Category Archives: Personal Development

The Future of Online Education is Now – Online courses from Harvard,MIT, etc

Personal Development, Professional Development,

I stumbled upon edX quite accidentally. One of my very respected LinkedIn contacts shared a link about an online course on the topic ” The Challenges of Global Poverty” by MIT and highly recommended it. I got hooked to this concept and explored “edX” further. What did I learn?

– edX is an initiative by MIT and Harvard

– Free online courses are offered by the edX consortium, comprising of some of the best schools in the world(including Berkley, Cornell, IIT Bombay)

– The courses are spread over 10-12 weeks(approximately)

– Certificates are given to those whose grades are above a certain threshold.

I liked the idea of “continuing education” and enrolled for the course on Global Poverty. It started off well, but at one point, I was not able to dedicate enough time for it and had to drop out. But I learned a lot of new things, and got more confident about completing an online course by managing my time better. Last month, I registered for another course, this time by the University of Texas, Austin on the subject ” Energy 101″ . The course has begun and this time, I am enjoying it more. I have already enrolled for my third course and have plans to learn things I never had the chance to study, like – ” Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge and Consciousness”  by MITx, ” The Ancient Greek Hero” by Harvardx, etc…

Want to know more about edX and the courses? Click here , here and watch the video below.

The Value of Writing (Blogs)..

Miscellaneous, Personal Development,

The last 3-4 weeks have been quite hectic with lot of travel. My work took me to the states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Delhi(Greater Noida), Maharashtra(again) and finally back in Tamil Nadu. During this period, I travelled by practically every mode of transport – aircrafts, train(AC/non-AC), bus, Auto-Rikshaw, cycle-rikshaw and what not(except boats). While the travel has been quiet fruitful, my blogging has been a casualty. As I sat to write this post, I realized that my last blog was almost a month ago. While I had convinced myself that the travel was the culprit, Fred Wilson’s blog said that real culprit might be lack of discipline. His view was in a different context,but he attributes a lot of his success to blogging. In his own words, “  I toiled in the VC business for close to twenty years before I hit my stride and the reason I found my stride was my adoption of blogging.

As all of you know, I write every day. It is my discipline, my practice, my thing. It forces me to think, articulate, and question. And I get feedback from it. When I hit publish, I get a rush. Every time. Just like the first time. It is incredibly powerful.

And it is permanent. There is a long and winding record of my thinking out there on the public Internet.”

Now, in addition to Seth Godin, there is one more guy who makes a convincing case for writing blogs daily. And as Fred says, the rush one gets when publishing a blog is something not to be missed. As I am about to hit the publish button, I am getting that rush!!!!

FOCUS

Books, Leadership, Personal Development, Psychology, ,

This 5 letter word is gaining more and more prominence. It was only a week back that Fred Wilson, the famous VC, blogged about “Focus”and how it led to the success of Steve Jobs.(Read my blog here). Today in LinkedIn, Daniel Goleman, the author of the path-breaking book “Emotional Intelligence”  announced the title of his new book(surprise, surprise) – “Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence“.

He asks “What do a world-class athlete, a star rapper, and a high-performing executive all have in common? Focus – how well they pay attention to what matters most for their performance. Focus is the hidden ingredient in excellence – but a different kind of focus matters for each of these achievers.”He then makes a very relevant point, “In the new normal we are inundated by a sea of distractions. Attention has become a mental ability under siege. We need to get smarter about how to maintain our focus.”  I can relate to this big time. The constant need to refresh the inbox to see if there are new mails, frequent checking of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn prompted by the fear of losing vital insights has an impact on productivity. That is where Daniel Goleman’s book comes into picture. More details about the book are available here or click on the image below.

9780062114860.jpg (429×648)
(Image Credit – Harper Collins Publishers)

Before I finish, I would like to add that his book “Emotional Intelligence” had an extraordinarily positive effect on my thinking. I would highly recommend that you get a copy of it.

Click on the image to read a good review/overview of the book.

emotional-intelligence

P.R.E.S.E.N.T principle

Books, Personal Development,

Acronyms, acronyms, acronyms. They are all around us. LOL, ROFLOL, TGIF, WTF(Winning the Future – coined by Obama, but also has a different expansion!!). Some of them are fun, some horrible and some really good. I would add P.R.E.S.E.N.T to the “good” category. So what is this P.R.E.S.E.N.T ?

I am an avid reader of the ” Influencer Posts” in LinkedIn and today LinkedIn sent me a post titled ” How to Hack Your Daily Routine” . Being an early bird myself, the title of the post aroused my curiosity and I open it to find Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter. Well, it turned out that it was not about getting up early, but more about how to start a day irrespective of when one gets up. Without taking away too much of what she has to say, here is what she has to say. Once you are up in the morning, you can do the following.

P — PRAY (or PAUSE)
R — READ
E — EXPRESS
S — SCHEDULE
E — EXERCISE
N — NOURISH
T — TRACK

Curious to know how it works? Here is her LinkedIn post and download her ebook for free here or click on the image below.

P.R.E.S.E.N.T