Events
What kids can teach us about Goal Directed futures
Tuesday 17 November 2009
Our son has just celebrated his fifth birthday and although we don't make a huge fuss about milestones (the kids get a party every second year), there's no doubt that he is learning about desired future outcomes and goals. I doubt he is different from most kids in his ability to spot something and declare with wholesome intensity 'Ohhh - I'm so gonna get that...'. What I enjoy is his reaction when he doesn't in fact 'get that'.
He just moves on. What he is learning to do is separate the desirable from the worthy and that is a clue many of us can take from kids. The REALLY desireable goals can lead to kiddie meltdown whereas the distracting short term 'so so' goals hold minimal emotional attachment. The lesson adults can remind themselves of, is the ability to ignore the distracting and focus on the big issue. Setting goals may require small steps to achieve a large one, but it rarely requires getting lots of small things in order to achieve a large thing.
Activity versus productivity. Kids by and large live and let live - they move easily onto the next thing at hand. As parents our key jobs might be ensuring we do NOT teach them to get hung up on the minor things that aren't that important. Most responses kids have are learned behaviours - from the fear of the dark, phobia of spiders, and even the foods they eat, kids typically build most of their understanding based on how they see us react and act.
If they see us all frantic and impulsive that is a key attribute they learn to mimic. If they see us not plan or see us fail think about our own future, that too is a habit they learn to mimic. If they see us setting goals, working hard to overcome obstacles and importantly, showing that we are able to discern the important from the merely attractive, it is likely they'll also mimic that approach to their own world.
Right now our son Flynn is learning about being Goal Directed. Thankfully to date, he can focus on goals that matter, not just goals that are interesting - I hope we don't teach him 'out of' that approach to the world.
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Events
Friday 16 July 2010
A series of recent activities has me writing on the idea of 'future strategy' and how different organisations are approaching their future development. What is interesting is the strong sense that preparing for your potential future requires multiple paths forward, not a single 'home run'. To that end I've recently considered sporting bodies and local community driven programs which has triggered these 'thought bubbles'
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Monday 5 July 2010
Stephen Downes is one the handful of bloggers I follow consistently. I do so because Downes (unlike many others unfortunately) like to write about his thinking AS WELL AS promoting the thinking of others, whether or not he agrees with them. In that way you get a solid collection of alternative views within his field of endeavour (learning & teaching et al). The link below will take you to a presentation by David Harvey that walks you through an interesting interpretation of the Capitalist model and where we are at in the world affairs. Whether or not you agree with the content, it is highly recommended
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Monday 28 June 2010
Coming off what has been undoubtedly my busiest period (3 months) in the past decade, I'm in the throws of catching up on some light reading. I usually have at least two books on the go and my preference is for the books to be about diverse topics because it allows the mind to seek out random connections. I once 'solved' the nuclear fusion problem whilst reading books by Umberto Eco and John D Barrow. A physicist friend of mine suggested my idea was radical and yet theoretically possible. But I digress. Right now I have a wide combination - 'From Poverty to Peace' by Duncan Green looks at ways in which we can empower people to help themselves more effectively, whilst looking at the myriad of mistakes so commonly made in the area of 'aid'. 'New knowledge in Human Values' is an older book edited by Ambraham Maslow with a wide contribution of thoughts from the likes of Pitirim Sorokin, Dorothy Lee and Paul Tillich (among others) and is a walk through some of the thinking about Human Values emerging in the late 1950's. The chapters are appropriately dense undertakings and I'm finding it hard to stick with, especially as I'm more inclined to lean towards the model of Clare W Graves and his Value Systems Thoery; 'Coercion as Cure' by Thomas Szasz is a ripper of a book thus far, though I'm only a few chapters in, I can tell the quality of a book by how much 'tagging' I do within a text
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