Tag: personal development

What shall I start doing?

I shall start to meet people again. I am seeing nobody since the beginning of the pandemic. Yes, I met people, but so seldomly. And for such a short time. So we really need to meet people again.

And I would like to meet new people, people wanting to be creative, to look at the world from different points of view. And once to a good laugh.

I shall start to write my books. I have started to put a system in place. Today is one year that I am taking notes on Obsidian, the software tool. And I have so far about 2500 notes, about seven notes per day. I shall start connecting notes into threads and topics making sense, telling a story from the beginning to the end. So I shall begin to defragment my notes to optimize my thoughts to make more threads out of which I can create articles, chapters, tutorials, presentations, webinars, and books.

I shall start to exercise all parts of my body. For the last several months, I’ve been only walking. It’s a good activity, but it’s not enough. I need to find the time and the will to do a complete exercise of my body.

I shall start to use the internet, social media to have more generative conversations. I’m tired of just sharing things links, even my articles. I moved from consumer to creator, but I’m not getting great value from being a creator. It just seems like I’m creating for myself. Not getting back value, not getting back a lot of feedback. I’m not getting back more relationships. I am not making many opportunities to meet new people to think about new projects to create right. so I need to start to revise my approach in exposing and communicating myself differently, under a different perspective.

I shall start to pursue my interests and ambitions by contributing to their achievement with small but significant additions every day. So, even if they are small contributions, every day, I should make progress under two aspects: the top-down approach, which is the intentional one. So I need to be more selective and focus on things I want to pursue, and I did some work with my 12 favorite problems. And I need to do better the serendipitous scanning and filtering of everything that comes to my attention. So, that is not wasted time, but instead picking opportunities to grow my networked knowledge base to fuel and feed my creativity.

I could start doing interviews with people I meet with the interesting people that I follow with others, creators, artists, or even friends. Interviews are an excellent way to do many things that I mentioned: expressing oneself,  meeting people, creating, thinking, elaborating your thoughts, growing your network, growing your knowledge, and even creating content. So, this is part of growing my network and meeting more people.

I should start to reread what I wrote. I am almost at the mark of maybe 1 million words since 2019. And I need to think about whether it is worth rereading it and finding common threads to make notes. And to annotate that massive amount of content into my knowledge base.

I should start to make art. I’d like to play an instrument. A bass, for instance, because it’s something that resonates with me. I frequently daydream about playing the bass. And I like seeing beginners and amateurs learning to play. Some great practitioners are playing beautiful covers that are better than the originals. And there are some songs that I would like to perform, especially Politicians by The Cream, or Crossroads and many others.

I shall start drawing or painting or doing photography that I used to do, and then I stopped.

I shall start to tell a story about my experience.

Continue to write daily. It’s a great habit. Writing is thinking, deeply, in a focused way. Keep on dedicating your attention for at least 15-30 minutes to reflect and write. It’s a transformational activity.

Continue to take long walks at least three times per week. No life without health. But, additionally, you can listen to music, audiobooks, or webinars. You can actively participate in online events if the connectivity permits it. You can record your voice and transcribe it to have drafts ready to be added to your repository.

Continue to read every day. There’s no output without input. Read slowly, by carefully understanding words, sentences, and concepts. Rewrite what resonates with you and connect it with your existing notes.

Continue to track key events in your day. You know you are wasting your time only when you are aware of it. Have the courage of recognizing useless activities and give a name, a place, and a time to them. It will be easier to avoid them in the future.

Continue to plan your time. Slowly you will move from tracking black-hole to plan the best use of your time. It requires practice and a lot of failures. Learn from them.

Continue to have meaningful conversations on the Internet, especially on social media. Writing and sharing are not enough. It’s a passive way to interact with others. Ask questions, propose your answers, develop conversations and relationships. You are part of the larger community of humankind, contribute to it.

Continue to share your knowledge. It doesn’t matter what you know and how you know it. Share it. It improves your communication skills, your relationships and there is also a chance you can contribute to the collective intelligence. There is no history of unshared ideas.

Continue to Collaborate.  Open your process up to meaningful input from others.  Why recreate that which has already been done?  As in life, working together can create beautiful outcomes that are more meaningful because of that collaboration.

Thanks to the anonymous contributors to this article.

