@mhsutton

heart.head.work.life

Category: Being

  • The Leviathan and the Whale: How Blocs Are Our Last, Best (and Probably Failing) Hope Against Corporate Overlords

    The Leviathan and the Whale: How Blocs Are Our Last, Best (and Probably Failing) Hope Against Corporate Overlords

    Right, let’s talk survival in the 21st century. It’s not enough to be a nation anymore; you’re either part of a gang, or you’re shark bait. I’m talking about the “blocs” – the EU, NATO, whatever economic pact is flavor of the week. And then you have the “whales,” the tech titans, the financial behemoths, those unelected corporate leviathans that are turning us all into their personal playthings. It’s a messed-up world, and frankly, if you’re not in a bloc, you might as well be wearing a “kick me” sign on your back.

    The Blocs: Necessary Evil or Just Evil?

    Let’s face it, the whole “bloc” thing is a bit of a con. Nations, puffed up with their ancient flags and national anthems, huddling together for “strength in unity.” It’s a bit like watching toddlers build a fort to keep out the neighborhood bully. Sure, they might look formidable on paper with their “shared interests” and “collective defense” buzzwords, but it usually boils down to bureaucratic nightmares and compromised sovereignty. But, let’s be honest, in this shark tank, you need a bigger boat, even if the boat’s leaking.

    • The Necessity of the Gang: Let’s be brutally frank. If you’re a mid-sized country not named “USA” or “China,” you’re basically a tasty treat for the whales, unless you have bloc protection. These corporations can – and will – exploit your resources, manipulate your markets, and influence your politics until you’re a hollowed-out shell. So, being in a bloc? Kind of a necessary evil, like a poorly-maintained shield against the corporate hordes.
    • Bureaucracy: A Feature, Not a Bug: However, blocs, by their very nature, are bureaucratic monsters. They are slow, lumbering, and about as agile as a three-legged elephant. Decision-making gets bogged down in endless meetings, while the whales, light on their feet, dance circles around them, gobbling up whatever they want.

    The Whales: Unstoppable, Untouchable, and Unethical

    And then, of course, we have the whales. They are the true power brokers of the 21st century. These companies control our information, our communication, and increasingly, our finances. They’re not constrained by borders, constitutions, or any pesky notions of human rights. They are profit-maximizing, data-hoarding, algorithm-wielding machines, and you’re all just pieces on their digital gameboard.

    They operate in a realm where accountability is a quaint myth, and their only loyalty is to their bottom line. You don’t elect them, you can’t vote them out, and any attempts at regulation just seem to make them stronger. They’re the digital equivalent of a natural disaster, and we’re all just trying to build sandcastles on the beach.

    Civil Liberties: Gone With the Tide?

    So, how are these power plays impacting your everyday life? You guessed it – badly. Here’s a grim recap:

    1. Unaccountability: The Whale’s Favorite Sport: The whales play by their own rules and have no need to justify their actions. They collect your data, manipulate your emotions, and push you around without ever facing any consequences. They are untouchable. They don’t even pretend to give a damn. [1]
    2. Democracy, A Relic of the Past: Whales are practically buying politicians in bulk. Your elected representatives are like puppets, doing whatever their corporate masters tell them to do. They’re just there to offer the illusion of democracy, while the real power resides in the boardrooms of the whales. [2]
    3. Social Media: The Brainwashing Machine: Platforms like Facebook, X, YouTube aren’t platforms; they’re carefully designed propaganda machines. They amplify the worst of humanity while suppressing dissent, all in the name of engagement and profit. And the digital barons? They’re fine with this, as long as the clicks keep coming. [3]
    4. Privacy: What Privacy?: Big Tech views your data as their personal piggy bank. They collect it, sell it, and use it to manipulate you, all under the guise of “personalized experience.” And you? You’re just giving it all away. For “free” access to their services. [4]
    5. Censorship: By Algorithm: The whales now decide what information you get to see, and what you don’t. They’re the gatekeepers of the internet, and they’re not exactly fair-minded about it. And if they disagree with your views, well, too bad, they will just ban you. [5]

    The Bloc’s Dilemma: Be Big, Be Agile. Can It Be Done?

