I started my session by making reference to Stephen Johnson's RSA Animate talk - where great ideas come from and suggested that the workshop provided a great space for harnessing the thoughts and ideas of the participants on the matters we were focusing on. We worked through the approach that I had learned from Fred Buining, the great Dutch facilitator encouraging participants to suspend their disbelief and think imaginatively with purpose to explore the problem statement we had created and then generate many possible solutions. This process prepared them for the main task which was to work in two's or three's to create a poster to describe their solution to the problem. Here the process encouraged both imaginative and critical thinking within a well defined time frame. At the end of it each small group pitched their poster to the others and at the end of the pitch the other participants had to make at least one suggestion to add value to the ideas that had been pitched. What emerged were some 'great ideas' which had huge potential to be shaped into exciting new concepts and social practices. It was a wonderful experience and I caught the sense of excitement as some of the participants realised some of the potential in the ideas.  Feedback at the end on my contribution was very generous  and I went home a happy man.

On the long (5 hour journey back) I reflected on the experience. Travelling makes you do this doesn't it? I re-read a blog post I had downloaded by Carlo Miceli  who summarised the key points in Stephen Johnson's book and it seemed to me that the workshop satisfied two of his ten statements about where good ideas come from. 

First innovation pattern: The Adjacent Possible
The first pattern he recognises is that  ideas are connected like doors. Open a door and you can see new ideas, but only ideas that are connected can be seen. It’s by learning from other people’s ideas, or previous ideas of our own, that we come up with new ways of seeing the world. It’s a constant connection of innovation. The key is not to isolate your idea. Instead, try to connect it to as many doors -people, places, ideas – as possible. I think the 'design thinking' workshop provided an excellent space in which individuals could open the doors behind which their ideas sat and expose them to new possibilities.

Second innovation pattern: Liquid Networks
Ideas are not single elements. They are more like networks. They are not sparked by the connections between different elements: they ARE those connections. For ideas to happen, you have to place the elements at your disposal in environments where more connections  can occur in the right way. The best networks have two characteristics: they make it possible for its elements to make as many connections as possible, and they provide a random environment that encourages constant “collisions” between all of its elements. The elements are worthless if they are not properly connected.  The magic in the workshop is the way in which people who had participated in and shared a process were then connected in the act of designing their solution to the problem/opportunity. This was when ideas collided and new and better ideas emerged.

The following day I sat down and tried to catch some of my learning from the event. I was particularly interested in the high level concepts and how the rationale might be developed to support these. As I wrote I realised that I was embodying the first of Johnson's innovation patterns. During the process I had opened my door to share my ideas and then been rewarded with the open doors of participants through which they had shared their ideas. My writing process was the way in which I tried to select and make sense of the multitude of ideas. I tried to identify the big ideas and connect them to existing subsidiary ideas that gave the big idea substance and deeper meaning and ultimately might enable new social practices to be created. Finally, one other thing I now have which I didn't have before is a personally meaningful story I can use in my work in encouraging creativity to flourish in universities. Such stories are valuable ways of bridging the gap between the abstract ideas of Stephen Johnson to the real world of academics, educational developers and managers.

So this is how I witnessed the birth of some GOOD IDEAS. It was a deeply purposeful, social, collaborative, energetic and constructive and connected process and I feel privileged to have been a participant. But the good ideas are only that. They need to be developed and grown into something that can be brought into practical existence. This is the challenge for the developer - to seize the good idea and be inspired by it. To care enough about it to want to do something useful and practical with it. To accept the risk and discomfort of persuading and battling colleagues to convince them that this idea is worth investing time, effort and resources to bring it into existence. But that is an all together different story which I have yet to witness called,  'where good social practices come from'.

Sources
http://www.carlosmiceli.com/where-good-ideas-come-from/#sthash.Baif9dvQ.dpuf

I have a really interesting assignment on Wednesday to work with a group of staff and students at Sheffield Hallam University and facilitate a workshop aimed at exploring and re-imagining personal development  planning  (PDP) in the Social Age. 


