyone who is a strong learner in life has great advantages in creativity, perspective, knowledge and many other areas.  If you can empower just one other person to become a learner themselves, you have given them a great gift!

This articles covers some of the methods I’ve learned to help empower others to become learners themselves.

Lead By Example

One of the most obvious and important ways to inspire others to learn is to ensure that others know you are learning yourself.  Make your actions speak for themselves when it comes to learning.  Talk about the things you learn and how you learned them.  Ensure that people know when you’ve learned something new by reviewing it with them or by presenting it to them.  Spend time studying and practising new methods and processes that you see.  Volunteer to teach new people in your work area everything about the job and make sure they know some of the resources you use for learning yourself.

Keep books on hand and talk to others about books they read.  Spend some time everyday reading books as it is the best resource for new material that exists still.  The internet is certainly an option as well but if its in the workplace, the internet is still often considered as a time waster, not a learning tool, so you should make other methods of learning more visible in the workplace.  Take some action with these as examples in your life and ensure that you are leading by example.  Doing this automatically attracts others to do some of the same things or use the same resources even without you hinting or asking them to.  People tend to copy others and if they see you learning, they will likely commit some learning themselves.

Demonstrate the Value of Learning

Sharing your success stories and failures is a great way to demonstrate the value of learning.  Take away from all your major activities something learned and share that with others.  Whether it is some life experience or project you have been on, look at what the things are that you learned from that and share that with others.  Look at how the mistakes you’ve learned from have improved you or helped you avoid such mistakes again or look at how you’ve repeated successes and learned to excel in those areas.  Demonstrating these type of results as a value of learning will help to inspire and motivate others to take learning more seriously themselves.  People value what impacts them and those they love so if you can demonstrate how learning something will improve their lives or those they love, you are much more likely to influence them into becoming a learning in that area.

Motivate with Rewards and Measures

If you are working to empower a friend, child, colleague or direct report, you should closely examine what kind of rewards and measures you use to encourage them to learn on their own.  Noticing new things learned is the easiest but often overlooked.  People want to be recognized so simply telling them what you noticed they were doing to learn more impressed you, or say thanks to them to encourage this type of behavior.  You may want to look at offering something for those who learn something new, or solve a problem by studying it or perhaps simply reading a book or fixed number of books.  Simple rewards can be very effective here especially for children.

The best kind of reward to give is one that is given without any prior promise or intent.  Do not tell someone you will give them a reward if they go learn something.  Instead, challenge them in different ways and then when they do learn something on their own, reward them for that spontaneously.  You don’t want someone to only learn if there is a reward at stake so its important that the rewards be random and spontaneous.

Measuring progress towards a goal of learning or self learning is also very helpful, especially if you have someone who you know is already working on becoming a more active learner.  Put some metric into place like the number of hours spent or the number of books read or the number of new things completed each week.  These types of measures can be highly motivating if you are a friend, parent or colleague with the intent to improve and help that person.  Don’t make it a person favor or competition, simply encourage them to become a more active learner.

Make resources Available and Easy to Access

Some people don’t know where to start when having to learn something new and this is where resources come in.  You can help provide the tools, people, training, courses, material or whatever else is needed to encourage someone to learn and empower them by eliminating any roadblocks.  You want to get as many things out of their way as possible so that the learning is easy.  Once there is a habit of learning and a desire, you can help them to get obstacles out of their way themselves.  These obstacles are things like having access to the learning materials, money to attend seminars and courses, lists of books and online sources for information, public library access, a network of people and friends who you can discuss and learn from and any other resources that would help someone learn.  Share any resources you’ve used for learning and lend out books and trade content.  Join a club that does this or look for used material or items to trade.  Introduce people to others with similar interests and learning habits so that as many resources that a person might need to learn from are readily available.

Let People Learn With Your Own Style

With all those resources listed above, not everyone is going to use them all or even like the idea of them all.  Find out how a person likes to learn and let them have their own style for content and practice.  It doesn’t matter how someone learns or even what they learn if you can empower them to become a life long learner.  Someone who learns today will continue to learn tomorrow and they will stimulate themselves to explore new areas and branch their learning experiences into new and different topics with various methods.  You should allow others to learn by their own tools and methods.  If you look at all the other headings from this article, they can each be accomplished while still letting a person learn with their own style so don’t push them into your style of learning and let them discover what works best for them.  There is certainly no problem with giving them suggestions or explaining what has worked well for you to help empower them, just make sure it is their own choice as a learner needs to have their own style of learning if it is to last.

