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Progress

Connecting The Dots In Your Life

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Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you to another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours – long hallways and unforeseen stairwells – eventually puts you in the place you are now.

— Ann Patchett, What Now?

A little bit of reflection and connecting the dots can lead to insight, an honest overview of where you are, and perhaps, a clearer picture of where you’re headed!

How To Measure Success

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First, the seed being sown falls on good ground, but the birds get it. Then it falls on shallow ground and can’t grow. Then on thorny ground, where it withers away. And only with the last attempt it falls on good ground and the seeds grow.
So we must shift our focus. We don’t want to look for which seeds thrive and which don’t. We want to know what the rate of success is.

Buffer’s Leo Widrich describes Jim Rohm’s law of averages in explaining his approach to measuring success.

Great things are not accomplished with a silver bullet shot of optimism but require work and a kind of faith that is informed by reality.

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Image: Sergiu Bacioiu

How To Be An Excellent Leader: The Best of the Internet

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Hugging PandasCatch up with the best of what we’ve shared on the interwebs this week! 

The rise of the culture hacker.

The antidote to burnout is progress.

Check in with people. Don’t check up on them.

Want to be an excellent leader? Read these 10 books.

Teach why startups fail.

imageDundee’s Tip of the Week:  Have you checked out your word cloud to see your language of getting stuff done? Just sign into iDoneThis, click on “Visuals”, and then click on “Word Cloud”. Which words are most prominent?

What Goldilocks Can Teach You About Management

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Running a classroom and running a business have interesting parallels for what works best to cultivate intrinsic motivation, effective productivity, and successful performance. Whether we’re students or employees, we need supportive conditions to achieve know-how and expertise.

On the education front, Dr. MaryEllen Vogt has examined the effect of how teachers’ perception of their students’ aptitude influenced their classroom approach. She found that when students were perceived as high performers, teachers:

  • talked less and encouraged more interactions among students,
  • allowed for more creative and generative approaches to learning,
  • offered opportunities for independent work,
  • had warmer and more personal relationships with students, and
  • spent little time on behavior or classroom management issues.

When teachers saw their students as low performers, they:

  • prepared more structured lessons,
  • allowed fewer opportunities for student creativity,
  • covered less content,
  • rewarded students for “trying hard” rather than for “good thinking,”
  • spent a significant amount of time on behavior and management issues, and
  • had less congenial relationships with students due to their heavy emphasis on discipline.Source: Karen Tankersley, Literacy Strategies for Grades 4-12

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