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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, last week I upgraded to Apple’s newest OS and lost the functionality of my favorite features in my favorite audio editing application, but I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share observations about learning.
Friday Forum
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What I Learned Yesterday:
Last week I released an episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday called Share What You Know. On Friday, we had a contribution from Mike about passion. One of the things that Mike mentioned was his inability to control a classroom of 12 year olds when he first began teaching. Now he has much more experience and knowledge, so he’s able to run a classroom much better.
As I mentioned in my outro on Friday, we had my son’s birthday party over the weekend. After the party my dad was getting ready to leave when he asked me how my car has been running. You may recall that my car is 30 years old, so this is a pretty common question that he asks me. I told him that it was running just fine, but I had a power steering fluid leak and a radiator leak that I was having trouble solving.
I admitted that I hadn’t had much time to dig into the car and track them down, and I only drive the car a couple of times per week, so I had mostly just been making sure to keep fluids in the car and hadn’t spent a lot of time trying to actually fix the problems.
My dad asked me to pop the hood so he could look at it. Within less than 5 minutes he had tracked down the likely cause of the power steering leak. No such luck on the radiator leak.
He’s done this before.
About two years ago my car was having some trouble accelerating and it was sputtering. I had a few ideas on what I thought it could be, but after describing the behavior of the car to him, he had a different idea. To me his diagnosis didn’t make sense. One day the car left me stranded on the side of the road and dad came to my rescue. We popped the hood and took a look at the part that he thought was the cause. You guessed it, he was right.
So why is it that my dad is so good at figuring out the problems with my car? It’s the same thing that has enabled Mike to manage his classroom: experience.
Experience is one of the most valuable (if not THE most valuable) method of learning. We can study books, watch videos, and listen to lectures all day, everyday for years. But there’s nothing that can beat experience.
However, I don’t want to diminish the importance and value of learning from books, videos, and lectures. They are immensely valuable.
When I started the process for developing this podcast, learning was at the heart of what I wanted to talk about. After all, this podcast is called, “Stuff I Learned Yesterday.” As I was developing the concept of this podcast, I began to realize that every podcast we do at Golden Spiral Media has at least one of these 4 attributes: entertaining, inspirational, motivational, and educational.
As I thought about our very first podcast, The Fringe Podcast, I realized that without consciously trying, it clearly included 2 of those attributes from the beginning. That is, it was educational due to our Science of Tomorrow segment, and entertaining due to a variety of jokes, gags, conversations, and spontaneous antics.
As Golden Spiral Media has exploded with new podcasts over the last 5 months, I’ve thought about these components a lot. I mean, nearly every day. As I’ve spoken with each of our new hosts, these components have been something that I’ve discussed with them.
We have an amazing team here at Golden Spiral Media. There are now 26 members of the Golden Spiral Media team. Most of them have some type of degree ranging from associate’s degrees up to master’s degrees. Several members of our team are teachers just like Mike. Education is really important to us.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
Education comes wrapped in many different forms and because of that, every day, and every situation, conversation, encounter, and observation is an opportunity to learn. Because these things are happening all around us every day, we may not always learn from them.
The amazing thing that has happened to me since I started this podcast is that it has caused me to be focused and intentional about these types of things. I’m now looking for things to learn in nearly every moment of my life. As a result, in many ways I’m learning more than ever before.
And that brings me to my takeaway for today. Many times we have to be proactive if we want to learn. Have you ever said something like, “One of these days I’ll…” Or how about, “I wish I knew how to…”
What is stopping you? Go do it! Be intentional!
You’ve heard me mention a great website for learning a few times throughout the lifetime of this podcast. That website is Lynda.com. That’s Lynda with a y.
I’m excited to let you know that we now have a relationship with Lynda that will earn us here at Golden Spiral Media some cash whenever you use their service. While I love the fact that I could now get paid for promoting Lynda, you know I’ve loved them even before that was the case.
But this is a great time for me to encourage you to go check them out. Ever wondered how much you could learn in a week? Go find out! Visit www.goldenspiralmedia.com/lynda and you can sign up for a free week of Lynda goodness.
Let me tell you just a few of the topics they offer. Keep in mind that these are just the topics, not the actual tutorials. For example, Video is one topics, and there are over 450 different tutorials within that topic. Here are some others: Screenwriting, Small Business Marketing, Time Management, Web Design, Writing, Restoration, Project Management, Note Taking, Motion Graphics, Music Notation, Management, Lighting, Languages, Interior Design, Game Development, Filmmaking, Ebooks, Drawing, Construction, Cloud Computing, Business, Accounting, and Animation.
Don’t let anything stop you from learning.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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