Internet goes down from time to time. A little disruption, sometimes a few minutes of blackout or, horror, horror, half a day. In those moments, I am forced to think about making the best use of my creativity without connectivity. Yes, of course, there could be mobile data connection, so you still have Internet unless you are in an inaccessible area. But I am referring to total blackout.

I miss those moments pre-1995 when I use to either waste my brain on TV (still possible) or listen to music (of course I still do but have you ever listened to music without doing something else on the Internet?) or the most beautiful, laying on the floor or the couch daydreaming (or napping).

So, I have all good intentions when the Internet is down, I grab a solid paper book or a notebook with a pen, and I imagine I would jot down notes, inspiration, or diagrams. Things that I actually do every day, but only because I know I can then immediately resume my thinking with a digital aid. When the connection is down, many other pressures go down, the need to stay in touch with the world, with work, with the news. It’s a rare moment of peace in my mind, and while having the most formidable ideas about learning and design, drawing and animation, concepts for a story or a character, I cannot help but fall asleep.

It’s a private transgression, full of joy and refreshing power.

Usually, when I woke up, the magic disappears because the Internet is accessible again, and I immediately get sucked into its spiral.

How much would I like to turn off the Internet intentionally to re-establish a healthier relationship with my brain?

My challenge resides at the intersection of my 12 favorite problems. It’s expressed by one of the problems itself: how to address all of the 12 in an interdependent way?

If in the group, I include:

1. Identity
2. Relationships
3. Learning
4. Health
5. Thinking
6. Communication
7. Sustainability
8. Design
9. Technology
10. Creativity
11. Art
12. Systems thinking

What’s the overall problem I am referring to? How can I consider all of them as being part of the same whole?

Organizing them by relation would lead to creating clusters:

1. Me and the others
   1. Identity
   2. Health
   3. Relationships
2. My mind
   1. Learning
   2. Thinking
   3. Systems thinking
3. The world
   1. Sustainability
4. Creativity
   1. Communication
   2. Design
   3. Technology
   4. Art

Yes, it is stretched, I know, but I like what I came up with. How could I reformulate the One Problem using those clusters?

1. How can I put my creativity at the World’s service?
2. Being healthy and knowledgeable to make a more sustainable world.
3. From personal growth to ecosystem sustainability.
4. Being a healthy part of a healthy world.
5. Art, communication, design, and technology to make education accessible to everybody, to increase the ecosystem’s health.

They sound like a mission. And I like that. I am creating the first drafts of my personal mission.

Ideas and mission

I should cluster my 100 ideas in the same fashion. Maybe in a future article. Which idea is related to my mission drafts?

Rereading the list, I find them relatively coherent, and that is reassuring. Which idea is falling at the intersections of my favorite problems and consequently in my mission’s realm?

I like this one:

Apply the metaphor of cooking to systems thinking, design, and as a simple project to create software to learn and teach about computer science, interaction design, and brain development.

Not bad. It touches on several aspects and disciplines with defined outcomes.

I will iterate this process each time I need to get inspiration to make progress. Ideas will get refined and refreshed while problems will coalesce into a more clear personal mission. I can use these better-defined concepts to write more about them and to filter information against them. That’s a good step forward in my creative approach directly influencing my Personal Knowledge Management System.

These are the No. 11 and 12 of My 12 Favorite Problems. Draft status, I am building them in public by iterating on an outline and then developing each concept. With those last two I have now the foundations to develop a refined iteration of the group.

Art

If design solves problems, art creates them. Nurturing curiosity and finding means to express ourselves are satisfied by artistic endeavors. We look for beauty and novelty, mystery and entertainment. Art also has a beneficial aspect, as meditation, regeneration, communication, and socialization.

How can we make art a part of everybody’s life?

What’s the intersection between science, art, and play?

How is technology influencing art, and vice versa?

Are games art?

How can we enjoy the beauty of drawing and painting?

How music affects our lives?

How can writing transform us?

Connections:

Design, personal development, technology, communication

Problem-Solving

How to solve problems?

How to solve all of my favorite problems?

How to create an approach to life, taking into account a systems approach?

How can I face the challenge of solving all of my favorite problems?

What are those tools, approaches, techniques enabling a holistic approach to problem-solving?