To say I have a soft spot for PDP would be an understatement. Back in 1998-99 while working at QAA I facilitated the process of developing the policy framework for PDP. What I learnt through practitioners and my subsequent research convinced me of the value of linking a set of interconnected activities and experiences that included:

• thinking ahead and deciding what to do – analysing tasks, identifying  goals, creating strategies to achieve objectives; using reflection –  drawing on past experiences and imagining a different future 

• doing / producing things broadly in line with planned intentions but  being responsive to the effects of actions and changing plans if appropriate; learning through the experience of doing with greater self-awareness

• self-observing and recording - thoughts, ideas, experiences, actions and their effects, experiences, to develop a record of learning and to evidence the process and results of learning and support the enterprise of ‘learning  about learning

• thinking about what was done and what was achieved in order to learn  (reflecting, reviewing and evaluating; making sense of experience;  making judgements about self and the effects of personal action and  determining what needs to be done to develop/improve/move on; the enterprise also supports the process of learning about learning).

In my research, after the policy framework had been created, I discovered that this set of activities underlies the theory of self-regulation and this theory and PDP have influenced my thinking about learning and developing ever since. Lifewide education and lifewide learning are founded on the principles of self-regulation and the way of revealing learning and development is through PDP-type processes.

So it's with great pleasure that I am returning to thinking about PDP. What has changed in the last 15 years since PDP was introduced into UK HE is that we have now moved into the Social Age of collaborative learning and sharing. The Social Age is defined by the massive use of social media platforms that are changing behaviours and habits in respect of how we find, use, develop and distribute information and knowledge and create new meaning and understanding for ourselves and with others. It is being brought into existence as a result of the web 2.0 and web-enabling communication technologies and ever faster broadband, wifi, 3G + 4G technology that  enable connectivity almost anywhere at anytime with infinite information resources, and personal knowledge residing within the personal learning networks we create for ourselves. Enhanced connectivity is at the heart of the Social Age might be defined in terms of  'the creation of value (knowledge, understanding [or learning] and relationships) by connecting individuals who want to share their interests, knowledge, passions who form a relationship  to co-create new understandings. 

I've not been a particularly fast adopter of these technologies but slowly and surely over the last few years I have tried out website building tools and various social media and gradually adopted, in a selective manner, the technologies that help me do what I need to do. In the process I have also decided against using some technologies, or using them in a selective way.

So how has my PDP practice changed?
I like to think I have always been reflective and this has helped me learn from my experiences. I also think I've been reasonably good at imagining what I need to do in different contexts and developing strategies for achieving stuff. And I have worked out through experience that plans need to be fairly fluid to accommodate all the unexpected stuff that emerges through life. All this is internalised and for most things I don't need to sit down and make a plan on paper or formally write up a reflective report.

Throughout my career in many different professional my roles I have had to keep good records of what I have doing and plans of what I intended to do, and in the last 20 years of my career I went through annual appraisals of various sorts - many of which involved creating a narrative and filling out forms which asked the questions that managers wanted answered and did not necessarily tell the story in the way I wanted to.

I don't have to worry about this anymore, the only appraisal I go through is my own, and my wife's from time to time! Neither do I have to worry about building my cv anymore. But I am interested in developing my ideas and sharing them with others to see if they have value.  As an educationalist I am trying to model my ideas and practices for lifewide learning and creativity so I do devote quite a lot of time exploring how my ideas relate to my own life believing that if I can't apply them in my own circumstances they can't be much good.

One thing that hasn't changed is that I prefer to write in word and upload to other technologies. I find the familiarity of word gives me the freedom and flexibility to express myself in ways that writing on-line does not.

The characteristics of my PDP are documented below

1 My PDP is all informal. It's what I choose to do, when I want to do it and how I want to do it. I have to make up the rules and frameworks I use they are not given to me. The fact that I don't have to jump through any hoops and the products are not being used to appraise or assess me, is quite liberating.

2  Its contextual. My PDP reflects the circumstances of my life and it being created in the context of my interest in lifewide learning and creativity - which is my work.

3 I have to motivate myself to do it because no-one else will make me. So my motivation is intrinsic, driven by my purposes which is to model the practices I would expect of a lifewide learner and my interest in developing and sharing ideas that emerge through this process. For PDP to be successful it has to serve a useful purpose and fulfil a need which might be defined in terms of interest in myself and how I relate to others, and an interest in the educational ideas that emerge through the process.

4 It requires discipline. There are times when I'm so busy that time for writing about my experiences and learning is squeezed out, but somehow you have to squeeze it back in again. This means I have to value the process and what emerges from it.

5 it's about building a narrative of the events in my life and how I respond to them. The overall value to me is in the development of my narrative over time and it matters to me and probably no-one else. It is I suppose a vehicle for creative self-expression in a medium (writing) that I enjoy. I also see that my writings can serve a number of purposes which is another source of motivation.

