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Reflections About Personal Learning This Week – 3 May 2020

Beside my desk at home, I have a list of questions that were created by Kenneth Mikkelsen who wrote the post on The Best Leaders are Constant Learners.

Every week, I glance over to it and make a mental note to use it as a means of self reflection for the week.  After all, I capture daily work and learning out loud videos through my YouTube channel (and shared on Instagram Stories) but sometimes I forget about what it is that I’ve learned because I’m in the moment of doing it.  I need to take the time and reflect on what I have achieved, learned and been challenged about.

Every week at our work meeting, we have to share one good thing – personal and professional that happened in the week as a way to start the meeting so these questions would also go some way in recalling what these are.  So here is what happened this week.

What surprised me the most?

It was lovely to chat with a good friend who I had served with many years ago when I was a Divisional Officer at the Australian Defence Force Academy.  Our friendship extended for many years and she’s fantastic.  She’s creative, outgoing, empathetic, compassionate human being who has spent years in the Services. What surprised me is that I always get surprised at how wonderful it is when I see my friends doing well despite these difficult circumstances.  I enjoyed every moment of our virtual catch up and had some laughs.

I’ve also been surprised at how my morning walks have made me feel this week.  I’ve integrated the Couch to 5K run in them too and I was hanging out for them every day taking longer and longer walks.  I think it’s because I’ve been enjoying the Coffee Break French podcast series and the Overwhelmed and Dying podcast by Judith Lucy which was strangely inspiring.

This week I also saw this tweet from the Wakelet team:

I applied to become a Wakelet ambassador and I received such lovely feedback from my Twitter network about this.

Of course I’m always surprised when I see our book we wrote on Microsoft Teams be communicated and promoted.  The sales are unbelievable and it’s such a delight to see that it’s helping people.

(My husband told me of a story that he was in a first Microsoft Teams meeting training with a leader in his organisation and behind them, our book was on full view to the people on the call! He didn’t have the heart to say, “see your book in the background there? My wife co-wrote that with her colleagues!”)

What do I need to do more of?

I need to devote more time practicing French orally.  At the moment, I’m only writing it and learning grammar through text books and Coffee Break French (which I have nearly completed Series 1).

I also need to overcome this feeling of procrastination in doing my PowerPoint presentation for Microsoft 365 May (an online event).  It may be because I don’t have a standard set of PowerPoint presentations every time I get asked to present on something (I change them to suit) and it just feels that I’ve done it too many times before that maybe I should just have a template – a stock set of slides – however, at the same time, I don’t want to feel like a cop-out because stuff is changing ALL THE TIME and I shouldn’t be churning the same old slides, same old content.  If I’m learning and changing and finding new things – then  it goes without saying that my content should too. It’s only fair to the audience who would be listening and spending their precious time on listening to my presentation.  I talk about it here.

What am I proud of having done?

I also started on a difficult (I’m calling it difficult) knitting project where I’m using this series of blog posts to basically create my own customised knitting pattern for a seamless top down sweater. It’s all using Maths to calculate rows, stitch counts and design elements to ensure that it fits me.  I’m trying to make heads and tails out of it.  I’m proud of at least starting this because it’s always been at the back of my mind to create my own standard pattern.  If I know the pattern it just means that it’s a no brainer.  I can then just use design elements to my hearts content (variety of stitch types; use of different colours and patterns; etc) they will vary but the standard design doesn’t.  It will take my knitting skills up a notch.

How has my perception been challenged?

Unsure about this aspect.  I don’t think I’ve had my perceptions challenged again this week.

I know I did feel uncomfortable when I was asked if I had any reports for LearningNow TV and I admitted I had none.  I always feel bad when I can’t deliver on things and I enjoy my reports on LearningNow TV.  In fact, over a period of time now, I’ve been seeing my network and connections with the old Learning and Development crowd (who were my network from many years ago on Twitter have dwindled).  I’m not disheartened by this at all as like anything, networks come and go and it is a weird time for everyone.  I feel that slowly, I’m disappearing from the old corporate learning and development network although I have stronger relationships with some of the “old and bolds” that are now moved away from the public sphere and into the realm of virtual meetings, friendships and direct messaging.

