Coming back

We were very busy in the last weeks and, unfortunately, it was not the blabluble project that was drying our time. So we decide to stop and rethink the way we are working. We just realize that it is more important/interesting to dedicate small portions of our time EVERY day, rather than trying to bite too much, but not as often as we want. Here is our new way of working:

A clear vision

First things first. We need to have a very clear vision about where we are trying to go. That is not about a defined scope, but about a set of principles that we really believe. Simplicity, high quality, fun and sustainability are some of them. We already have invested some time to create a vision, but I think that it is not clear enough right now. That is our first week goal.

Removing non issues and impediments

We can cry a lot about what we don’t know how to do, or about things that is hard to learn, or things that is boring to do, or complain about the weather, etc, etc, etc. It is always easy to find a reason to do not do the things we want to do. A lot of the difficulties that are in front of us right now are not real issues, but just fake reasons to procrastinate. Anyway, some of them are real and we will try to figure out creative solutions for them.

Heartbeat

Healthy hearts beat at a constant pace. Even if you put yourself in move, like running, your heart will find its pace, maybe it is a fast one, but it beats at an almost constant pace. That is how we are planning to work, creating a weekly rhythm. Of course, we could decide to change the pace and go faster or slower, but we need to keep heartbeats.

Improving always

The points above are not perfect, but they are an improvement in the way we work. But because every solution brings some problems, we should improve always, change what is not working and try new ways to get better.

Continues…

Story tellers

I must confess that I’m not the kind of person that knows how to keep focus. Just one phrase or someone walking around works as a trigger in my brain and so a lot of thoughts starts to get chained in my head. Can you imagine a guy like me in a classroom? It was easy to forget the teacher and just think about a lot of more interesting things. Maybe the problem was with me because it was me losing the focus, right? What the hell was the problem with that kid?

Or maybe the problem wasn’t with me.

I can remember two or three teachers that know how to naturally keep my attention. What they do is very simple to understand, but also very complicated to do in a natural way: instead of throwing information on me, they tell stories. They know that writers don’t write the books to students, but to readers. They know that important people take decisions to change things, instead of pushing students to learn dates and places by heart. And those story tellers know that scientists, genius like Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein did what they did because of curiosity about understanding how the Universe works. Not to force me to sit in a classroom and learn some formulas.

When you think like this, you start to contemplate the stories, the context, the reasons and motivations behind the things you are trying to learn. Why this writer is so obsessed about “not to perfume the flower”? Why is he so obsessed about his strict meter and assonant rhymes? Try to know his history and you will see that he used to be an engineer (plus he comes from a family of artists). What about the calculus controversy between Newton and Leibniz? How cool is to listen someone telling these histories. I guess that this is the reason why we are so glad to share beers with friends while we tell and listen stories. Even more important, we share the stories we listen with others, that share with others and so on. Very powerful way to share knowledge.

For sure it was much more interesting to me hear all the stories both inside and outside the books. And that is what I try to do every time I teach something, I try to tell stories.

Learn, Unlearn, Relearn

Today I spent the whole day writing code and reading about e-learning solutions. Because I’m a very curious person, I decided to widen my research and read about learning itself (instead of just trying to understand how e-learning systems work). And, voilá, I found a very inspirational presentation in SlideShare with a quote that worth a gazzilion dollars:

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn”, Alvin Toffler

Perfect! We are living in a world overloaded by information and it just doesn”t matter how much you know rigth now, but how much you can learn to solve the problems that will arise tomorrow. Take a look at the whole presentation below: