My digital 2015?
This post is inspired by Alexandra Samuel‘s HBR article “Your Digital Year in Review“. She suggests reflecting on digital habits throughout the year by considering the four foci productivity, inspiration, socialisation and learning opportunities. Technology plays an important role in my daily routines and too seldom do I reflect on if I truly benefit from it the way I should. As Samuel puts it, when she is describing insightful online moments:
But those aha! moments probably wonât come from watching cat videos or taking Buzzfeed quizzes.
I catch myself watching and playing these, too. But honestly said, they did not make it to my reflection list. But if not the cat videos and quizzes – what are my online aha! – moments? Online and offline has become much more interwoven in my life. And the four foci symbolise this to a certain extend. Even if I have online aha! moments, they are worth nothing without applying them to my offline, analog me. No truly inspiring moment can happen purely on- or offline.
Productivity
Getting things done in a meaningful way. This is my definition of productivity. It’s not simply doing things. It is about finding the right way of getting things done and prioritise in a suitable manner. My personal blog is by far the most long-term productive tool I have ever started. Even though there were times I did not post frequently or did not know what to write about / how to formulate my thoughts, it was the progress that contributed to my productivity.
Personal Blog
A blog (a truncation of the expression weblog)[1] is a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displayed in reverse chronological order (the most recent post appears first). [Wikipedia]
Becoming confident
Most and foremost, I remember the frustration when I hesitated to press the publish button when I started blogging. What would others think and how would they react? Now that my post is out there, I cannot take it back, can I? Insecurity was followed by bitter frustration and irritation after publishing a post. No one reads this anyway, so why should I keep writing? In the end I realised that this blog is what I called it. A personal blog. And that a personal blog is not about clicks and comments. But about my own learning process and my own experience. It gave me a lot of confidence to write, actually publish and share my thoughts and research. In addition, I reflected on my arguments, line of reasoning and wording.
Expressing quality
Blogging is not about frequency. Frequency is no indicator for quality. I catch myself judging a blog’s quality by the date of the last post published. This is definitely not fair. The aim of frequent post-publishing is only relevant if there is something resonable to write about. Blogging over a longer period enables me to remember and reflect on what I have done. It illustrates a process. In times where I questioned if I had done anything productive at all during the last days, weeks and month; my blog reminds me of all the great thoughts I had.
Reflecting, moving on and connecting blogging and productivity
My initial idea in 2015 was not to generates clicks and likes. It was a year of pushing things out and getting confident. I still have a hard time focussing on a theme and framing a reasonable amount of information. This is ongoing work for me. I still learn to balance between reworking a draft and deciding on when it is time to publish it. Writing about my thoughts feels meaningful and this is why I produce these artefacts I can refer to and reflect upon. In 2016 I want to work further on linking, tagging and spreading my posts to the right people. An important requirement for this is to generate ideas of topics I am interested in so I feel motivated to invest my time in.
Inspiration
For me inspiration comes in four steps. Find great sources which inspire me, get input from these sources, apply it to my own situation and get feedback on how that worked out. In retro perspective I decide if the identified resources are still inspirational. Great digital tools support me during all of these four steps. LinkedIn has done so in different ways. I used groups and following function to get the input I thought was most inspiring as well as my own profile content to keep reworking my biography.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking service. [Wikipedia]
Creating self-awareness
The overwhelming power of a professional network is the combination of a personal profile and the evolving network around it. LinkedIn is not your CV. I heard this during a talk on professional storytelling and couldn’t agree more. It became a continuous progress to change my profile and frame the person I am. My profile is (and probably will be) always in the making. It motivates me to ask questions like: who am I, where do I come from, where am I now, where do I want to go and how do others perceive me? Even though I might not have definite answers to all of these questions, there is this satisfactory feeling of being more certain with every saved edit.
Identifying the inspirers in my network
Inspiration, as I pointed out earlier, is a never ending process. It is about finding sources of inspiration, keeping them or moving on. This can be a very long and demanding development. In 2015 I realised what having a network and being part of a network means. I started identifying central actors of my network and how they contribute to this network. What does this person share, post or like – and do I consider this as inspirational? In 2016 I want to focus on how I can see more of those inspirational people and even on how I myself can become inspirational for others.
Socialisation
When moving to a new place it requires initiative to reach out to people. I realised that just going out and meeting up is completely different from connecting and networking with people. It feels like I was wasting my time browsing the web, instead of just getting out into the real world.
Lunchback
This is the reason that we started Lunchback, an app that can be used to find yourself a mentor in your local area. [Lunchback on The Local]
Being clear in what you want (and what not)
Until finding Lunchback, I really had become fed up with all the effort I put into networking. It always resulted in numerous, but loose connections. With Lunchback I realised that as important as socialization is – it’s even more important to be aware of what you want to get out of it and choose your events accordingly. I began to work on being concrete with my feedback requests. Why do I want to speak to this person? What do I want to have feedback on? How do I formulate my request concisely and precisely? Until today I have not received a “no” but rather long-term intense contacts who support me in my personal development.
Daring to try something new
When it comes to socialisation, I tend to stick to my old habits. After all, they have worked out in different contexts and with different people. When time becomes a scarce resource however, I start wondering about with whom I really want to spend my time and why. This might be a good time to dare trying something new. I admit that it felt a bit scary to use the app at first. In the end, you are meeting a person for real, over lunch, spontaneously. But it’s worth it to go out there and try it. The matching process is thought through and all the people I met where and are supportive in so many ways.
Learning Opportunites
Learning is understanding a concept, connecting it with what your already now and share it with others. I have taken many MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) in 2015. Not all of them where meaningful. But most of them did make a difference. I would say that they represent a new understanding of learning. The idea of life-long learning and individualised (micro) learning opportunities anytime anywhere.
MOOCS
A massive open online course (MOOC ) is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. [Wikipedia]
Learning how to learn
I have always been fascinated by those people that strive for learning something new every day. When I first heard about MOOCs I was browsing the web on online learning. It is impressive how many resources are out in the WWWÂ if you want to learn about something. However, I sometimes miss structure and quality of content. Even though, not all MOOCs I took provided these, they equipped me with guidance and a learning path. In the end, I learned a lot about how I learned best. By interacting with others, answering questions and producing my own learning artefacts.
Sharing is caring
Learning online was a new experience and I needed my time to adapt to a new environemnt. But during this process I learned what the buzz-phrase “sharing is caring” means. By creating my own learning artifact and sharing it with my learning cohort, I could actually recieve meaningful feedback not only by the facilitator but by my peers. Especially in adult education this concept is valuable, because everybody comes with a backpack of prior knowledge and experience which contribute to the learning experience. Also, sharing knowledge means you are trying to verbalize what is in your head. This is a very demanding process and I truly believe by continuing doing so in 2016 I can contribute to others’ learning experience as well.
My digital 2016!
Here is my digital bucket list which summarizes my want-to-do’s and will-do’s of 2016.
- Join a network that inspires me on- and offline. Contribute to this network.
- Desing, create and improve my social media appearance.
- Work on my contact follow-up and reach out to inspiring people more proactively.
- Organize my apps in a way I want them to use – not in a way I use them.
- Reflect daily. And talk about it to someone I trust. Dare to talk about my dreams.
I encourage you to write your list, too. I would love to hear about it! If you don’t feel ready to share it, write it down for yourself. And who knows, you might share it in your digital review 2017?
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