    So, the challenge for nations is clear: you need to be in a bloc for protection, but blocs tend to be slow and cumbersome. The central problem? How do you create a large, powerful entity (a bloc) that also has the agility and dynamism of a smaller, more flexible entity?

    It’s like trying to design a cargo ship that can also win a speed boat race. It’s a contradiction, but that’s the bind we’re in.

    A Few (Probably Futile) Ideas

    So, what to do? It’s a long shot, but here’s the plan:

    • Demand Actual Democracy: Seriously, make politicians earn their keep, not the corporations.
    • Regulate the Whales: Enact real laws with real teeth to keep these corporations in check. And don’t let them “self-regulate”. That is like asking the wolf to guard the sheep.
    • Become Social Media Literate: Learn how to spot the scams and manipulation tactics of social media. And then spread the word.
    • Fight for Privacy: Stop giving away your personal information for free.
    • Support the Resistance: Find the people trying to challenge the status quo and back them, whatever it takes.

    The Grim Conclusion

    Look, we’re not in a good place. We’re being squeezed between lumbering blocs and power-hungry whales. The odds are stacked against us. But if we don’t start demanding change, we’re all going to be swimming in data and propaganda, and no one will even remember what “freedom” meant in the first place. So, get angry, get organized, and get ready to fight – because no one else is going to do it for you.

    References:

    [1] Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
    [2] Lessig, Lawrence. Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It. Twelve, 2011.
    [3] Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2018.
    [4] Lyon, David. Surveillance after Snowden. Polity, 2015.
    [5] Morozov, Evgeny. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. PublicAffairs, 2011.

  • On Suicide.

    On Suicide.

    From my late 20s I lived with bouts of depression.

    I don’t know if I’m chemically prone to it or just the pressure of perception of the expectations I placed on myself created a new ‘gem’ in my crown. In any case, I would have quite deep lows.

    The first time the thought of suicide crossed my mind was when I was 31 – in the worst time of my divorce and wracked with guilt about failing as a father to two young children and the hitherto unresolved grief of missing my Dad. It was the usual thoughts of ‘they’d all be better without me’ / ‘I’d be better without this’ / ‘this is too much to take’.

    I have always managed to talk myself away from ending my own life. There has always been a voice of reason that chimes in and says something to talk me down. There has always been work to pour myself into, to ride out the darkness.

    Recently though, I have come to another place. One that I find great logic in and certainly what seems like a longer term cognitive solution.

    A party at Hotel California, but you can leave anytime you want.

    I accept that the person I am now can have these thoughts and probably always will – given enough stress. That’s OK. There is a cycle to it. There are signs of an impending low I can see and there are things I can do to mitigate.

    I also now accept that I have the power to end my own life anytime I chose. That is the biggest release I found. It – for me at least – is the biggest affirmation to staying alive. In a thought, I have broken the biggest reason I had to contemplate suicide – that horrible, powerless sense of being trapped.

    Speaking to my daughter recently about this, I developed a really apt metaphor (those who know me, know that metaphors are my thing!). This is something that now plays in my head and reinforces that sense of NOT feeling trapped – a new kind of fearlessness.

    Imagine you went to a party. You will hear music you love, some you hate. You will bump into rude people, you’ll hang out with others that make you laugh and love. Sometimes you will feel miserable and want to leave. But there is no exit and every time you try to leave, your friends guilt trip you into staying. At some point, you’re not having fun anymore. You’re trapped.

    What should have been a fun night, turns into a nightmare.

    But what if, as you enter the party, – you are told where the exits are and you can leave any time you want and no one would stop you. They would miss you and perhaps might feel disappointed, but you wouldn’t feel like a party pooper for wanting to leave. My bet is you would stay all night – simply because you have the power to decide if / when to leave.

    I’m sticking around in this party – however sucky it gets – because I know I can leave anytime.

    Time to teach people to not feel trapped.

    It is time for the taboo about suicide to end. I have no doubt that it contributes to the sense of being trapped that many people who consider suicide feel.

    The fact is we each do have the power to end our lives – we should have the legal right to also.
    It should not be criminalised.

    That is not to say other forms of intervention are not necessary – if someone is being abused and decides to not commit suicide, the abuse still needs to stop and the trauma of that still needs to be resolved.