6 It is about learning about myself. To develop my ideas I have to keep thinking about things I have not previously given much thought to. What often causes these triggered reflections is the stuff I read in other people's blogs which provide a prompt that I can't resist. How do I find these? Well I spend a lot of time on google searching for things that interest me but also I discover much through the Personal Learning Network I have constructed using Twitter. I usually check my feeds daily, although I can go days sometimes without doing this, and if a tweet looks interesting I follow the link to see where it takes me. I have learnt so much through this process.

7 I have to admit that I have the time or rather I can make the time because by doing it I'm not able to do something else. But not having to go to work every day

8 I am using quite a lot of technology to help me record my experiences and musings. Thanks to the Web 2.0 Weebly website building tool I have my own website which hosts my blog and a suite of other websites to support my educational work. My basic approach is to write a blog usually about something that has happened or something I have come across that has caused me to evaluate myself. I try to write something every week. If I think the ideas and perspectives in my blog might be of interest to others I share them either through my two educational websites (lifewide education and creative academic) or Linked in or for work that actually becomes publishable - academia.ed. When my ideas have been developed sufficiently I might publish them in our on-line Lifewide Magazine. I share my blogs through my three twitter accounts which serve different purposes and audiences.

Making sense of it 
Two friends who are in my PLN - Chrissi Nerantzi and Sue Beckingham, have developed a framework to help us understand how social media can be used. Its called the 5C framework - communicating, connecting, collaborating, creating and curating. Descriptions of how I'm using social media to support my PDP  I can see that I am engaged with all 5 of the C's. Firstly, my blog is all about communicating in words and images, my personal knowledge and insights to myself and to others who are interested. Connecting - I use my blog to connect ideas, link to resources and to connect to interested others. By posting on multiple sites and with forums like the special interest groups on LinkedIn, I expand the potential for people to connect to my ideas. Similarly I benefit from the connections I make in my PLN's and quite a few of my reflections have been triggered by the posts of others. Collaborating - this is probably the weakest aspect of my PDP practices although the topics of my reflections often make reference to the collaborations I'm involved in (such as my involvement with Hallam in this post). PDP for me is mainly a solitary practice although I could present a case that every idea I assimilate that triggers a reflection is a sort of collaboration and therefore many of my blogs are in fact co-created with the resources and ideas of others. Creating - my blog brings ideas and thoughts into existence that are new and original to me and I change my understanding through the writing process. The digital medium allows me to play with ideas and images in ways that I could never do before this technology was available.  Curating - I am curating my narrative and my ideas for myself and because I am always trying to be resourceful I make use of my writing for multiple purposes. For example I intend to use an edited version of this article in the next issue of Lifewide Magazine. By posting in my thematic websites I am adding content to other curated collections. The one thing I would add is another C - commitment. All this does require sustained  commitment and effort.

Why do I do it?
I left the big question until the end. I commit to engaging in PDP because I believe in its intrinsic worth. I also engage in PDP because of my professional interest in exploring and growing ideas from my everyday life and because it helps me to understand myself. I also do it because to be an active participant in the Social Age, sharing my personal knowledge and insights with anyone who is interested.

My PDP is an integral part of my learning ecology. For example this post is a personal inquiry, prompted by the forthcoming Hallam workshop, in order to gain a better understanding of what PDP practice means to me. My intention is to share this post with participants as part of the knowledge development process around the workshop. 

Last but not least, the PDP practices I describe above is one of my outlets for creative self-expression.  Furthermore, the new insight I have gained from this examination of my own PDP practices is to conclude that I use my PDP process not only to reflect on what I have done and make sense of my experiences, I use it to actively explore new ideas and things I haven't thought about before. That is why it is such an important part of my ecology for learning and developing.

If you would like to share your ideas and practices relating to PDP please leave a comment.


Sources
Nerrantzi, C. and Beckingham, S. (2014)  Our Magical Open Box to Enhance Individuals' Learning Ecologies. Chapter 2 In N.J.Jackson and J. Willis (eds) Lifewide Education in Universities and Colleges
http://www.learninglives.co.uk/uploads/1/0/8/4/10842717/chapter_c2_revised.pdf
QAA (2009) Personal development planning: guidance for institutional policy and practice in higher education Available on-line at: http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Documents/Personal-development-planning-guidance-for-institutional-policy-and-practice-in-higher-education.pdf
Stodd,J. (ed) (2014) Exploring the Social Age and the New Culture of Learning. Lifewide Magazine Issue 11 Available on line at http://www.lifewidemagazine.co.uk/

For an artist the medium is his art - his drawing, painting or other form of creative expression and it includes the media he uses to create his representations, his sketchbook and tools for sketching and colouring. Or, if he is a digital artist - a computer or digitising pad, scanner and camera or smartphone and software to process and manipulate the images. For a writer his medium for self-expression is the words he writes be they in a notebook or on a word processor. For a performer like a footballer, his medium is the game of football he plays and his tools are the ball and the boots he wares.

