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You are here: Home / Archives for Professional Development

24 October 2023 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Reflections Of The Year Post-Work: What I’d Like to Do Next

It’s been a little over a year now of not working. At the time of resigning from my previous employer, Rapid Circle, I had been planning to take the year off and then decide what it is I wanted to do. However, truth be told, the plan was never to return to the kind of […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Lifelong Learning, Professional Development, Social Media Tagged With: 2023, Disinformation, Fake News, Learning, Media, Media Literacy, Misinformation, Retirement

4 October 2023 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

From the Diaries: What is Your Most Overrated Virtue?

add with virtues

I’ve been writing in journals since I was 15 and have my entire life and reflections written in thousands of pages over the years. It’s been exactly a year since I left working and decided to go through some of the pages I had scribbled to review how much I have progressed in that time. […]

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Filed Under: AI Tech, Lifelong Learning, Professional Development Tagged With: 2023, Personal Development, professional development, Reflection, Self Improvement, Technology, Writing

25 January 2023 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Klara and the Sun Book Review

Can bots be our friends? I’ve got a new book review up on YouTube. This one is by British novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro and it’s one that stays with you long after you put the book down. Themes of love, hope, loneliness, human-like bots made to be AFs (artificial friends) for children, genetic editing and uplifting, […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books Tagged With: AI, Book Reviews, Books, Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

21 January 2023 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Learning & Development conferences in Australia in 2023 by E-Learning Provocateur

A list of conferences in Australia related to learning and development by Ryan Tracey.

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Filed Under: Conferences, Learning and Development Tagged With: Australia, Conferences, Corporate Learning, elearning, learning and development, Training

13 November 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

The Natural History of Love

My new book review is now published on YouTube. How this book got into my hands was full of coincidences that I simply couldn’t explain and wrote about them in the blog post: Eerie Coincidences. In the video, I wander around the golf course showing where the site of the original Mayfields House was. I’m […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Books, History, Writing Tagged With: 2022, Book Reviews, Books, History, November 2022

18 October 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Book Reviews for The Week

assorted title books on brown wooden shelf

I’m a mad reader and currently onto about my 55th (?) book this year which has focussed on reading authors who come from a non-English speaking background. I’ve read some interesting ones which are all sitting on my YouTube channel. Here’s a few that have been uploaded in the last week or so. There are […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, Book Reviews, Books, September 2022

8 September 2022 by Helen Blunden 4 Comments

Our Attention Has Been Stolen

children lying on sofa and using gadgets

I published a new book review this morning on a book I recently finished reading. It’s Johann Hari’s new book called Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention. In the book he provides the different causes over the years as to why we feel our attention and focus has been hijacked and offers a not-so-startling […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Social Media

27 August 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Dare to Unlead: The Art of Leadership in a Fragmented World

Celine Schillinger wrote this wonderful book recently that I have recommended to everyone I know. It’s a book about a different style of leadership needed in today’s world. When I was reading the book, there were times when I was angry and had to put it down to reflect more. It wasn’t what was written, […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews, Future of Work, Professional Development Tagged With: 2022, August 2022, Book Reviews, Books, Leadership

4 August 2022 by Helen Blunden 2 Comments

Top Tools for Learning 2022

set of tool wrench

It’s that time of the year again to submit for Jane Hart’s Top Tools for Learning. I’ve been doing this every year since 2012 she created this annual program which has now become a record of how the tools for my personal learning have changed over the years. This year has been a complete flip […]

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Filed Under: Learning and Development, Lifelong Learning, Professional Development Tagged With: 2022, August, August 2022, Curation, learning tools

28 July 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Book Review on The Bookseller’s Tale

assorted books

A new book review is now on on my YouTube channel if you’re interested. This one was fabulous because it was written by a bookseller who collated and curated all sorts of different stories and facts about books, book collectors and book stores. A great read.

