Curt Rosengren recently shared some suggestions from a book he is reading to help experts spend some time remembering what it means to be a beginner in a field. I found it interesting because I do consider myself an expert on a couple of topics, but I feel like I spend a lot of my time practicing the behaviors described.
Most of them center around the fact that beginners are learners first and foremost, and they exhibit strong learning traits like curiosity and a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. really, these are traits experts should be cultivating within themselves anyway. It’s part of keeping up with your industry or niche. It’s also how trends and new discoveries are identified. Who wouldn’t want to do those things?
For my part, I just like playing “What if” games with my work, and then experimenting to see if my ideas will work. It sounds like a mad scientist in her lab, but it’s those same traits at play that beginners use to help themselves grow. It’s how I, established in the fields I feel comfortable with, find new ideas to chase.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 10:48 AM EST
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After using eHow for a while, I finally decided to jump in and try to post some of my how-to articles there.
I’m starting small, just posting one article a week. My first series will be the constellation finders I wrote back in grad school. I don’t know where I’m going to go from there, but I figure I have a couple of weeks to sort that out.
You can keep up with my articles here, and feel free to suggest article ideas to me.
Next on the agenda, trying to be more brave about submitting my short stories. If people think I ought to give my writing a chance, I guess it can’t hurt.
It gives me something to do in between being rejected from jobs, if nothing else.
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 8:25 AM EST
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(Sorry if this is late. Real life can be a real bear sometimes.)
Over the weekend, I put together a list of as many of my currently-used skills as I could think of, including one that’s getting a lot of good practice at the moment that I completely forget to mention.
I like research. I love to look for information. I love to gather information from various sources and find patterns and commonalities. I like to verify what I think I know. There are people out there who don’t have the time to find information they need, and I’m thinking about how to present this skill to them.
So, my question to you is: If you hired someone to research or check facts, what would you most want to know? What would you expect this person to be able to do? What bundle of skills would you expect this person to be able to provide?
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 2:44 PM EST
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I really feel this post on cartooning says it all, but honestly when you combine images and words, you are tapping into two learning modalities. You’re engaging the reader’s mind on two levels. That’s twice the opportunity to have your message sink in.
Something to keep in mind when developing products designed to make a point…
Posted by Rebecca as Uncategorized at 9:54 AM EST
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