    We must still talk more about how we feel with open hearts and open minds and people who need treatment should still have it. This metaphor of being able to leave the party is only a part of the bigger picture of care for all of us.

    I think that without being released from this sense of being trapped, all therapy is similar to asking a bird to live more happily in its cage.

    This might have triggered you.

    Yes, suicide is a sensitive subject.

    People who have lost loved ones and are dealing with the grief and inexplicable nature of it all might feel angry about reading what I have written. That’s OK – lets talk about it.

    I offer my words as someone on the same path as their loved ones but who has found a way to manage it differently. Perhaps it might help someone.

    Featured Photo by Kajetan Sumila on Unsplash

  • I Want to Help One Billion People Prioritise Their Happiness

    I Want to Help One Billion People Prioritise Their Happiness

    A very bizarre set of events led me to discover Mo Gawdat and his movement onebillionhappy.

    This highly inspiring man who could, by all accounts, be sitting in his wealth, isolated from everything that is going on in the world, is instead on an audacious mission to help ONE BILLION people figure out and focus on their happiness.

    Not only for themselves, but to significantly shift the narrative we are all putting out into the world – specifically to shift  what data machines learn from.

    I love this and I’m going to help.

    What’s not to love? Help people prioritise and invest in their happiness leading to happier lives and help a better world data stream that machines can learn from.
    I’m in.

    Over the next 3 months, I want to run an experiment:

    I will invite 8 people to join a ~30 minute video call where we will explore what happiness means to each of us and how we each invest in it.

    Each person invited commits to run another 8 person meetup – online or offline, in exactly the same way, discussing exactly the same topic. And so on.

    If my math is right (it’s basically 8^10) and the plan works, in 10 weeks, over ONE BILLION people will have met. No repeats, no strain on organisers.

    Just a simple 30 minute conversation.

    Each person will have invested about 1 hour to create such an impact – 30 minutes as a guest, 30 minutes as a host.

    Here is my simple projection:

    Thank you for being willing to help with this experiment and if you would like to be included in the invitation, please comment below.

  • 10 Days into #LinkyBrains and this is what it's about for me.

    10 Days into #LinkyBrains and this is what it's about for me.

    10 mad days

    It has been the maddest 10 days of my life and I’ve had plenty mad.

    Time to reflect on this LinkyBrain thing – taking in all the feedback  that’s rolling in from chats, blog posts and spontaneous conversations and I’d like to share them.

    Here are my reflections, 10 days in.

    LinkyBrains has touched on something profound

    People from all kinds of backgrounds, jobs, ethnicities, genders are engaging with this. They want to share their experience, others just want to read and comment. Others still are volunteering to help – even as the plan of what needs help is emerging.

    People are organising and meeting up and connecting.

    The Core Are Committed

    Every community/movement was started somewhere by someone.

    This one started with  3 naked dancers –  Doug, Alex and Chris.
    It was joined by a follower – Mike (me) – now we are all dancing naked.

    It is what it is.

    We aren’t more important, we aren’t thought leaders, we sure as hell aren’t experts in anything remotely like this.  ‘First’ doesn’t confer any more rights and privileges than ‘last’. What matters is being in the movement – everyone earns their respect from the things they choose to help with, and the impact they create.

    We are simply naked dancers and we keep dancing and working to keep the dance growing. Join in.

    We are walking a fine line. Inclusion vs Exclusivity

    A really amazing article gave words to what many seemed to be thinking:

    Is this some kind of self-congratulating, wealthy male party?

    Is this another exclusive club for those who love talking about themselves – because we need that like a hole in the head?

    Is this LinkyBrain vs non LinkyBrain?

    No. It isn’t any of that. 

    The narratives so far seems to be dominated with stories/confessions of ‘look how great I turned out with these things that should have slowed me down’.

    If that is all you read, it would paint a picture of exclusivity. But I see this differently.

    Life is full of challenges, they are like tunnels.

    Of course it can be hard for everyone but, for people who see the world differently from society’s normal range, it can be especially hard. That is what this movement is about – making it easier and helping those people contribute to the benefit of everyone.

    Most of the confessions are from ‘Jubilant emergers’ – they’ve emerged from various tunnels and discovered ways to be happy and successful at navigating tunnels.