Finding the medium or media for creative self-expression is an important and continuous search across and through all the spaces and opportunities in our life if we want to find joy and live a fulfilled and meaningful life. Looking back through my life as a teenager I loved drawing and painting so I was used to the medium of the artist. Later I swapped my sketchpad for a field notebook as I became a geologist. My context became the 'field' and my medium my field sketches and the maps I produced as I observed and interpreted the world around me. Geological mapping is a craft that combines observation and critical thinking with imagination. In the classroom as a teacher, the lecture or practical became my medium and the resources I produced and used were my tools to engage and encourage students to share my love of my subject. These techniques were later adapted for educational professionals as I morphed into a higher education researcher, policy maker and developer. In this way, although the contexts have changed the medium through which I have expressed myself have generally remained constant.  Outside my work I have enjoyed expressing myself through my garden and being in a band where I play drums. All these contexts, and more, provided me with challenges and opportunities, in which I could create a sense of purpose. Within them I found a 'medium', the means of doing and accomplishing something that I valued and within which I could create something - mostly by myself, but sometimes with others.

The medium I prefer to express my ideas, imagination, beliefs and values in is writing. This has always been the way since I wrote my dissertation as an undergraduate, through the papers and thesis I wrote as a postgraduate, through the articles and books I have published in my fields of geology and education and now to the articles and blogs I write and most recently a book about my family's history.

In recent years I have come to see myself as first and foremost a writer, then a developer, broker and lots of other things. Some would say I'm sad spending so much time sitting at a computer writing. My wife sees my writing as work, and there is a discipline that makes it work-like, but it often feels more like a hobby because of the pleasure and satisfaction I gain from it. Through  writing I explore my ideas and imagination and bring some sort or order and meaning to their randomness as they are connected and contextualised.

There are many definitions of creativity but as a writer I have always had a soft spot for Dellas and Gaier (1970) who suggest that creativity is the desire and ability to use imagination, insight, intellect, feeling and emotion to move an idea from one state to an alternative, previously unexplored state. That sums up very nicely what often happens when I sit down to write about a subject I know little about - like this blog. The process of crystallising thoughts in words is the way I discover and consolidate what I understand and believe. 'How do I know what I know until I say it?' is very real to me. Through writing I appropriate the ideas of others and make them my own connecting them to what I understand and adding to my understanding in the process. It's mostly a solo experience - so in answer to the question do you prefer to be creative on your own or with others, I would have to say that on balance, and in the context of my preferred medium, my preference is to work by myself. Although, there are certainly times when it is a joy to write something collaboratively.

The desire to write is often what gets me up early in the morning (including this blog today). I have a thought in my head and that provides the stimulation and motivation and I get annoyed if something gets in the way. It's the medium that provides me with the means of doing something useful (to me) with the idea. When I sit down to write I usually have a bit of an idea about what I want to write about but not much. The words have to be invented as I write. When I get stuck I might google and do thanks to serendipity I will usually find something that someone has written that triggers new thoughts and ideas. I sometimes also bounce an idea off friends who will offer their perspectives. For example yesterday I wanted to start writing something on the creative affordances of social media but didn't know where to start. So I wrote down some simple propositions and emailed them to a couple of knowledgeable friends and within an hour or so I had their perspectives, as well as confirmation that what I had written was okay. This enabled me to progress my understanding in a way that was useful to me.

The medium enables immersion. By that I mean I can lose myself in the process for hours, sometimes 10 or 12 hours in a day. It's not all fun though and there are often negative emotions and feelings of dissatisfaction as I struggle with something or lose something that wasn't saved, as well as more positive feelings as stuff emerges. Writing is a process that results in a product but the product emerges through the process and that is where the magic lies. So at the end of writing this piece the collection of connected thoughts and feelings that have been crystallised into words did not exist before.