My favorite problems should cover and intersect with my interests, and they should function as magnets, attractors, poles, towards which/with which I should filter information flows.

Connections:

Critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, problem-solving

Technology for Life

How to augment life?

How to raise collective intelligence?

How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.

How to live multiple lives?

Connections:

Technology, design, collective intelligence, sustainability, systemic design.

How to be creative

How to be more creative?

How to facilitate everybody’s creativity?

Connections:

 Creativity, Design thinking, learning.

The remaining problems to develop

1. Art
   1. Make art a part of everybody’s life
   2. Creative Coding
   3. Generative Art
   4. Games, Game Art and Game Design
   5. Drawing and Painting
   6. Music
   7. Writing
2. How to solve problems?
   1. How to solve all of my favorite problems?
   2. How to create an approach to life taking into account a systems approach?

Ecosystem Health

There is no planet B. At least not until we start to colonize other planets. We must contribute to the ecosystem’s health by building a more sustainable society.

If we make the World better, we make the lives of all living beings better. Each of us can have a role in making the world better by constantly giving small positive contributions while minimizing the unintended negative consequences.

A sustainable society increases the chance to imagine and create better futures for all by leaving a positive, durable, and compounding legacy to future generations.

The problem of improving the Ecosystem’s health is common to everybody. If we aim to positively impact people and the planet, we need to gather our strengths together for the common goal of making the world better for all.

How can we do that? What’s my role in that?

Connections:

critical thinking, collective intelligence, sustainability, systems thinking, systemic design, education, development, networked thinking, collaboration, cooperation, inclusion, justice, UN SDGs.

Design

Solving problems, designing solutions, and building them, are at the foundation of our society in every field.

The design approach should be one of the skills and competencies every human being should acquire. What is the minimum viable knowledge needed to be an effective and an efficient, and sustainable designer? 

Design as a mindset, a craft, and an approach belongs to science and engineering, education and fine arts, philosophy, and any other human endeavor.

Business, entrepreneurship, and leadership became so complex that they need design to be executed effectively and efficiently.

How to be a good designer?

1. How to understand, communicate, and manage complexity?
2. How to minimize unintended consequences?
3. How can we imagine alternative worlds? Better futures?
4. How to create networks of networks of changemakers creating a positive impact on people and the planet?
5. How can we leave a legacy that will make us remembered positively?

Connections:

 Design thinking, critical thinking, systems thinking, systematic design, sustainability, education, training, mentoring, coaching, professional development, business design, interaction design, User Experience Design, Service Design.

The remaining problems to develop

1. How to augment life
   1. How to raise the collective intelligence
   2. How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.
   3. How to live multiple lives
2. How to be more creative
   1. Teach everybody to be creative
   2. Make art a part of everybody’s life

How to be a good thinker

Thinking is an essential quality of being a human. The brain, somebody said (who?), is the most complex object in the Universe. We are alive and conscious, we live and survive perils, we love and nurture (Hello, Anne! 😎 other living beings, we learn, observe, understand and know, we imagine, design, build and share, and many more things, thanks to the fact that we think.

You might say not everybody thinks, that’s true, and that’s my favorite problem: how do we increase the quality of our thinking? How do we improve our decision-making capability?

Connections:

Observation, imagination, fantasy, creativity, understanding, learning, education, teaching, leadership, decision making, critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, communication, collective intelligence.

How to be a good communicator

We evolved as human beings by finding the best food sources and avoiding the deadliest predators. How? By developing our communication system. In the era of networks of networks of information pervading us, communication is a key skill to thrive and prosper as a species.

How do we become effective and efficient communicators? What’s the role of design and thinking in communication? What’s the impact of good and bad communication? What’s the role of storytelling?