    We are not hearing from anyone currently in a tunnel – confused with where they fit, struggling with school / work / life, being understood or however it manifests.

    We are not hearing from those approaching a tunnel – who might not even know there are tunnels.

    We are not hearing those who might not be facing the challenges themselves, but are supporting people who are. Their voices are important too.

    Those groups aren’t often able to speak out and share their realities.
    We must do better to find way to hear them. Help us.

    We need to move beyond Jubilance to sharing ways to navigate tunnels with anyone just behind us. How did you cope with this, what did you actually do to address that fear etc.

    Some abuse will happen

    I remember seeing someone trying to sell underwear with the tag #metoo. It pissed me off.

    There will always be people trying to promote a personal agenda with any movement – however noble the cause is. That is just what it is. There’s nothing I can do about that beyond doing my best and remain committed to the bigger picture.

    The Good Will Shine Through

    We – me and the emerging LinkyBrains community – are going to keep encouraging the good, the humanity in us all, the positive. We will continue to help stories emerge, help people connect and do their best work for the benefit of everyone.

    By: John – CC BY 2.0

    I am an unwavering believer in the fundamental goodness of people and that will carry our efforts to everywhere in the world. It will quieten the negativity and amplify the goodness.

    What Now?

    You have simple decisions to make :

    Help or not.

    Join the dance or watch from the sidelines – pointing and laughing while we change the world.

    Helping is easier than you imagine – just some easy things you can do now!

     I’m still dancing. I’m in.

  • I have a confession. I'm a #Linkybrain

    I have a confession. I'm a #Linkybrain

    The world became much less lonely for me two weeks ago.
    I was quietly minding my own business, doing what I always do – dream and deliver. Then I read something that connected with feelings I had buried deep and lost the key to. Then I read another and another – until it was clear. I was not alone in my world.

    I’m an outsider born to outsiders. Born to an Punjabi mum whose parents migrated to Singapore and a black Caribbean dad who escaped a small island at 17. Both moved first to Ghana and then to Nigeria to do great things with newly independent countries. So you see, none of us fit.

    Mixed race children are natural outsiders – we are never fully one nor the other. We force the world to consider its fucking boxes. But that is another story.

    Growing up in Nigeria, I adapted to fit in. If you are fairer skinned than the norm, you get called names – not hateful – but being called ‘Oyinbo’ still stings when all you want to do is not attract attention.

    School was unremarkable to say the least. I did the minimum to stay in the game. I was great at English  – my parents were both teaching it.  But I remember thinking at age 9 – ‘why are we being taught this exact thing and not something else’ – even if I didn’t know what that something else was – I knew there had to be.

    I was the kid for whom the multiple choice options never had the answer. The one for whom the opportunity to free flow the answer and bring previously unconnected ideas to the question was golden.

    I saw so many of my friends who I now believe to be linky brained struggle and cope the best they could. Some were literally brutalised by the corporal punishment culture of the educational system. Others marched tirelessly to the predestined outcomes of their parents – ‘you will be a lawyer/doctor/accountant!’

    I now recognise I had the most supportive parents ever. They let me try (and fail) at so many things without pressure, including

    • worked at a chicken farm
    • apprenticed to an TV repair guy at 11
    • apprenticed to a basket weaver at 12
    • learned to drive at 13 (which was briefly interrupted because I killed the lawnmower)
    • started a micro-loan service at 13
    • programmer of computers from age 13
    • delivery guy for my dad’s bar from 14
    • video club entrepreneur from  14 (we only had 200 films that my mum brought as hand luggage on her travels)  – I would lend the same film out to the same person at 5 times – each time telling them a different story line!
    • my house was a magnet for LinkyBrains – a sanctuary for all those written off for not being focused or academically brilliant. My mother took them under her wing, they became my friends and family.
    • travelling and experiencing different cultures and viewpoints. I had been to Canada, the US, Singapore, Russia, Togo, Malaysia, Ghana by the time I was 10 – seeing what poverty looked like, seeing how people welcome you.

    My Confession

    I am driven by an incredible amount of empathy for the human condition. Having had my ass handed to me by life – my dad died when I was 17, I was married by 21 and had the first of my 4 kids at 23. Divorced at 29. That either kills you, turns you into a mean drunk or fills you with compassionate understanding that we aren’t perfect, we fuck up but we are also powerful beyond belief.

