Virtually Priceless Thoughts

Thank you everyone for your feedback to my previous post on learning in 2010 – both in the comments and by email (some of you were shy and preferred to give me great feedback directly).

The day after I posted the previous post, Zen Habits posted a little piece on Focus and Passion, which was timely. I agree, somewhat, with what the post is saying, but not entirely. I agree that passion and excitement is key. Also that being great is important. BUT, I think you can become great at something by bringing together a few diverse skills to create that unique specialization rather than focusing on something singularly until you are great at that (although that can work as well). With the idea of tying pieces together uniquely…

…On to my personal learning objectives for this year.

I have broken down my five personal objectives into three groups:

Leadership:

• Become more clear on types of team function / team leadership – particularly looking at successful and creative teams. Put learning into practice at work.
• Explore the Evidence-based Anecdote (my term) in leadership. This objective relates to use of story-telling in leadership and change. Put learning into practice in grant writing / presentations.
• Look into other experiences on adapting agile software development methods into research teams and clinical practice. I think there is something here… not sure where / when to apply this, yet.

Health Informatics Standards: (1)

• Review Core documentation on openEHR and archetypes, with a focus on content related to chronic disease data modelling.

Board Games / Game Playing:

• Review game mechanics / how to build board games.
• This one is partly for fun (and to get me ready for my son in a few more years) but also to explore why we play games for fun and how can we imbue some of that fun into learning, work and research methods. Not only will I spend some time playing with game pieces, but I will look into mechanics and why they work to see if they can be included in some of our work / design processes in the future.

My learning plan will be to dedicate a month to each topic. I will take the “free” months to learn about fatherhood or to either delve more deeply into one of these topics above or to add an additional topic, based on what I have learned or what I have lived.

I will build out more specific reading / activities for each month and share what I have learned through some blog posts.

If anyone is interested in joining me for any one of these activities, please let me know. It would be fun to have a learning group.

January is team leadership month!

1. I have other projects this year that will pull me into SNOMED CT more deeply, if not, I would have put that on my list.

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