My learning and development plan for 2018

(also posted in the Working Out Loud Facebook group and the Workplace by Facebook community where I am hosting my 3rd WOL Circle and running the #OneWord2018 project with Fiona Michaux)

(updated since first posting with the addition of a Q&A section of my responses to questions that were asked in the WOL circle)

In the spirit of working out loud, I am posting this plan in case anyone wants to join me for any part of the journey. I am open to doing anything with anyone related to the items listed. For the books that I will be reading, this may mean something as simple as doing a shared document of our notes and application. For the WOL Circles, I am open to either facilitating and being a full member of a physical or virtual circle or simply being a member of one. Just let me know what you would like to do. The full back story of how I got to this plan will be the subject of the first in a series of blog posts co-created and co-published with Fiona (Michaux) for #OneWord2018 in January.

I managed to get access to Workplace by Facebook to run a Working Out Loud Circle on and Fiona and I are also using that platform for our One Word work.

This was version 1 of the group page header on Workplace …

… which has now changed to this …

And so on to the plan ...

My plan for 2018 and One Word 2018 is to work closely with Fiona in a variety of ways but including publishing in tandem with Fiona a set of blog posts throughout 2018 on our chosen words for the year of "focus" (mine) and "energy" (hers).

To fulfil my core desire of being simultaneously a generalist and a specialist, I will focus my learning in 2018 as follows:-

1. In January to further encourage my voracious appetite for learning, I will read and apply Walter Isaacson's Leonardo da Vinci
2. in February to address my issue of being easily distracted and to start working and reading more deeply, I will read and apply Cal Newport's "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
3. in March to understand Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and set my 1st set of personal OKRs, I will read and apply Christina R. Wodtke's "Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results"
   
   April will be a rest/holiday month.
   
   
4. In May to understand and assess my level of professionalism in my service delivery across all areas of my life, I will read and apply David Maister's "True Professionalism: The Courage to Care About Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career"
5. in June to improve my level of productivity, I will read and apply Charles Duhigg's "Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business"
6. in July to read and learn from a discipline I am unfamiliar with, I will read and apply Atul Gawande's "Better: A Surgeon's Notes On Performance"
   
   August will be a rest/holiday month.
   
   
7. In September to further craft my work style, I will read and apply "Manage Your Day to Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus & Sharpen Your Creative Mind" by various authors including Seth Godin, Scott Belsky, Dan Ariely et al and edited by Jocelyn K. Glei.
8. In October to explore the impact of technology on human relationships, I will read and apply Sherry Turkle's "Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other"
9. In November to explore what it means to belong and to be a member of a community, I will read and apply Brene Brown's "Braving the Wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone"
   
   December will be a rest/holiday month.
   

I have already scheduled and started the setup of my 3rd WOL Circle that will run from January to March 2018. My intention is to do my 4th from May to July, my 5th from September to November and my 6th from January to March 2019. These will need to be recruited for or joined the month before each circle starts. In parallel with the above, I am setting the following milestones:-

1. all my loose paperwork reviewed, scanned and binned/retained (end January)
2. all my digital content moved to a new easy-to-find-stuff directory structure on all my devices including hard disk drives (end February)
3. a document consolidating my learning of using Workplace by Facebook and including the wider community's assessment of that platform versus other platforms we have used with a view to extending our use of that platform beyond the end of March 2018 created and issued to the two Facebook execs who gave me free access to Workplace to run a WOL circle on (end February)
4. a Lessons Learned blog post published covering the running of the Workplace by Facebook community and including members of the community's assessment of how I ran the community (end March)
5. all my CDs ripped to mp3 by iTunes and the CDs given away to good homes to free up space (end April)
6. all my storage boxes emptied and assessed for which books etc are staying and which are going (end June)
7. review the 2017 actions as part of a mid-year checkpoint (end June)
8. bookcases finally set up to hold my books (end August)
9. a summary blog post published of what I have learned and applied during my year of having "focus" as my One Word (end December)
10. review the 2017 and 2018 actions as an end-year checkpoint (end December).

The following questions were asked about my plan in the WOL Circle. I responded to them and include them here as the master copy of my plan.

Q&A

Q:  It's interesting that you've planned your reading that far out.
A: What is really interesting is that I have planned this at all! :) Historically, I have just left piles of books and now ebooks pile up even higher or lists of books to read lengthen and then hardly read any books at all. 2017 was amazing for my book reading and this was due to reading 4 significantly helpful books in the context of virtual book clubs. The accountability and posting notes and comments helped keep me drive to the finish line. 2 of those were on Facebook led by someone else. 2 led by me in Slack (1 with Zoom video calls). I am ashamed to say that this is probably the most (non-fiction) books I have read cover to cover for a lot of years. I want and need to be deeper in my learning and reading.