Start Small

Empowering someone is a difficult task to accomplish so you should always start small.  You don’t want to make any massive changes or expectations on someone that overwhelms them and discourages them from being engaged in new learning activities.  Begin with simple straightforward things that you already know they can handle and build upon that to have consistency and repeatability in learning actions.  Ramp those activities up over time and make sure that you don’t accelerate too fast.  Keep in mind that you likely have a much higher ability to sustain a learning mindset and workload than someone you are looking to empower with that attitude so you need to ensure you allow them to grow and learn at their pace.  Make sure you recognize any and all progress since you want to encourage more learning and any increases in learning focus is valuable.

Set Goals and Plans

Goals and specific plans should help you to empower someone to become a learner as well.  Work with to set a specific goal that they can accept about their level of learning and ability to learn.  Something that is measurable and demonstrates an ability to learn and willingness to learn instead of a specific learning task.   Don’t teach or look for facts, content, or knowledge in these goals,  instead, teach them HOW to learn, how to think, how to approach things.  Give them space to become an individual with their own creative mind and an ability to find solutions to problems and a desire to hunt down that solution themselves.  Set the goals to help focus them and use them as a guide to review progress and help them get to a level of ability they are happy in achieving.  Continue to expand those goals over time as they are accomplished and look for new ways to complete each goal to help expand their learning capacity and ability.

Final Thoughts

Keep them away from the systemic teaching systems (like classic schooling and courses) that do nothing but spoon feed information, training memorization instead of thinking and ensure that every distraction and control is bound around a very rigid and non-flexible teaching style.  These methods are failing now to build students with individual minds and are producing less and less people with the ability and willingness to learn throughout their life!  Make sure to encourage "out of the box" thinking since thinking has become so conditioned in today’s schooling that few people ever come to realize the dangers of that system.

If you empower a person to learn, they become a learner and teacher for life with an immense ability to take on and excell with any new challenge!

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 4 Comments »

In my last article I explored the five Ws about training someone.  This article expands on that by closely exploring the HOW to train someone.

Start with the Right Mindset

If you offer to train someone, don’t pretend or imply that you know everything about that subject.  Even if you know a lot, there is always more to learn and you should offer to help in a way that you are suggesting ideas and wanting to help them learn instead of telling them what to do.  Being humble with training is important to avoid you coming across as a "know it all".  This can be especially true if you are teaching someone older than you or with more experience.

The attitude and mindset of wanting to help and teach someone else is what you want to portray, not the fact that you are smarter than them or know more than them.  That only leads to disrespect and makes the learning for less likely.

Prepare An Outline

To train someone something an outline can be a life saver for stepping them through a process and to guide you to stay on track.  You should create this BEFORE the training starts if you can and have it ready once you proceed.  Its helpful especially if you are not a natural learner since you may find it hard to stay on track or approach things in the right order.  Here are some things you might need to include in a typical training outline:

• Answer the question of what is the area you are training and why?
• Put some steps to learn this new thing onto paper (somewhere from 3-8 steps works best)
• Ask yourself what questions might someone have and prepare answers ahead of time to present them.
• If there is expected doubt or resistance to new training, explore ways to overcome that.
• List sections or titles for each stage in your training to help guide you and categorize your sessions.

Consider What Your Audience Wants to Learn

Don’t assume that what you plan to train will be everything that your audience wants.  You don’t need to change your topics or main areas, but sometimes looking to tailor your training just a little bit to cover the important areas for your audience will make a HUGE difference.  This doesn’t matter whether you are providing one on one training or a huge seminar.  Ask people what they want to get out of it and look to cover some of those areas specifically.  If you consider the audience, they will be far more receptive and attentive since they will actually be looking for the area that they a re most interested in.

Involve Your Audience

It helps to keep your audience alert and involved with the training as much as possible.  This ensures that they are more attentive and keeps their mind active in the learning process.  Have them answer questions, repeat things aloud, do short tasks on paper, work in groups, answer simple quizzes or anything else that has them directly involved with the new material.  Involving them directly and making things more hands-on is far more effective since so many people learn best that way.

Follow Up and Reinforce the Learning

Once you finish with your training, make sure to follow up on it.  This doesn’t matter if you had providing a one time session or continual training, following up on the areas you covered from previous training is important to refresh it for yourself and your audience, and it allows you to see how much has actually been learned.  The point of training is not that you taught it, the point is that who you taught it to has actually learned it.

Posted by Mike King under Learning | 3 Comments »