Nancy Schwartz is hosting the next Carnival of Nonprofit Consultants. The topic is professional development resources and strategy for nonprofit marketers ....
I was totally going to ignore this Carnival, but the topic is one that is near and dear to me. It has also been insanely busy the last few weeks and I definitely need to remind myself of my personal strategies for keeping inspired when your to do list is way too long!
Continuous personal learning is very important to me. It keeps me happy, healthy, and creative. I view it like exercise or brushing my teeth, a necessary daily activity. It takes a certain mindset or perhaps lack of discipline to step away from your madly insane deliverables and give yourself the permission to think and reflect in the face of deadline.
Now matter how pressured I'm feeling or whatever ugly deadline is looming over my head, I try to set aside about a half-hour a day in the morning for reflection. Sometimes this is just a morning walk in the woods or other times this just quiet time to hit the pause button and take a deep breath.
Over the past 15 or so years, I've had a little bit of an obsession with creative and visual thinking processes. I've read about, studied, and practiced many different methods. So, I like to choose one of the techniques and an idea and just play with it. I might draw or mindmap these ideas or just to write out some thoughts. These don't necessarily appear on my blog (sometimes they do).
Some people don't know this about me, but at one point was accepted into art school -- illustration. I went to music school instead, but I still find that drawing my ideas helps me reflect and think. So, sometimes my morning time is spent sketching out some ideas.
Lately, I've been revisiting some of the techniques I learned from Micheal J Gelb's How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci which is almost ten years old! Here's an example of one of the techniques - the 100 questions. You rapid fire write out 100 questions about something that you are curious about. Then you reflect on the questions by grouping them into patterns. Sometimes new insights occurs, and sometimes not. I'm also a big fan of Roger Van Ock's work, particularly his creative thinking strategies. Yes, I have a creative whack pack by my computer.
Finding the right mix of channels for professional development is a balancing act. I would like more face-to-face opportunities where you can discuss issues with colleagues in an informal way. I don't get enough of that.
I consume a lot of content via the Internet. I find lots of inspiration in reading blogs, perhaps it is like having a conversation with someone. I'm also an information addict and love browsing and organizing and aggregating resources. That sounds totally weird, I know. The face-to-face gatherings that I find most useful are the local meetups of bloggers and video bloggers. I've had incredibly conversations with people and meet all kinds of interesting people with similar interests as much. I try get to a conference at least once every other month and I'd go to conferences more often if budget and time permitted.
If I could create the perfect professional experience, I'd like a year of independent study and field trips. Okay, this is the fantasy part ... What's a field trip? You go visit an organization or place where you admire what they are doing and visit for the day or whatever. I'd create a video blog/blog journal about this and spent a few hours on-site interviewing people and then writing informative articles. These would be mostly for me, but I imagine they might be of interest to others.
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