I've been having a lot of epiphanies lately. For the first time in my life, I've stepped back and truly questioned everything about myself. What kind of person am I? What kind of person do I want to be? Where do I want to go? What do I want to do?
And you know what I've come to realise? All those 'I's don't matter a lot. If I want to have a fulfilling life, if I want to achieve anything, it's not going to be under my own power. To a large extent, it is the people I bring into my life that will make me happy and who will help me bring about the change I want to see in the world.
The phrase "alone we are powerless, but united we are strong" (or variants thereof) gets bandied around a lot, and I've always accepted it as a truism, but until now I have never felt it.
Now I see that while self improvement is an admirable goal, it takes others to truly lift one up to the heights of limitless potential. Synergy may be a horrid management buzzword, but it makes sense! By helping others, we help ourselves more than we could imagine.
Showing posts with label self development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self development. Show all posts
Saturday, 17 July 2010
Sunday, 11 July 2010
An idea: a Personal Development Social Networking site/Online book club
So many books, so little time
Lately I've been flicking through Amazon looking at all the books I'd like to read when the thought struck me "Why bother reading the whole book? The key messages could probably be summarised in a few pages?". Furthermore, how do I know whether the book is any good or not? Will it help me achieve my goals, or it just a waste of time?
An idea: user generated commentaries
How great would it be if there was a site that pulled together multimedia commentaries (video!) outlining the key messages of a resource (books or otherwise) that could help you achieve your goals? Click on a goal, e.g. "Improve communication skills" and you would be presented with a list of resources to help you achieve the goal. Users could vote on the material, elevating the most useful commentaries to the top of the list.
Goal setting social networking sites
This would be a perfect complement to the goal setting social networking sites like www.43things.com and www.goaltribe.com. On these sites, you can set your own personal goals, track your progress against them, create action plans and support and be supported by your friends (the social networking side of it).
A fusion: Personal Development Social Network
What I'd love to see is a way to bring these two ideas together so that you could access resources that would help and inspire you to achieve your goals. It would be fun but oh so useful for personal development. It would be the epitome of positive procrastination.
What do you think?
Would a site like this be useful for you? Would you contribute to it? (After all the power of the site would be in its user base)
How would it pay for itself?
Ideally, the site would be free to allow as many people as possible to access it and contribute to it. How could hosting, etc. be paid for? I hate google ads and couldn't stand to have them cluttering up the page. Is there another way?
Lately I've been flicking through Amazon looking at all the books I'd like to read when the thought struck me "Why bother reading the whole book? The key messages could probably be summarised in a few pages?". Furthermore, how do I know whether the book is any good or not? Will it help me achieve my goals, or it just a waste of time?
An idea: user generated commentaries
How great would it be if there was a site that pulled together multimedia commentaries (video!) outlining the key messages of a resource (books or otherwise) that could help you achieve your goals? Click on a goal, e.g. "Improve communication skills" and you would be presented with a list of resources to help you achieve the goal. Users could vote on the material, elevating the most useful commentaries to the top of the list.
Goal setting social networking sites
This would be a perfect complement to the goal setting social networking sites like www.43things.com and www.goaltribe.com. On these sites, you can set your own personal goals, track your progress against them, create action plans and support and be supported by your friends (the social networking side of it).
A fusion: Personal Development Social Network
What I'd love to see is a way to bring these two ideas together so that you could access resources that would help and inspire you to achieve your goals. It would be fun but oh so useful for personal development. It would be the epitome of positive procrastination.
What do you think?
Would a site like this be useful for you? Would you contribute to it? (After all the power of the site would be in its user base)
How would it pay for itself?
Ideally, the site would be free to allow as many people as possible to access it and contribute to it. How could hosting, etc. be paid for? I hate google ads and couldn't stand to have them cluttering up the page. Is there another way?
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Talent is overrated
I recently read two excellent books: "Talent is overrated" by Geoff Colvin and "The brain that changes itself" by Norman Doidge.
The key message of both is that there is no such thing as being "naturally" good at something. Expertise/skill is not born but made and those individuals who appear to be light years ahead of everyone else are in that position because of years of specific practice.
Specific practice involves identifying your weaknesses and focusing on activities that can overcome them. It is often hard, but hard work is not necessarily enough. Spending a huge amount of time doing things you're already good at is not the most effective or efficient way to improve. The effort must be concentrated.
The reason why it works is neuroplasticity, a relatively new theory in psychology, which claims that the brain can change. Through targeted practice, neurons in your brain are induced to form new connections that allow you to perform new tasks and perform old tasks faster. A good summary is "neurons that fire together, wire together". There are some astounding stories of people who were born with enormous neural defects but have managed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and attain a high level of intellectual ability.
This framework strikes such an accord with me. In the past I have been guilty of thinking that if I do an enormous volume of work (whether it be exercise, learning vocabulary, or work work) I will improve. It did help to some extent, but I could've got to where I am right now a lot faster if I had instead concentrated on what I wasn't good at.
From now on, whenever I detect a weakness or an area I could be better at, I'm going to pounce upon it! My first target is public speaking. I'm going to push myself out of my comfort zone and join the Monash Debating society next semester.
I strongly encourage you to give it a try and read the books:)
The key message of both is that there is no such thing as being "naturally" good at something. Expertise/skill is not born but made and those individuals who appear to be light years ahead of everyone else are in that position because of years of specific practice.
Specific practice involves identifying your weaknesses and focusing on activities that can overcome them. It is often hard, but hard work is not necessarily enough. Spending a huge amount of time doing things you're already good at is not the most effective or efficient way to improve. The effort must be concentrated.
The reason why it works is neuroplasticity, a relatively new theory in psychology, which claims that the brain can change. Through targeted practice, neurons in your brain are induced to form new connections that allow you to perform new tasks and perform old tasks faster. A good summary is "neurons that fire together, wire together". There are some astounding stories of people who were born with enormous neural defects but have managed to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and attain a high level of intellectual ability.
This framework strikes such an accord with me. In the past I have been guilty of thinking that if I do an enormous volume of work (whether it be exercise, learning vocabulary, or work work) I will improve. It did help to some extent, but I could've got to where I am right now a lot faster if I had instead concentrated on what I wasn't good at.
From now on, whenever I detect a weakness or an area I could be better at, I'm going to pounce upon it! My first target is public speaking. I'm going to push myself out of my comfort zone and join the Monash Debating society next semester.
I strongly encourage you to give it a try and read the books:)
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