If you are really focused on expanding your capabilities, your salary is probably a secondary motivation when it comes to employment. Your major motivation is going to be your learning and growth opportunities. The graph below shows how learning opportunities change over time. At the beginning of any job, you will have many opportunities to learn because everything is new. This section is marked by the green zone. Every day will involve new experiences and learning new things. As time goes on, this tends to level out, as shown by the yellow zone. Sometimes the yellow zone is only temporary and you will be given new responsibilities that will have new learning opportunities--you'll … [Read more...] about What Is Your Current Work Zone?
education
Should he drop out of college?
In a recent conversation, I had a friend explain how he was trying to talk someone out of going to college. The young man he was referring to was going to a community college to appease his mother who wanted him to go to a university. He was talented at computer repair and my friend thought he should drop out and focus on acquiring more computer troubleshooting skills. I disagree with my friend's assessment, but it made me wonder why I value college education so much. Surely there is something to be said for someone who enters the workforce and learns everything then need to know through on the job experience. Is my belief that getting a degree is better rational or is it just … [Read more...] about Should he drop out of college?
Starting College
With school in full swing again it seemed like a good time to do a post geared toward helping people who are experiencing college for the first time. If you aren't in college, but know someone who is, please consider passing these tips on to them. Learn outside the classroom What you learn in the classroom will only be a very small part of your college education. It is easy to get so focused on the formal side of education that you miss out on learning from everything that is going on around you. College is a great place to learn how to interact with people from different backgrounds and cultures, deal with strange and difficult people, and negotiate. Too often, students overlook the … [Read more...] about Starting College
Solving the Wrong Problems
It is amazing how good people are at problem solving. Think of all the inventions and methods people have come up with to fix everything from minor annoyances to large scale worldwide problems. Even as good as everyone seems to be at solving problems, we are notoriously bad at identifying the correct problem to solve. Let me give a few examples. Aviation safety Our public aviation security in the US is based around the idea of keeping bad stuff off airplanes. The idea is that if we can keep anything dangerous off planes, we will be safe. Lots of problem solving effort has gone into keeping dangerous stuff off planes, but is that the real problem? There is stuff all over in a plane … [Read more...] about Solving the Wrong Problems
Never Hire An MBA
If you are responsible for hiring people, someone with a master's degree in business administration might look like an attractive hire. While, "Never Hire An MBA" might be a bit extreme, I see a lot of people who overvalue an MBA. In particular, small and medium sized businesses will often try to "hire an MBA". Consider that statement. Wouldn't it seem strange to say, "I want to hire a Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering"? A Bachelors of Science in Computer Engineering isn't a person--it is a degree. You can't hire a degree. What you really want is a software engineer or maybe a computer scientist--a person. But when it comes to the MBA degree people talk as if you can just hire … [Read more...] about Never Hire An MBA
On the Job MBA
A Master of Business Administration degree is designed to give a broad set of skills needed in running a business. A good deal of what you would learn from an paid, formal MBA program can be gleaned from on-the-job experience if you are paying close analytical attention resulting in a free MBA level education. This article is going to explore some of the ways you can leverage your job experience to develop many of the skills you'd get going through an MBA program. In fact, if you apply yourself to this type of education, your free MBA skill set would put you well ahead of some state school MBA's I've had to work with. Business is not rocket science. A lot of what you need to know is … [Read more...] about On the Job MBA
Tips for Continuing Education
You can't rely on your college education to suffice for the rest of your career. If you want to stay at the peak of your earning potential, you will need to continue your education throughout your career. This can be done in a formal or informal setting. Informal education is very important. It may never show up on your resume, but it helps you stay up-to-date. Formal education has the added benefit of letting you work toward some type of recognition (degree or certificate) that employers are likely to reward. In some jobs, you can move to a higher pay-scale by adding a degree. In this article we are going to look at some tips and methods for both formal and informal education. … [Read more...] about Tips for Continuing Education
11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job
I had quite a few comments about taking classes online in my post "17 Things You Should Stop Doing". When LifeHacker linked to the article, they had even more comments from their readers. Many of the comments were negative, saying that you shouldn't take classes online. So, I wanted to take some time to talk about the best way for college to fit into your career. First, here is a little background about my education to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. I have a bachelor's and master's degree in music composition (both taken at physical universities where I was sitting in class). I am currently working on my thesis for a master's focused on software engineering that I took … [Read more...] about 11 Steps in Becoming Educated for Your Dream Job
Learning to Stay Current
