Dear Readers,
Hope you had a good week. I had a busy one with new rituals, people and a lot of travel.
A quick life update: After 2 months of navigating the consulting sea, I am now at a comfortable coast of a full time role. I joined last week, and my mornings now start at 5:30 am rather than 6:30 am. So there is that!
In my role, I am going to be looking at the professional development of teachers and focus on their learning.
I have just spent 3 days but I know it in my gut that I am going to learn a lot through this experience. And for that to happen we’ll have to give time some time.
Onto this week’s issue. 🌻
Issue #19
In this issue you will find:
Learning and Work
Reflection Box
The Learning Bank
And a way to connect with me!
Let’s go!
Learning and Work
What does it take to become better at our work?
In the last issue I spoke about how to meet the learning needs in small teams. In this, let’s unpack how do we, as individuals, can become better at our work. Notice, how I wrote work and not jobs? Because our work is how we manifest ourselves, we could be working in a job, or a passion project or on our own initiative or in our homes.
These are the steps you can take:
Leveraging L&D: If you are working in a job, you have a great option of simply leveraging and using the L&D initiatives in your workplace. Most employees groan at the thought of more training, or courses. And I get it, doing a safety training or training on a new tool could be boring but this point is more about tapping into opportunities that are presented to you as a part of L&D and running with it. There is a conference, sign up and show up, your company partnered with a course provider, check out the courses they offer, an opportunity to speak, take it!
Finding Projects in cross functional teams: This is for everyone. You are a stay at home partner, find something that you do not take care of maybe washing and drying up clothes or paying the bills and do it for one week or 2. Have your own start up and leading the tech? Sit down with the operations head and work on 1 key project with their team and of course even in your workplace, find another team to work on a small project with. This will offer you new perspectives, you will gain knowledge, an understanding of the new area of work and perhaps a new skill.
Learn from a mentor: Now it is not easy to find good supportive mentors in the space you are, trust me, I have been trying. So if you have access to one, wonderful! Schedule calls regularly, work on things you discuss and just be active. If you can not find a mentor, here is what you can do- Use an app such as brainsparker or journal prompts to ask deep questions to yourself, find someone in your field that inspires you and learn from their work, or if you have a good rapport with your manager ask them to also double up as your mentor.
Do a self paced course/ Read a book/ Listen to a podcast: You just had a conversation with your manager and they helped you identify skill gaps or even things you are good at but can be great at- find a free course, learn from it and try to use it in your work or read a book or listen to a podcast. Do the same whether you are leading a start up or managing a home.
Passion Project: Pick up a project- any project- that has been on your list. Wanted to try your hand at Digital Marketing or Home Decor or Video Editing or Baking? Just pick that up and see it to fruition. Once you complete it you would have gained skills and knowledge that you could then use it in your work. Maybe you found a new time management system for yourself or learnt how to effectively break down a project into smaller tasks!
Learner Tip: Plan your learning goals for maximum a quarter. You can take annual learning goals and break it down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and so on. Also think about a reward you can give yourself on achieving it to keep yourself motivated.
The Learning Bank 🏦
Here is this week’s learning bank-5 resources- videos, articles, blogposts, courses and more to learn from!
Learn how to declutter your brain with this 10 second graphic.
Learn about how reading affects your brain with this medium article.
Learn from one or all of the 25 most popular TED talks of all time.
Learn how to play ukulele with this 30 day ukulele challenge. (This is the playlist I used to learn it!)
Learn UI/UX design with codecademy’s new course in collaboration with Figma.
Connect with me!
If you are a Learning Designer or want to be one and want to have a chat about Anything and Everything about Learning, book a slot here.
You can also follow me on LinkedIn or send me “hey” on avnivij3@gmail.com.
If you liked this newsletter, maybe share it with someone else who’d like it?
Keep learning!
Adios,
Avni