    I need people around me, that get me and are passionate, to amplify my magnificence. We become greater than the sum of our parts.

    I day dream a lot.. Always have and I hope I always will. In my mind – time just stops and I slip into the gaps in reality. This is where I imagine what the world could be and how to make it happen. So if we are ever in conversation and I appear glassy eyed and unresponsive – you’ll know where I am.

    I am cursed with ideas and enough of all the skills to have a go at them. My only enemy is time and the absolute principle not to fuck people over.

    I’ve been told to ‘focus’, to pick one thing, to specialise. I’ve apologised for this. I’m done apologising.

    I suck at execution – because life gets in the way and I often can’t sustain the enthusiasm in the ensuing drudgery. I love working with people who help sustain me.

    I tend to outpace and out-passion my partners. Which often leads to disaster – someone I’ve come to deeply respect suggests that I ‘sabotage’ those relationships. Needs further exploration, but suspect he is correct.

    For the longest time, I craved a sense of belonging – to find where I fit. I even craved to be mediocre because that seemed to be a group that just exists without much effort. But it didn’t work out – my curiosity captured me again.

    I have multiple focuses at any one time. I can’t do it any other way. I get bored and frustrated. I jump from thing to thing and back again. I recently learned this is how artists work on a piece. A bit here and there, working in iterations until the piece is done. This often annoying variation in my wiring has led me to:

    • learning to fly planes
    • doing a human rights masters and speaking at the UN Human Rights Commission
    • having multiple attempts at learning the saxophone, piano and conga drums, Italian, Spanish and Japanese – each attempt builds on the last and brings me closer to my outcome. I don’t seek mastery.
    • building and failing at more startup ideas than I care to admit to, losing incredible amounts of time and money and amassing incredible amounts of learning and relationships.

    I’m really good at building teams – I mean crazy good. At making people feel valued and valuable. My gift is interaction and the breaking of barriers. I connect people with ideas and make them fly.

    Many things do not interest me at all – I do not pretend anymore.

    I’m a master at embracing uncertainty. It doesn’t scare me at all. I think it is a red herring.

    Failing my children is my greatest fear. By failing, I mean not giving them the greatest range of experiences from which they can make better choices and the support to realise they are magnificent.

    I often feel alone in crowds and I invent personalities to entertain myself – from all the crazy shit I’ve seen, done and seen done. If you see me grinning to myself in a crowd, now you know why – ask to be invited in.

    I’m prone to depression and I now know how to manage this more successfully. There are still times of sadness and melancholy – often at the world and my perceived lack of impact on those things I promised myself to care about.

    I very often feel like an imposter  – even in a profession that I have done successfully for 20+ years and in some areas that I helped to define as a role. I find myself comparing what I know to what others know – and I’m never that good!

    I’ve done incredible things. People have told me later that I helped them realise huge things in their lives – open up more, make a decision they’ve avoided or just get out of a rut they are in. It is magnificent.

    I’m fascinated by why people do the things they do and why they don’t do the things they love. My mission is to have more people value Joy above all else.

    I am a #LinkyBrain and I’m not alone.

     

  • March's 30 Day Challenge: 2 minutes of high knees + 3 minutes of push ups!

    March's 30 Day Challenge: 2 minutes of high knees + 3 minutes of push ups!

    5 Minutes seems the right amount of time

    To get to a very nice sweat – with the right exercises of course.

    The 30 Day Plank Challenge was phenomenal! My back, legs and core feel so much more reliable. I think that they are so effective that I will keep doing them every other day, in addition to the current challenge.

    2 minutes of non-stop High Knees + 3 minutes of as many push ups as I can manage – every day, for 30 days.

    If you don’t know what the High Knee exercise is, here is a great intro (ignore the smatlzcy American accent):

    The key is sticking with it for as long as you can manage. I find that going slower is a better option than stopping – because it is really hard to get started again.

    As for push ups, maintaining proper form is key to avoid injury. This dude gives great intro. Classic push up is fine – if you are adventurous, do some funky variations.

