I’m a magpie. I realize the reference is dated, but it fits perfectly. I’m a magpie. I see shiny things, I get excited, and I go after them. I don’t mean shiny things like fancy cars or watches or anything material at all. I mean […]
Tag: education
We Interrupt this Broadcast…
Thursday is my “deep work” day. I don’t go to the office. I only check my email once. I sit at the kitchen table, headphones blasting the soundtracks from my favorite movies (the music from Braveheart and Harry Potter is pretty great by the way). […]
Coming Soon. The Intentional Academy: VLOG
ave you ever had a ‘life changing’ experience? Maybe it was a religious retreat. Or a summer camp. Or a medical crisis. Maybe you experienced a disaster. In the blink of an eye, you know you’ll never be the same. Your life changes in the […]
Coming Soon. The Intentional Academy: Stories.
Have you ever been completely lost during class? You’re in the room. You’re listening. But you find yourself just sitting there with no idea what the professor is talking about. Do you raise your hand and ask for help? Usually, the answer is “no.” Why […]
Coming Soon: The Intentional Academy. Reimagined.
The number one request I get from my students is to show more examples in class. I get caught up in talking about theories – because they make sense to me. The reason they make sense? I’ve seen countless examples and then applied the concepts […]
Midterm Rehab – Sustained Focus Makes Life Easier
The thing about being behind is that you can’t catch up by doing more of what you’ve been doing. You’re behind because the current strategy isn’t working. Yet we often tell ourselves that we’ll “sit down for a big workday this weekend and get caught […]
Midterm Rehab – A Winning Routine
When stress hits, we react quickly. We focus our attention and effort like a laser beam on the task that needs done. We tend to put down “optional” activities for a time to sprint and catch up. Except we never catch up. The laser focus […]
Follow Through
I’m not a golfer. But I know enough about physics to realize that every swing of the club involves 4 phases: alignment, wind up, down swing, follow through. When we face a challenge or a large task, the first three come naturally. But after we’ve […]
Dream. Mission. Goals. Action.
These are the destinations I arrive at every time I actually achieve something. It often happens subconsciously, nonlinearly, but I am certain that we always stop by these four waypoints: Dream – we have a fuzzy picture in our head of something we hope will […]
Measurements Aren’t Goals
I was in a conversation with my colleagues yesterday about ways to improve our college. The talk quickly shifted to focus on three key ideas: Lowering the student-to-faculty ratio Reducing class sizes Increasing research funding It struck me that these aren’t actual goals. The goal […]