Connections:

imagination, fantasy, creativity, understanding, learning, education, teaching, leadership, decision making, critical thinking, systems thinking, design thinking, thinking, collective intelligence, sustainability

The remaining problems to develop

1. Justice, equality, equanimity
   1. What’s the right word?
   2. How to create a just society
2. Make the world better
   1. How to build a sustainable society
   2. How to make a living while making the world a better place.
   3. How to leave a positive, durable, compounding legacy
   4. How to put new things in the world to make it better rather than worse
   5. How to minimize unintended consequences
   6. How to create better futures
   7. How to improve the ecosystem’s health
3. How to be a good designer
   1. How to understand, communicate, and manage complexity
   2. How to minimize unintended consequences
   3. Imagining alternative worlds
   4. How to create networks of networks of changemakers creating a positive impact on people and the planet
   5. How can I leave a legacy that will make me remembered in a positive way
   6. How to imagine better futures
   7. Another favorite problem is the one of solving problems and designing solutions, and building the designed solution. So I think that the design approach should be one of the skills and competencies every human being should acquire. What is the minimum viable knowledge needed to be an effective and an efficient, and sustainable designer? That’s a beautiful question. That could go on the same level of being a scientist or being an engineer, but also being an artist. All of those aspects are needed in our life. As well as being a manager or being a leader of being a communicator. All of those skills are at the intersection of being a good citizen of the world.
4. How to augment life
   1. How to raise the collective intelligence
   2. How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.
   3. How to live multiple lives
5. How to minimize the suffering of all living beings
   1. How to relieve suffering
6. How to be more creative
   1. Teach everybody to be creative
   2. Make art a part of everybody’s life

This is hard, painful and I feel really uninspired.
I’ve learned my lesson, when I am in this mood I need to lower my ambitions.
So, I’ve taken the first two problems, I wrote one sentence to develop each, and I’ve attached the initial questions.
I am taking it nice, easy, and slow. I know I won’t be finished in a week.
That is fine.

My Identity

When I had to change job I’ve asked myself a lot about my identity. What started as an inquiry into my professional world went over the boundaries and reached my personal sphere. I am writing every day to learn more about myself. I want to keep on writing not only to discover more about myself but also to leverage the many articles I wrote so far.

A temporary list of questions about my identity:

1. how to be a good person.
2. How to live a good life.
3. How to find purpose and meaning.
4. How to make the best use of my time.
5. What is happiness? How to understand it and live with and without it.
6. How to develop an interconnected system of habits to grow as a healthy, wealthy, and systemic human being, conscious citizens of the world, human beings, members of humankind.
7. Develop self-awareness, self-expression.
8. How to stay healthy.
9. How to make my life meaningful, worthwhile.

Relationships

I cannot live alone. My life has a sense because of the people around me. What shall I know better about my relationships? How can I live better with them? For them? I would like to dedicate more focused reflection to relationships.

An initial set of questions about relationships:

1. How to have good relationships.
2. How to take care of my family.
   1. how to be a good partner.
   2. how to be a good father.
   3. how to be a good son.
   4. how to be a good relative.
3. how to be a good friend.
4. how to be a good citizen of the World.
5. How to spend more quality time with quality people.

The remaining problems to develop

1. How to be a good thinker
   1. how to be a good thinker
      1. observation
         1. recognizing patterns
         2. cross-discipline / non-disciplinary
      2. how to think about the future
   2. how to make the best decisions
   3. Learning
      1. how to be a good learner
2. Communication
   1. how to communicate in the best way
   2. Storytelling
      1. how to tell great stories
      2. how to create great stories
3. Justice, equality, equanimity
   1. What’s the right word?
   2. How to create a just society
4. Make the world better
   1. How to build a sustainable society
   2. How to make a living while making the world a better place.
   3. How to leave a positive, durable, compounding legacy
   4. How to put new things in the world to make it better rather than worse
   5. How to minimize unintended consequences
   6. How to create better futures
   7. How to improve the ecosystem’s health
5. Education
   1. How to educate sons.
   2. How to educate children.
   3. How to educate human beings.
   4. How to educate human beings for the best
   5. How to learn
      1. How to know more about what is unknown
   6. How to be a good facilitator, coach, trainer, educator
6. How to be a good designer
   1. How to understand, communicate, and manage complexity
   2. How to minimize unintended consequences
   3. Imagining alternative worlds
   4. How to create networks of networks of changemakers creating a positive impact on people and the planet
   5. How can I leave a legacy that will make me remembered in a positive way
7. How to imagine better futures
8. How to augment life
   1. How to raise the collective intelligence
   2. How to extend life, perception, augment intelligence, individual and collective.
   3. How to live multiple lives
9. How to minimize the suffering of all living beings
   1. How to relieve suffering
10. How to be more creative
    1. Teach everybody to be creative
    2. Make art a part of everybody’s life