    I’ve started already – so lets see how it goes! Good luck and please get moving.

    Tip:

    I use the very useful IntervalTimer by Seconds Pro to help me not cheat on the timing. Here is the timer for this high knees and pushups challenge.

    Challenge yourself!

    Next for April: 2 minute burpees + 3 minutes of squats, every morning !

  • My 15 Year List of Ideas is a Ready Made Company Selector

    My 15 Year List of Ideas is a Ready Made Company Selector

    For the last 15 years I’ve maintained a list of ideas to build – things that both excite me and improve the world.

    I’ve kept it pruned, adding new ideas, removing those that no longer seem viable and adding more details of the idea over time to those that still do.

    It turns out this list is a wonderful way to help me identify those companies that I would really love to work with. To help those people build things that I am passionate enough to want to build myself.

    Turns out that I care more that those amazing and positive things become realised and are in the world doing good than I do about being the person that created them.

    Turns out I’m equally happy to be one of the many hands and hearts to bring them into existence.

    One such company is Too Good To Go – this amazing organisation is using tech to reduce food waste.

    Their mission ties in so strongly with an idea that I had about five years ago – “fix the problem of global western food waste”

    Then at the Agile Testing Days conference in Potsdam last year as I brainstormed with some amazing people including Maria Urdaneta Castro, Ilan Kirchenbaum and Karen Greaves, that idea morphed into “The People’s Pantry”:

    So what is the takeaway here (pun intended!)

    • keep a list of your passionate ideas, keep them pruned – I spend 2 hours a month on this. Remember to write what the compelling goal is  – what change do you want to see in the world.

    • keep a look out for those people/organisation that are trying to build it.

    • join them and help, if you can.

    I hope this proves helpful to you to remember what you are passionate about and to help when you are looking for a job where passion and purpose are important.

    Thanks for reading and I’ll let you know how it goes 🙂

  • Offer: Let's have a helpful conversation

    Offer: Let's have a helpful conversation

    It seems that when I’m most busy is when I also seem to want to share and help others the most – so continuing in a long established tradition, I would like to offer some office hours to help anyone who needs it.

    But first – at the risk of inventing another buzzword/phrase that gets trademarked and certified, what is a ‘helpful conversation’?

    It is simply a time that you bring something a person needs help on, we talk about it and you leave feeling better, clearer, energised or otherwise ‘helped’. If you don’t leave the conversation feeling like it was s good spend of your time, then we haven’t had a ‘helpful conversation’.

    It isn’t free, it’s priceless.

    My time is the most precious thing I have and I offer it, in the hope that we both have a brilliant conversation and learn and share from each other. My reward is knowing that I helped you.

    So, what could be helpful to you?

    Here are some things I know I can help with:

    Startups

    because I’ve spent the last 15 years learning by doing

    Bootstrapping a startup
    Designing your test-the-market strategy – MVPs, guerrilla testing
    Essential tools I use everyday to planning, testing, prototyping etc super easy
    Designing marketing experiments
    Dealing with failure – how to take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’
    Hiring and equity sharing
    Advising your startup on a regular basis

    Agile Things

    because I’ve been coaching for over 10 years and been a dev, product guy, maker in this space for the last 16 years 

    Most things about Scrum, Kanban, Lean and variations therein.
    Should you get agile certification? I have an alternative view and can help talk you through your options.
    Building and growing self-organisation, empowered teams
    Being an effective manager or executive in an agile organisation or during a transition

    Helping People be Successful & Joyful

    because that is basically what my entire career has been about – and I love it.

    Using improv to get better at being present, collaborative and generally ‘good to work with’
    Software and tech industry career advice – what you might want to invest in (and not) as you start out in tech –  attitudes and essential skills
    Valuing learning and relationships.
    Getting mentors

    Business meeting culture

    because I built a startup to fix this and it has 6000 users.

    Simple techniques to transform your personal meeting behaviour
    Make any meeting better (or at the very least, suck less)
    Helping your organisation have fewer and better meetings

    I want a helpful conversation,  how do we do this?

    I thought you’d never ask! This is simple as pie.

    If you don’t know anything about me – I encourage you to check out my about page, my LinkedIn and some of my tweets.

    Then, if you think I could be helpful,  checkout my office hours availability, book an available time slot and show up.