Imagine that your memory was only good for two years. Anything that you learned over two years ago was forgotten. The only education you had at your disposal was the things you had learned in the past 24 months. This should be a pretty terrifying prospect for anyone. However, some people would find themselves unable to function at all, while others would find themselves merely handicapped. It all depends on how much effort each individual has put into learning new things in the last two years. Some people graduate from college with the idea that they can stop learning. They pick up some additional education in the form of on-the job-training, but the amount they learn each year … [Read more...] about Learning to Stay Current
Tuesday’s Tip: College Records
When I was in college, I quickly learned how important it was to keep records. You can't rely on your university to keep track of everything correctly. Maybe they will, but just in case they make a mistake, you need to be prepared. One habit I formed early on in college was to get a copy of my transcript each semester. One semester, there were an extra 15 hours of credits on the transcript for classes I had not taken. After doing some checking, it became clear that they had accidentally given me credit for someone else's work. I explained it to the university and they straightened out the records. However, I imagine it was much easier to get something taken off than it would be … [Read more...] about Tuesday’s Tip: College Records
Experienced-Based Education
Everyone is familiar with traditional education. You sit in a class and a teacher teaches. This is an important part of development. But at some point, every individual has to take charge of their own education. To do this, one must look at the root of learning. What is it that makes some experiences add tremendous value to our lives while other experiences do not? On a very basic level, experiences that are unfamiliar usually add more value than experiences that are familiar. This is because unfamiliar experiences require much more of our attention, which means we are in a better state to learn something new. Obviously, this concept must be used in moderation. Someone who … [Read more...] about Experienced-Based Education
11 Steps Toward Developing a Superior Mind
Great success in life is usually the result of taking advantage of rare opportunities. So success is most likely to come to those who are prepared to take advantage of opportunities. One of the most important aspects of being prepared for any opportunity is making an intentional effort to avoid becoming dumb. I know that sounds silly, but it is very easy to find people around you who haven't kept themselves in mental shape. When opportunities come their way, they miss out because they lacked the right knowledge, frame of mind, or mental stamina. Just like a muscle, your brain needs exercise. Far too many people get stuck in a rut of old habits and never really exercise their … [Read more...] about 11 Steps Toward Developing a Superior Mind
The Deadly Well – Teaching to Learn
When you need to remember something you've learned, one of the best things you can do is explain your new knowledge to someone else. When I was studying music theory, I thought I had a firm grasp on the subject. However, when I went back and taught it to incoming freshmen, I discovered how much better I understood once I had to explain it to others. I still use this technique today. When there is something that I think I understand, I'll try to explain it to my wife to help me remember and to see if I understand things as well as I think I do. My mother teaches grade school and uses this principle all the time. When her sister and her sister's 5 year old grandson were coming to … [Read more...] about The Deadly Well – Teaching to Learn
Personal Development: How important is college?
The role of a college education has changed over the years. To get an idea of how people view the importance of college I asked a number of bloggers: How important is a college education? (4039) While independent learning and personal growth through books, seminars, and networking can significantly bring you closer to your professional career goal, a college education is important for the following reasons. The exposure to a wide variety of subjects expands your understanding of the world. As an effect, it will help you communicate with individuals from other professional fields down the road, while understanding the interrelationships their work may have on yours. The … [Read more...] about Personal Development: How important is college?
Alternative Education
My friend Jon Dale was accepted into Seth Godin's "Alternative MBA". It is worth taking a look at the program. I think we will see more of this type of education in the coming years. Seth gets a bunch of free help and the students get an education and networking opportunities that would be hard to come by elsewhere. By the way, Jon is looking for a room to rent in Hastings on Hudson New York. If you have any suggestions or recommendations that might help him out, please drop him a note. … [Read more...] about Alternative Education
Investing in Education
Education is an investment in the future. Just like investments have different rates of returns, studying different things will give you different payback. There are generally two types of education available to people after high school. A technical education prepares you to do specific tasks. A general education prepares you be able to learn. Many people don't understand the difference between these two types of learning. Going to massage school may seem great in the short term. It doesn't take too long to learn and the pay is significantly better than what you can get from a job right after high school. However, it doesn't really prepare you for changing jobs in the future. A … [Read more...] about Investing in Education
The Benefits of Failure
My wife and I were doing some research into how education is handled in various countries when we ran across some interesting statistics. Basically researchers took middle school age children from a bunch of different countries and tested them in mathematics. The US children did very poorly compared to the rest of the developed world. However, the researchers went a step further and asked the children to rate themselves in mathematics. The US children consistently ranked themselves higher than the children in the countries who were actually more skilled in math. So while the US wasn't the best in actual mathematics, they are the best in teaching students how to feel like they are good … [Read more...] about The Benefits of Failure