I enjoy writing for different audiences and in different styles - essays, academic articles and books, magazine articles and blogs to name a few. The space I write in is not so important - I can write anywhere and anytime but I prefer writing in my own space,which is my office - a converted garage where I'm surrounded by own things and connected to the world via internet. This perhaps is because leaving the house and walking to the garage is like going to work where I know I am going to be disciplined. My office space is my equivalent to an artist's studio. It's full of stuff that has meaning in my life. Like many an artist's studio my office is quite messy but I can generally find things I need. I remember reading that when they broke into artist Francis Bacon's studio after he died it was knee deep in discarded drawings and paintings. In life he reasoned that in this environment he created order out of chaos and I have used that as an excuse for my messyness ever since.

My preferred writing tool is a laptop/word processor - I use an old version of word. I cannot touch type but I'm quite fast with 2 or 3 fingers and I type as fast as I can think and compose. I sometimes write with pencil and paper but I notice that when I sit down at my laptop I ignore what I have written and just write. But coming to it freshly, after having thought about it, generally makes it easier. Writing is an emotional rather than clinical affair: I often listen to music when I write and I choose music that fits my mood.

The second medium I am at home with is visual representation. I like to turn ideas that are written in words into pictures - illustrations and diagrams, in particular. I enjoy the process of creating a picture in my mind but technically, I am not very good at drawing the pictures so I work with an illustrator to help me turn my imagination into reality. Sometimes I just tell him that I want to illustrate an idea and describe it to him in words and then let him interpret but this generally does not work. I have discovered that if I can create a design for him - usually based on cut and paste of figures he has already produced we get a much better result. To achieve this I've got proficient in using paint and photoshop to edit and amend existing illustrations or parts of illustrations.  - Here is a recent example formed around the idea of learning and developing in lots of different contexts. On the left is my collage formed from previous drawings with notes to the illustrator and on the right the new design created by the illustrator. The process is collaborative and we both feel that we have contributed to the process of creation.

Most recently, I have, thanks to Web 2.0 website building tools enjoyed creating websites in order to support my work as a developer and organiser of social enterprises and communities around the educational ideas I believe in. Weebly, and to a lesser extent other social media tools, like twitter have opened up a whole new medium within which I can express myself. The world has suddenly become richer for people to express themselves and share their creations.

Robinson, K. (2007) Fresh Perspective: Creativity and Leadership: Sir Ken Robinson in Conversation with Russ Volckmann Available on line: http://integralleadershipreview.com/ 5377-fresh-perspective-creativity-and-leadership-sir-ken-robinson-in-conversation-with-russ-volckmann/  

ADDENDUM
As I finished this post I found on Twitter this wonderful example of creative self-expression by the School of Life 

This week I came across a lovely post by Shelley Prevost who shared an important piece of her wisdom. I thought it so useful that I shared it with two of my children who are in the early stages of embarking on their young adult lives.

Shelley said, 'Your purpose in life has very little to do with your job' In the last four years, I've been a psychotherapist, teacher, mentor, investor, and entrepreneur. It's so tempting to say with certitude that this job or that job is my purpose. That I'm 'called' to be a counselor, a teacher, or a CEO. But rather than using them as labels to define and decode my purpose, I now think of my roles as reflections of who I am now, in this moment in time, with these people I work and share my life with. And perhaps more importantly, these jobs are helping me become who I am supposed to be. Your purpose is to unlock--and eventually fold in--who you are becoming with who you already are. The activities that force you to grow are your calling. Learning from those activities is your purpose. Your life purpose is way too big to be filled by one role, or even one long career. If you choose wisely, your job can point you toward your purpose. Your personal evolution--becoming wiser, kinder, more curious, more YOU--is the purpose of your human experience. If you're lucky, your job might serve as the flint that sparks your growth or, as some of you know too well, it may take the form of a psychic straightjacket that's inflexible and unaccommodating. Either way, your job is a reflection of your current conditions--not the purpose itself.

How right she is. I've had five different roles / enterprises in the last 15 years  and in each I have tried to pursue my purposes even though the roles have been different. In fact making the job or enterprise into something through which I felt able to fulfil my purposes and provide opportunity for creative self-expression, was and remains, a key element of my enjoyment and fulfilment in each role. In the coming week I am going to launch another enterprise - Creative Academic. Its purpose, and mine, is to support students' creative development in higher education.  Looking back to 2001 I created a similar community based enterprise called the imaginative curriculum network while working for the Learning and Teaching Support Network . Both of these enterprises are, in Shelley's words, activities that force or enable me to grow and develop and give meaning, substance and purpose to my creativity. These interconnected projects underlie the fact that our purposes are too big to be filled by one role. We carry and enact them by repeatedly bringing new organisations, relationships, performances and products into existence. In this way our purposes become the real driving forces for our creative self expression. While our creativity gives meaning and substance to our purposes, its our purposes that drive our creative spirit.

