So, do I work for the greatest library in the world or what? Currently at my workplace the staff is taking part in a training program called Learning 2.0 where, on work time, we go through a list of lessons that familiarizes us with the new Web 2.0 technologies. One of our assignments is to create a blog and–voila!–here it is.
As part of that assignment, we have to post about which 7 1/2 habits of lifelong learners we find easiest and hardest. Here’s a list of the habits:
1. Begin with the end in mind.
2. Accept responsibility for your own learning.
3. View problems as challenges.
4. Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner.
5. Create your own learning toolbox.
6. Use technology to your advantage.
7. Teach/mentor others.
7 1/2. Play.
[So is “You’re a Hard Habit to Break” suddenly playing through your mind, too? 🙂 Yeah, the voices in my head have their own soundtrack ….]
Anyway, back to the easiest/hardest thing. I would have to say that easiest habit for me (and I use the “easiest” in the loosest possible fashion) is #6 (using technology to my advantage). I qualify the “easiest” part because, while the technology itself is not difficult, getting help to learn the technology frequently is. Right now, I’m going mano-a-mano with a new mini-dv recorder. Is the instructional manual helpful, you ask? Noooooo. Is there a knowledgeable user close by to give me a hand? Noooooo. So I’m learning by trial and error, mostly error. Is learning in this fashion driving me up the wall, you ask? Why, yes, yes, it is.
So what’s the hardest habit on the list? I’d have to say it’s 7.5 (Play!). Again, not so much the playing as the finding the time to just goof around on the ‘Net. Goofing takes time and there always seems too much to do and not enough time to do it in.
I see by some of my colleagues’ comments on their blogs that I’m not the only one to have a knee-jerk reaction to #3 (View problems as challenges). [You’ll have to imagine the super-perky voice that’s said in]. If you work for a large bureaucracy as I have for the past 18 years (may God have mercy on my soul), sooner or later you will find that sewer pipes of productivity are being clogged by a large, smelly, greasy, rotting hairball of a problem. Invariably, the ultimate solution to this hairball will be in the hands of Higher Up, but instead of doing something useful like demanding the personnel/money/infrastructure overhaul necessary to solve the blockage, Higher Up will tell you that this ghastly situation should be viewed, not as a problem, but as a challenge/opportunity. That Happy Talk is not and has never been a solution to a problem doesn’t seem to occur to Higher Up. Which is why you, the Lower Down, will be attempting to evict that productivity hairball with a plumber’s helper that only partially sucks and a raincoat made out of a trash bag. But that’s another story …..
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