105 Free College Lectures
Here is a big list of 105 current college classes with free lectures online. Most of them have RSS feeds of podcasts you can subscribe to. If you like posts like this, consider subscribing to the RSS feed Make the most of your daily commute by taking advantages of these free classes. Some colleges may take the Podcasts down this summer, so I'd suggest downloading any lectures you want to listen to ahead of time--just in case they disappear. Advanced Analog Integrated Circuits EE 240 UC Berkeley RSS URL: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/rss/course-archive.php?seriesid=1906978506 Advanced Cell Biology BI 406 Northern Michigan University RSS URL: … [Read more...] about 105 Free College Lectures
Podcasting Conference
I'm attending a day long conference of educators talking about podcasting at Kansas University today. At lunch it was very interesting to hear the professors talking about how their students approach to learning has changed after coming out of No Child Left Behind style education. They felt that current students tend to take much less responsibility for learning than students from 3 or 4 years ago. One teacher said he had 5 students go to the dean because they had attended every one of his lectures and didn't understand how they got an F in the class. Their grades were evidently less impressive than their attendance records. … [Read more...] about Podcasting Conference
Tuesdays Tip: Time for Reading
This might be a personal idiosyncrasy, but I bet I'm not the only one it applies to. When I don't spend some regular time reading, I start feeling drained of creative ideas. And I'm not talking about spending some time reading articles on the web, I'm talking about sitting down with an actual physical book and doing some good old fashioned reading. I suppose this makes sense. If you are constantly trying to produce using the creative part of your brain you need to be feeding it new stuff, but I suspect that the effect goes well beyond just having some new ideas to think about. Reading (at least for me) seems to trigger new ideas about totally different subjects. So spending some time … [Read more...] about Tuesdays Tip: Time for Reading
Habit List Course Beta
As I mentioned before, I'm testing some email based courses as an added feature here at Productivity501. I have a very limited test going on for the Procrastination Prevention course right now. The second course I'm working on is for the Habit List. I know many people downloaded the Habit List, printed it out and promptly buried it under a pile of other papers. The course helps walk you through the different uses of the Habit List by sending you a very very short email for 10 days. The idea of the course is to help motivate people to actually use the tool simply by keeping it on their mind for a week and a half. I'm going to do a slightly larger test for this course. You can … [Read more...] about Habit List Course Beta
Looking For Procrastinators
I am experimenting with a simple 10 email course designed to help break habitual procrastination. If you are interested in previewing the course and providing feedback, please send a a note to [email protected] and ask to try the Procrastination Prevention Course. At this point, I would ask that you only try it if you are willing to provide some feed back at then end and let me know what you liked and what you didn't. I'm looking for about 10 people to try it out. Edit: Well that didn't take long. :) I have everyone I need for testing. If you are interested but were not able to be part of the testing phase, keep an eye out for the official release in the near future. … [Read more...] about Looking For Procrastinators
One Laptop Per Child
The one laptop per child project really sounds like a great idea. Design a computer that can be mass produced for around $100 each, give them to millions of kids in developing countries, viola! instant smart kids. While there is a lot of value in learning how to use a computer while you are young, most of the true educational value won't come through the hardware itself. This type of mindset is very common when it comes to technology. People like to focus on the hardware instead of the software. Focusing on what a piece of equipment is theoretically capable of is a lot more exciting than focusing on how you can actually use it today. In the US educational system, there are many … [Read more...] about One Laptop Per Child
Papers – Paperless Office for Academics
A helpful reader pointed me to Papers. It is a well thought out program for managing academic papers on OS X. I've looked it over briefly and it looks pretty impressive. It integrates with PubMed and other online repositories allowing you to search and download PDFs while autopopulating all the metadata fields. Papers also allows you to take notes as you read articles and keep them with the PDF. It seems to be setup for working with existing PDFs, so there doesn't seem to be an built in OCR capabilities. If you are looking for a way to organize your research Papers is worth checking out. … [Read more...] about Papers – Paperless Office for Academics
Maximizing Benefits
John posted an article about Multiple Positives which he defines as doing activities in a way that give you multiple benefits. This got me to thinking about ways that I've been able to stack things together in order to get the most benefit. In general, I consider multitasking to be a bad habit. However, there are times where "multibenefiting" is highly profitable. The difference is that with "multibenefiting" you are concentrating on a richer outcome. With multitasking the focus is just on doing things at the same time--even when the outcome is less productive. Here are some examples: 1. Mowing the Yard with a Book I hate mowing. To make things a little more bearable, I started … [Read more...] about Maximizing Benefits