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, Book Reviews, July, July 2022

23 July 2022 by Helen Blunden 1 Comment

LinkedIn Gone to Sleep

person holding iphone showing social networks folder

Yesterday I was chatting with a friend through texts (I’m doing a lot of that now) and it was mentioned about ‘hibernating LinkedIn’. I hadn’t investigated this feature so this morning, I did that too. It’s not exactly permanently deleting but it just hides your profile until such a time that you need to use […]

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Filed Under: Professional Development, Social Media Tagged With: 2022, July, LinkedIn

14 July 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

You Are Not A Gadget

A new book review is now up on YouTube and it’s Jaron Lanier’s, You Are Not a Gadget written in 2010. In the video I talk about how I read this book as at times it took a while to read due to its writing style and at times, grappling with some of the words […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, Book Reviews, Books, July 2022, Social Media

12 July 2022 by Helen Blunden 6 Comments

I Wasn’t On the Org Chart

Last week we had our monthly Team Sync. That’s an opportunity for our CEO of our Australian team to share news and updates of our company. I look forward to this meeting because it’s a snapshot of what’s happening in the company and also learning about what other teams are up to as most of […]

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Filed Under: Professional Development, Working Out Loud (Work Narration) Tagged With: 2022, July, July 2022

18 June 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Reading Jaron Lanier

I’m reading a couple of books by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier at the moment. The first one is You Are Not a Gadget and the second is Ten Reasons To Delete Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. They’re not the reason why I’m getting off social media as I’ve noticed that once we make […]

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, June, June 2022, Social Media

23 February 2022 by Helen Blunden 2 Comments

We Wrote a Book

Our second book is now available through Amazon Kindle. This one is a little bit different to our first book which was called Microsoft Teams: A Manager’s Guide to Communication, Collaboration and Co-ordination. This first book provided some ways for teams to be able to use a framework that helped support these. We had received […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, February, February 2022, Teams

22 January 2022 by Helen Blunden 1 Comment

Struggling Through Certain Books

‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.’  Just about every parent I’ve been reading a book as part of a book club by Kim Scott called Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss without Losing Your Humanity and admittedly, I’m really struggling to get through this book. I’ve read […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Book Reviews Tagged With: 2022, Book Reviews, Books, January, January 2022

18 January 2022 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

My Notion of Microsoft Loop

Things at the beginning of the work year are always a little bit quiet until people get back from holidays and commence projects for the upcoming months. As such, it’s always the “calm before the storm”. So what I have been doing is catching up with all the Microsoft changes and using this quiet time […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Professional Development, Working Out Loud (Work Narration) Tagged With: January, January 2022, Microsoft Loop, Notion

5 January 2022 by Helen Blunden 5 Comments

Smarter Note Taking

First book I read in 2022 on my new Kindle (a nice gift from Santa, thank you very much) was How to Take Smart Notes by Sonke Ahrens who also has a great website Take Smart Notes. Why Did I Choose This Book? Some time back in early 2021, I started on the journey of […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Professional Development, Working Out Loud (Work Narration) Tagged With: 2022, Evernote, January, January 2022, Note Taking, OneNote

7 November 2021 by Helen Blunden Leave a Comment

Welcome to My Bookshelf Tour

woman reading in library

This week I decided to do a bookshelf tour of three shelves in our lounge room and although most of the books are my husband’s, you can instantly tell how different our tastes are! Enjoy!

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Filed Under: Book Reviews Tagged With: Books, November, November 2021

24 September 2021 by Helen Blunden 1 Comment

Radio Girl

I’m currently reading a book by researcher David Dufty called Radio Girl: The Story of the Extraordinary Mrs Mac, Pioneering Engineer and War Time Legend (what a cracking title) and the more I read it, the more I believe that Australian film makers MUST make a film or a series about her. Violet McKenzie grew […]

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Filed Under: Blogging, Book Reviews Tagged With: 2021, Morse, Mrs Mac, September, September 2021

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Life Lessons Through Books

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My Writing

  • Meet Griffith
  • A Trip to Clunes Book Town Festival
  • Volunteering at Our Charity Event
  • The Genius or Maniacal Man When It Comes To Technology
  • Ladies Night at the French Film Festival 🇫🇷
  • We Had Our First Book Club Author Event for 2025
  • How I Take Notes When Reading a Book
  • Transferring All My Blog Posts
  • Creating a Book Club Journal
  • Our 19th Wedding Anniversary
  • Extracting 1498 Blog Posts One by One
  • Changing Ways
  • The Moon & Sixpence Book by Somerset Maugham Book Review
  • Flâneur Friday ~ Patterson Lakes
  • Spending Time with Mum
  • My Annual YouTube Analytics
  • Happy New Year!
  • My Year in Books – Reading in 2024
  • What I’m Reading
  • Book Review of She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai
  • Book Review of Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
  • Visit to New and Old Parliament House in Canberra
  • Futuro House
  • Creating a Reading Journal
  • Book Review: Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
  • Last Book Club Chat for the Year
  • New Book Review: Home by Toni Morrison
  • Golf Trip to The Dunes
  • A Week of Golf and Cleaning
  • Book Review: Leonard & Hungry Paul

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