Start a List: “What I Want to Learn”

Remember, wanting is a good thing. The instinctive, natural selection of wanting.

It’s been a very stimulating weekend so far. I’m getting a lot of help from all of you in ignoring my new “empty nest syndrome” — I don’t have the time to succumb to it! ”Zach’s call home Friday night really helped too :-) ” When he talks about what his new college environment is beginning to gel as for him, I get very energized myself.

I hope you have decided to ho‘ohana with us this month. Our Ho‘ohana on Lifelong Learning is starting to strike a chord with people and I’m cheering! This month is going to be fun, and isn’t that what learning should be?

Dave, Phil and Adrian have gotten us started so magnificently; mahalo nui guys! I have already sent you to Dave; Do click in to the articles Phil and Adrian wrote about Lifelong Learning:

Stephen Covey devotees know of his 7th Habit, Sharpen The Saw; It is the habit of self-renewal. Phil Gerbyshak of Make it Great! shares with us how he’s interpreted this habit for his own journey with continuous learning. He offers us six different options, and I’d encourage you to jump into Phil’s comments with some ideas of your own. I couldn’t resist his post: click in and you can see what I added there.
Sharpen Your Saw by Continuously Learning.

We often hear that to be more productive, we all could learn to say “no” more often. Adrian Savage, author of The Coyote Within writes of how saying “yes” is a much better approach when it comes to Lifelong Learning.
Saying “Yes” to Life.

Learning and living are the same. When you stop learning, you start to die a little every day. Strong scientific evidence links between brain cells can regrow at any age if you give them some exercise. Your brain is a case of "use it or lose it."
—Adrian Savage

Start a Learning List for yourself: Just write down all the intriguing ideas coming your way this month, and something will start to emerge as your first pick before you know it.

Want a glimpse at my list?

One of the things I want to learn more about are wikis. I admit it: I’m a sucker for just about anything that Bren and Dwayne say is a good idea; they’re both so consistently great with their recommendations and they are natural-born mentors in their generosity sharing them. I read wikis, now I want to produce one.

Bren wrote Wiki Goodness, and
Dwayne wrote Wiki, wiki. Smooth and Sticky.
What’s not to love with titles like those?

The one I read the most often is Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. What a rich resource!

It looks to be a good place to start my learning curve on eventually producing a wiki: I’ve created my user account, now I’ve got to create a page; long overdue that I haven’t done this for MWA yet, don’t you think? Help tips are welcome from anyone who has already done this!

The online opportunities right now are mind-boggling. This is the newest entry on my List: “Schedule Michael Rappa course time.”

Sidebar: Thanks to GTD and MWA3P I’m learning to Next-Action my Lists whenever possible. This one used to read “Get a better understanding of the full scope of online enterprise.”

I just found Professor Rappa’s site this morning via the RSS feed I’d setup for the business page on del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us/popular/business – terrific place to let other web-surfers find goodies for you!):

Managing the Digital Enterprise by North Carolina State University professor Michael Rappa. It looks to be a goldmine.

These are his course “Learning Objectives.”

• Establish a basic understanding of the Internet as a communication network;
• Understand the Internet’s evolution from an historical perspective;
• Examine the centrality of communication networks in how business activity is organized;
• Explore how the Internet is causing the rules of business to change;
• Explore how the Internet is causing global markets to change;
• Understand the ways in which information technologies are changing society;
• Examine some of the causes underlying the rapid growth of e-commerce;
• Explore the implications for managing an enterprise in which the Internet is a central feature of how it operates.

Within his course you’ll find modules on Ethics, Governance, Intellectual Property (think copyrights), Trust (fight internet fraud), and much more. The page that initially drew me in was the one on Business Models.

So, What’s on your list? Share your ideas with us, won’t  you?