“Whether we’re artists, corporate managers, accountants or whatever, we all want to create; and we want to do it in a purposeful and meaningful way. I learned the hard way that, as agreeable an idea ‘Creativity for its own sake’ is, it’s not particularly sustainable, financially rewarding or emotionally satisfying over the long run.” Hugh MacLeod

 Shelley Prevost Two Unexpected Lessons I've Learned Since Changing Careers 
 @shelleyprevost
http://www.inc.com/shelley-prevost/two-unexpected-lessons-i-ve-learned-since-changing-careers.htm

image source and quote
https://brucelynnblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/creativity-with-purpose/

 

Its the start of a new year and I guess its customary to start the year with some sort of plan for how I will conduct it. I have been re-reading Clayton Christensen's book, 'How will you measure your life?  In it he shares a lot of wisdom about how to conduct your life. I picked out three chapters that are relevant to a life plan.

Chapter 2 talks about what makes us tick - what motivates us to do the things we do. Without understanding this we might as well not get out of bed in the morning. But once we have discovered what matters to us we are able to chart a course through life that enables us to engage with and fulfil our purposes. And sometimes it is not so much the achievement of something that matters most but the journey towards trying to achieve something that matters to us.

I think I have discovered what matters to me at this stage of my life and so any plan I create needs to address these. The things that matter most to me to and which I anticipate devoting most of my time, energy, intellect and emotion to in 2015 are listed below.

FAMILY & HOME

• Love and support my family in whatever way is necessary, including my daughter and her twins who I look after one day a week
  
• Do all the stuff I need to do around the house and garden including the many jobs I continually put off.
  
• Writing & research - complete (more or less) part 2 of our family history including my own life story

MYSELF

• For the sake of my family and my own health I need to look after myself better.. lose weight, eat better, get my knee fixed and do more exercise, read more and watch less TV. I want to spend time learning the piano from scratch.
  

FRIENDS
I am not very good at keeping in touch with friends (unlike my wife who is great). I do need to put more effort into this in the coming year.

WORK&INTERESTS

• Continue to develop and extend the influence of Lifewide Education - fulfil the anticipated work plan and more
  
• Develop and launch Creative Academic as a social enterprise - conduct research on creativity, support universities and facilitate short courses
  
• Continue developing my personal learning network - last year I saw the value of twitter user in my PLN and exposing me to new ideas and ways of thinking @lifewider @lifewider1 @academiccreator
  
• Provide a good professional service to anyone who retains my services
  
• Freeworld Band - raise more money for children's cancer charities. Collaborate with Graham on his musical??
  
• Begin writing a book on lifelong/lifewide learning based on my own life [PERHAPS?]
  

UNANTICIPATED
Respond to whatever happens to the best of my ability dealing with challenges and making the most of opportunities as they emerge

Two of the chapters In Christensen's book are relevant to planning. Chapter 3 talks about the balance of calculation ( deliberate plans) and serendipity (taking advantage of unanticipated opportunities. 'You have to balance the pursuit of aspirations and goals with taking advantage on unanticipated opportunities. Managing this is often the difference between success and failure.

Chapter (4) deals with strategy - or how you implement and accomplish your plan. 'Real strategy in companies and our lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about [how and] where we spend our resources (money, time, effort etc). As you live your life day to day how do you make sure you're heading in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If you're not supporting the strategy [with your resources], then you are not implementing that strategy at all.

My rough plan is merely a list of things that matter to me and it would never be any good in a work context where I would be expected to produce a list of actions and work towards SMART objectives. But I'm not managing people and resources other than myself and the only person I'm accountable for delivering stuff is myself. So I think I can work with these broad themes and make things up as I go along as I have done in previous years mindful that things may crop up to disrupt my plan (blog 16/12/14) and as as long as I stay fit and healthy: the single most important condition for the implementation of my plan.

As always, it will be interesting to look back through and at the end of the year to see where I have put my resources in implementing my plan. As always I look forward to the things that will happen that I cannot predict will happen, as long as they are kind to me and my family.

Source:
Christensen C (2012) How will You Measure Your Life Harper Collin
Illustration by Hugh http://gapingvoid.com/2010/05/13/dbc019/