Learning how to learn

I wonder how many of us where taught, at a young age, HOW to learn in a way that related to how the brain stores information?

It amazes me how little of what we know of the brain is used in teaching children, and my question is: If we were taught at a very young age HOW to learn, how to use our brains effectively, what kind of learners would we be today?

Babies are the most incredible students in the world. Can you imagine a baby learning the way an adult does? He takes a few steps, falls over and instead of getting up to try again, he refuses to walk for the rest of his life, deciding that he simply isn’t a natural at walking. That would be a funny scene. Somehow, on their way through school, they loose their curiousity, “grow up” and become scared ‘adults’ who are terrified of the slightest failure.

One of the things I want to see happen while I am alive, is have children in their first years of education taught the real skills of HOW to learn, that failing is a perfectly natural progression of the learning progress and how to learn from their mistakes to move into adulthood and become exactly the kind of adults they want to be.

To set this goal of mine in motion, I’ll be studying a series of books by authors such as Tony Buzan, Edward de Bono and other great “thinkers”. They teach you how to think, how to use your mind to its greatest potential and so far I’m loving it. It makes so much sense, and matches many values I already had about the mind. The book I’m studying at the moment is “Use your Head” by Tony Buzan, and I highly recomment it. Eventually, I want to teach this stuff to other teachers, getting them to use this information in the classrooms with their students to help them to learn too. Being an ex-dyslexic, I want to spread the word that I’m doing this excersise, in the hope that it’ll show people that just because something is “difficult” it does not mean you are inable to do it.

“Only Human”

There’s an interesting thing people tend to say when they screw up or do something wrong. They say “I’m only human!” as if that excuses them for not completing the goal. But last time I checked, humans could travel into space, climb mountains and overcome great challanges. “Only” is an awful thing to say, as if we’re “not good enough”. I wonder if people who overcome some amazing challange would turn around and say “Of COURSE I’m amazing, I’m HUMAN!!” If it’s humanly possible, EVERYONE CAN DO IT!

I’m realising just how many of my “friends” are sheep, when I thought they were more than that. How depressing ._.

Joys of front end designers…

I really liked the idea of having a Horizontal layout on my website. I found a tutorial on the subject (http://woork.blogspot.com/2009/02/useful-tips-to-design-horizontal.html) and tried it out for myself. I enjoyed it, until I realised the downfall of resolution issues. My old enemy has returned!

If Internet Explorer let you do percentage widths, they’d be no problem. But because it has to be a fixed width, and the majority of people still use IE, I’ll never be able to make it look exactly as I’d like it to on all computers. Thats important to me, as I’d like everyone who visits my site to get the same experience. Naturally, the solution lies in JavaScript (making a browser-redirect script), but arrgghh, I promised myself I’d learn PHP first! *sigh* So, no horizontal layouts for me until I finish learning PHP. Or, I could find an open source script. Hmm…

Web Design Rant

For YEARS I was the kind of person who shunned WIZIWIGS. Notepad was my only friend, and I liked it that way. Then I started using Dreamweaver 8, and I changed my mind – I could use both programs comfortably, I liked the way Dreamweaver made my coding life easier, I felt like I’d moved from the cold, wooden bench to a comfy, relaxing sofa.

Now Dreamweaver isn’t opening for some inexplicable reason and I said “Oh well, Notepad has always been there for me, no harm in using it for now”. But now I see that I have become so dependant on Dreamweavers abilities… I have to open TWO NOTEPADS to work in HTML and CSS, where Dreamweaver simply had two tabs. Dreamweaver finished my tags for me, made the code look so neat and even coloured my writing in for me… and now… I am stuck on Notepad! Once, my only friend, now it is simply not good enough. *sobsobsob*

Seriously, I just miss being able to see what it looks like in the preview without having to save it and refresh the browser.

Getting a life now, byee..

Exploring work means play

When I first started this blog, the title “Work means play” really struck me as a title that I really wanted for a blog, something that I decided really summed up who I am, what I want my lifestyle to be and how I want my future to pan out. But at the time, I’d not fully grasped how much it would come to mean to me.

This blog has become more than what it was meant for. When I sit here, writing, and I see the title “Work Means Play” it inspires me to want something bigger. I’ve always had huge dreams about where I want my life to go, but that little title, that little piece of who I am has made me reassess everything.

“Work” to me isn’t about what you do to ensure security for yourself or your family. It’s about gaining fullfillment in life, giving who you are and really contributing to people. I’ve had some fantastic results from talking to people when I really “gave my all” to them, and I beleive that it’s that action that gives you the most success. Think about it? Don’t you go to work to “Earn a living”? To EARN it implys you have to give something – how does the law of receprication work if you don’t give anything first? I ranted about this on my last entry, so I won’t go too far into it, but it’s so important to remember that to GET something, you first have to GIVE something. “If you constantly give, you will constantly recieve”.

I enjoy that ideal so much that it’s my inspiration, my relaxation, my playtime. Work = Play.

Filling a role or really making a difference?

It often boggles me at how a lot of people really seem to struggle with the idea of actually making a difference in their workplace. Case point: My department* has recently hired a new manager, who is a lovely young man and he’s very capable of doing the job. And thats about it. He’s not doing anything wrong, but he’s not helping the company move forward at all… he’s just filling a role.

To me, working for a company really means taking the time to view a problem the company has, and use one of your skills to make a positive improvement. At this job, it was their customer service skills that were lacking, so I stepped in and started making sure to make every customer that left my checkout happier since coming to me. If I’m making a website for someone, I want to make it benefit them and their business as much as possible. But I’ve noticed that a lot of people, especially in this job*, that don’t actually care if they do a good job, as long as they get paid at the end of the month.