Q: How much flexibility are you giving yourself - what if a book comes along that you are more interested in - will you add it to the list?
A: We will see how "strong" I am in resisting the temptation to add new books to this list. I tend to get on a mission when I write things down. This exercise of doing a plan to share with Fiona for the One Word 2018 workstream and for this specific circle and then thinking that I could have the 3 months on and 1 month off cycle could work well as a learning routine, pattern or rhythm. It was liberating. Some book choices were obvious and front of mind, others were added amazingly as I considered my personal learning priorities and was prompted when I looked through my ebook library. That was how the Sheryl Turkle book was added. I have a long standing interest in the impact of tech on human relationships but have never really studied it in depth. This was really started when I read Euan Semple's book "Organisations Don't Tweet, People Do". I love that book! I am confident that all the books on my list will retain my interest.

PS: I have already (!) seen another book that I have just now added to my "to read" list on Pinterest (https://goo.gl/4bb31W) via a video on the web earlier today (https://youtu.be/4Ftdu-XNpLk) - Daniel Pink's "When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing" (https://goo.gl/5PXYb1)

Q: What if you want to rearrange the sequence?
A: This question makes me explain the groups of 3 books for each of the 3 months. I wanted to start with a wide-ranging book to encourage the breadth of my interest and after hearing Walter Isaacson on the Tim Ferriss podcast this was a must-read book and it is not disappointing. I have started today! I wanted to read Deep Work early on as I see that as being key to me sorting out my distractions issue. Fiona pointed me at the Radical Focus book and I was amazed and surprised (learning not to be!!) to see that OKRs were already in my mind being new to me in the last 2 months and are intriguing me and would help me may be set my own personal OKRs. That is the first trio.

The next 3 include David Maister on professionalism. I think this could become a core book for me to share with others as a majority of those close to me are deliverers of professional services. This could even be the basis of my next circle goal in May. The Charles Duhigg book is in this 2nd trio as another book to help me address my distraction issue as well as being way more productive than I am now outside of work. I was trying to have at least one such productivity book in each of the groups of 3 books. The Atul Gatawande book made it on to this list because of the amazing quote about writing and writing for a community. I also see this book as helping me with being far more proactively reflective. You may have heard me say that I can be reactively reflective rapidly and deeply e.g. in Twitter Chats when "wild mind writing" seems to simply kick in as I read the questions in the chat and other people's responses. But I do not do this as a matter of course. I seem to need a trigger.

The Jocelym Klei edited book was in my ebook library and it has the word "Focus" in so seemed very appropriate for the One Word 2018 theme for me of "focus". It also seemed to have lots to say by the multiple authors on all kinds of productivity-related subjects. The Sherry Turkle book I have already mentioned. I am expecting her to provoke me! The final book in this trio and this overall set of nine is Brene Brown. Braving the Wilderness has an amazing message from the clips I have seen of her on Oprah and various other places and just seemed to be appropriate to round off the year. I may get "caught" reading that one earlier!!

The 3 sets of 3 seem to work as sets for each of the 3 month blocks having variety and range of things to read and learn. Each set has a book majoring on "focus" to keep my feet to the fire on my One Word through the year.

Q: Also what 'traps' or challenges do you anticipate for yourself with this plan and how do you plan to address them?
A: Overall, I have sensed that I have set my own "course" curriculum for the year by doing this plan and as such I am committed to it. No one has influenced me in any way to get to this list.

I can achieve this plan regardless of whether I am in a circle or not for the 3 x 3 month time slots.

The reading and applying of these books as goals in the three circles that I hope to be in could be done on my own but would then fall foul of the circle goal criteria of needing other people to achieve the goal. I will be working with Fiona throughout the year so that is one response to working with others. But I will be trying to do mini book clubs for each book for the relevant month in question. This proved a challenge when I tried to do this in my last circle. I recruited 10+ people but only one person actively read and posted their comments on Jane Bozarth's Show Your Work over a 10 week period.

I will be using the circle exercises in a major way to do better this time round on engaging people for each book.

A challenge will also be to not just read the books but to take notes and retain key learning from each one.

If anything, I am currently more concerned about the other non-book-related goals in the plan. I am such a hoarder ....