    There, all done. I look forward helping however I can.

     

  • Yes, learning is hard. But do it anyway.

    Yes, learning is hard. But do it anyway.

    It seems popular, these days, for coaches and consultants to talk about ‘continuous learning’ or the ‘learning organisation’.

    Learning is like sex – everyone nods knowingly when it is being talked about, but few are actually doing it well or at all.

    For me, learning a new skill is hard – especially if you are unconsciously competent – i.e. an expert, in another domain. Although I take baby steps and mentally (an emotionally) prepare to feel inadequate or stupid, that preparation does not fully protect me against those feelings. I do feel frustrated and stupid when I learn something new.

    I’m not one of those naturally curious ‘take it apart to see how it works’ nerds. I need a reason to do anything – even if that reason is simply to have some fun. Luckily I am a solution dreamer – to problems that I see everywhere and even those that haven’t yet peaked. So, what I lack in curiosity, I make up for in imagination.

    Of course, learning is only the beginning – think of it as an introduction to a new skill. You are barely becoming competent, you are simply prepping yourself to begin. Practice, once you have the basics, is really where I make all my solid, sticky learning. This holds its own hardships too.

    My preferred style of learning anything is to have a goal – for example, when I learned to knit, I set myself a goal of knitting a scarf.

    This goal-focused approach means that I can focus my learning, ignoring those things that may be valuable but do not directly move me towards my goal. It also means I have a reason to practice – rather than to learn, it is to create my goal.

    What often suffers when I take this approach is that I skip a whole load of important theoretical back story of why certain things are the way they are. But on the plus side I get something tangible quickly.

    Every step of the learning experience, especially in the early stages are painful. I feel frustrated that I’m making such slow progress. I find having expertise in a related domain makes things worse.

    For example, as I learn React Native to build my Personal Relationships Management app – “Percy” – the WTF/min are really high because I know how quickly I can achieve the same functionality in Java or Ruby – both of which I code with some fluency.

    Of course you hear those well meaning fools who harp on about ‘make it fun’ – clearly they haven’t done any learning recently. How do you make the constant feeling of inadequacy or the sense of being a dumdum any fun?

    When I learned to juggle, I remember feeling physically sick from sense of failure when – in spite of my best efforts – I just couldn’t keep three balls in the air at the same time. Until I did and that sense was immediately quashed forever.

    This turnaround is addictive – and anticipating when I will get beyond the tunnel of crap into the light of palpable competence – itself is exciting. It’s a rush. It’s what keeps me showing up to learn and improve.

    The capabilities you develop are rewarding – if nothing else, this new skill gives you a new set of filters and paradigms to see the world through. It gives me a new world from which to draw metaphors from.

    So – of course it hurts, but it’s worth it – so do it anyway.

    How does learning affect you and why do you show up?

     

  • Day 1: I am Rohingya #51Days

    Day 1: I am Rohingya #51Days

    Today as part of my #51days act of solidarity, I shall change my twitter profile to

    ‘I am Rohingya”

    The Rohingya are an ethnic group that live in Myanmar – formerly Burma – they are mostly Muslims in a country that is predominantly Buddhist.

    For a toxic mix of reasons – ranging from religious difference, land grab, ethnic hatred to simply being  – the Rohingya have been persecuted almost out of existence. First by successive military juntas and now from a democratically elected government itself led by a former political prisoner and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

    The Rohingya seem to be the favorite whipping boy of everyone with power in Myanmar and the world seems mostly deaf and mute to their persecution.

    Myanmar is signatory to multiple human right treaties and conventions  – pretty much all the ones that matter. It has obligations to protect the rights of indigenous people, women, children, the disabled and pretty much everyone in its jurisdiction.

    The Rohingya do not deserve to be murdered, their women raped, their leaders tortured and disappeared. No one does. If they have committed a crime – charge and apply the law against them. To the best of my knowledge, their only crime, as a group, is to exist.

    The violence and discrimination is both by agents of the Myanmar start under the pretense of security and by private militias with the tacit and often, active, support of the State.

    Today, I stand with the Rohingya.

    Please learn more about this here: http://www.rohingya.org/portal/

     

    Photo by AK Rockefeller