The thing that makes me laugh the most is when collegues start complaining about the “unfair treatment” they’re getting. They just expect people to treat them a certain way, or to give them “what they deserve” – which in their eyes is like winning the lottery, or getting a few weeks pay for no reason, or not having to do anything except sit on their bums and do nothing. My responce is always “But what are you doing to deserve that treatment?”. Because I really doubt they would give someone something for nothing. If you want to get praised or rewarded for doing a good job, you have to do a good job!! Why is it that it’s so hard to find someone who actually believes this?! Is it just me that believes that it’s common sense?!

Everyone I’ve met so far who work in this job are exactly the people who I don’t want in my life. I’m looking forward to this week off to work like mad on improving my skills so I can get out of this madness and into what I was meant for!

*Note, this is my supermarket – parttime job that drives me up the wall.

Looking for work…

Okay, the weird lazy feeling has disappeared since my last blog and has been replaced by some crazy motorvation. I’ve been getting up at 7.30 every morning (makes a change from my every-day lie in until midday routine) and going for a mile long brisk walk. Soon, I will be replacing the walking with jogging, and then eventually, with running.

My goal is to get fit enough to enter the Great Wall Marathon- A very tough marathon set on the great wall of China. Exciting stuff, but I have a lot of work to do.

On the work front… Not much to say on it, unfortunatly. I’m working part time at my local supermarket which is fun only for the people you get to meet (seriously, getting PAID to sit down and talk to the public all day? I almost feel like I’m ripping my employers off…). I’m relying on that to bring in an income now, and then as my work picks up, I’ll hopefully be a lot busier. I might end up having to stroll over to a local very-small website design business and try and sell myself as a HTML / CSS editor (doing all the boring jobs) and see what I get with that. Half the problem with that, is that they probably don’t even need me or can afford me. But it’s worth a go, even if I make their lives just a little bit easier!

I stayed up until 2am last night looking for work-from-home jobs in website design and web site editorial work. So today, I ended up falling asleep for about 10 seconds on my till, in the middle of serving a customer. Oops.

Emotions aren’t achievements…

A thought is in my head and I need to write it down to really get the gist of it.

For a few days now, laziness has struck me down and I’ve been gripped in some kind of lethagic spiral. Something is changing dramatically in my mind and I can’t see it – which is important to me – but I feel that it is close enough that I could just reach out and touch it if I stretched hard enough.

I remember times over the past year where I have felt paticularly emotional, whether frustrated, happy, angry or excited and I remember thinking “I’m going to remember this forever – this is a definative part of my life”. Like, a movie where the main character is running around in the rain with motorvational music spurring them on. Only, I can’t remember anything about what I was doing when I thought those thoughts. The current thought processes, it seems, is that… surely the most memorable moments in your life aren’t the emotional turmoils or the important sudden decisions you make in the madness of anger or depression, but are actually the achievements that those decisions bring about. I’ve read a fair few sucess stories lately, and the most interesting part is never how insanely unhappy they were in this depressing situation, but what they did about it and what those actions meant to the rest of their lives.

So, instead of getting caught up in some emotional moment, I’ll figure out what I can do about it that will change my life in some way, so I can look back when I’m 103 years old and instead of saying “I had such an emotional life” I can say “My life has been one heck of an achievement!”

Inspiration comes from the strangest places…

About 3am last night, Mike was doing an excersise in a book called “Why am I so Disorganised?” and was getting a little frustrated, not knowing what to say. He ended up sighing, putting the book down stressfully and decided to go to bed. He went into the bathroom to do his business and then returned, a light gleaming in his eyes and began writing furiously for a few moments. A look of finality was on his face, he’d finally finished his task!

It’s always amused me how often he’s come out of the bathroom with some new thought or idea. Sometimes I’ll be waiting for him in bed and hear an evil chuckle as he figures some fact or discovers some random thought while looking in the big white bowl and then wait for him to return to tell me his news. I’ve forgotten some of the best lines he’s come out with, but I’ll have to keep a note.

The scary thing is though, I’ve found myself doing the same thing while being in the bathroom. I’ll be in the shower, and all of a sudden memories from years ago will come flooding back to me and I’ll be overcome with emotion. Or brushing my teeth suddenly sparks some random story idea that I obsess over for a couple of hours before falling asleep. Perhaps it has something to do with the size of the house – it’s a tiny flat with a kitchen, bedroom and bathroom, so perhaps the bathroom has become some kind of sacred “alone” place, where we get some real time to ourselves to think without the other person being there.

Or maybe there’s a mad pixie trapped in our cupboard that keeps sending us telepathic thoughts while we pee.

Life is a thoughtful thing…

I was reading an interesting article a while ago about the meaning of life – very deep stuff – and came across this little chart on living life and morals. According to the article (which I can’t remember the name of), this is from a computer game. I always find it interesting when computer games come up with these meaningful, inspirational snippets, so I thought I’d share:

Truth = Honesty
Love = Compassion
Courage = Valor
Truth + Love = Justice
Truth + Courage = Honor
Love + Courage = Sacrifice
Truth + Love + Courage = Spirituality
The absence of Truth, Love, and Courage is Pride, the opposite of which is Humility.

It made me think a little about my own values and standards, and how I haven’t really discovered what they really are. I have thoughts on what they feel like, but it would probably be a lot easier to be “one” with myself if I actually conciously knew what my standards are. Part of me wants to write them all down right now, but poor Mike (my boyfriend) has a long day tomorrow which means I probably need to kick both of our butts to go to bed. (It’s kinda 2:00am, heh). Standards and life goal stuff can wait until the morning.