Also, I have been seeing how this COVID situation has affected people in learning and development and the loss of jobs.  At times, I do think I’m living and working in an alternate reality and I shouldn’t complain. I’ve got it pretty easy and it’s hard not to feel guilty about that sometimes.

Other than that, this is what I’m missing:

What worked this week?

My knitting projects and my own French studies have been going well albeit I can add more time to the French.

What didn’t work?

I have people asking me for all sorts of different advice and recommendations for what product to use, how to use a certain tool, platform or app or asking for an invitation to connect with someone I know.  The majority of the people are thankful and they send me written messages of thanks.  I like that.  However there’s the 1% of people who after I send them the details, there’s not a ‘thank you’.   I took the time to research and send them a response and then I get absolutely no feedback or even a thank you.

Flipgrid – I sat down a bit to have a go at learning it but saw it was way too in-depth so left if for another week.

What should I stop doing?

Thinking about the above, it’s hard to stop doing what you naturally feel compelled to do.  I like to help people and jump in.  However, it’s hard to determine which person genuinely is grateful for the support and which one is just using my own experience as a quick win for themselves.  Like I said, the majority of the people send my lovely direct messages and my heart jumps that I was able to help them in some small way.  I won’t stop doing that of course.

Who did I help?

This week I helped out Keely Sorokti who had asked for assistance regarding putting face-to-face workshop material into an online format.  I had pulled together a Wakelet for her (if you want it, let me know and I’ll send you the URL as it’s not a public collection).  She was very happy with the resources and I received great feedback.  Keely has been part of my personal learning network for many years and I look forward to the day when I meet her.  You can see what I did for her in this video:

I walked into a Lincraft store on Saturday (I hadn’t been in a store in AGES) and was buying up yarn and mumbling to myself.  I had ladies come up to me (standing at a safe distance) and ask me questions about knitting, needles, patterns and yarns.  I wonder if they thought I worked there??  This usually happens when I’m at a yarn store.  I think people think, “there’s someone who looks like she doesn’t have a life and just knits”

What emotions did I experience?

This week I ventured outside to the shopping centre.  It’s been close to 2 months that I haven’t been inside one and I had to go and pick up some medical scripts so while there I decided to have a bit of a walk around. Many of the shops were closed up and the larger stores like KMart, BigW and Target had social distancing queues outside.  All of the shops had some signage about limiting the number of people into the store at any one time.  I spent over half an hour in the pharmacy just perusing the shelves of moisturisers, make up and shampoo.  Truth be told, it was nice to be outside of the house and have a bit of a chin wag with the pharmacist.  Outside of my family, friends and colleagues, she was the only person I had spoken to in a long time. I enjoyed my morning out but came home in a reflective mood before sanitising everything else and getting back into the routine.

It’s suffice to say my emotions of late have been a bit on the downside – not sad – more like, an acceptance for how things are and the slow realisation that life is going to change.  Don’t expect to jump the gun and go back to eating out at packed restaurants and bars any time soon; or enjoying a breakfast out at a busy cafe with hubby.  We’ll be “out” but with people further apart – which may mean that we either become patient if we don’t get a table or we choose to move along and do something else in some other way.

There was also a realisation dawning on me that I must expand my circle of local friends. I’m way too insular and shouldn’t rely on my social media and networks for conversation all the time.

How did I handle a difficult situation?

I can’t recall a difficult situation this week.

Who helped me? Why was it useful?

I didn’t ask for any help this week. However I did find that people’s great feedback regarding my work and how I helped them, helped me.  It’s always nice to get feedback that you help others.

What was my biggest achievement for the week?

My biggest achievement for this week was completing an amusing craft project called Yip Yips.