I had another experience of  'slogging' this week. One of my development projects on behalf of my family and my ancestors! is to try and construct our family history. I began by recording some conversations with my mum and dad. They are now approaching 90 and they are able to recollect their childhoods and the stories they were told about their families. I turned this into what I hope will be the first chapter of a family history that my siblings and my children can carry on developing. I then turned to Ancestry.com thanks to the generosity of my sister who bought a subscription. Over the last couple of months I have spent a lot of time (probably far too much)  slogging away at the various records that can be accessed. Sadly many of my ancestors were called Thomas Jackson and they lived in Manchester and that generates an awful lot of possibilities. So far I haven't even got my grandfathers birth certificate. But using my imagination and I hope reasoning power I have fabricated a lineage going back to the 1790's. It might of course all be wrong but the point of my story is that in slogging through the records this week for probably the best part of  6 hours and feeling very frustrated because I wasn't making any progress, I suddenly found a record that seemed to fit and push me back another generation. The joy that came from this moment of seeming to make progress out of this tedious search was enormous and it was a real boost to my morale causing me to stay with it for much longer than I intended. So out of slogging can come reward and satisfaction as a bit more of a problem seems to be resolved and out of these moments progress is made and potential solutions emerge that would not have happened without the slogging because the information or idea is deeply buried within the quest. So slogging away at something may be deeply dissatisfying but it is the pathway to discovery and achievement.

And yet one more example of emergence today. I had an email from a talented illustrator I had worked with in the past. It was a speculative email enquiring about possible work opportunities. I emailed back to open up a conversation about a possible role as an artist in residence at our forthcoming conference. Over 3 or 4 emails I tried to draw him in. I could see he was interested and he eventually agreed. I was delighted and immediately created a new web page to host information about our two artists. I then spent the best part of two hours creating a new explee animation to show off his work. It was both enjoyable and I felt creative and I was pleased with the result. There was no way that I could have anticipated this activity in advance of it happening. It emerged through interactions in my work ecology and being able to create opportunity for someone else to apply their talents to a new situation that they found appealing.

The creativity in development project focuses attention on the way creativity emerges through individuals' development processes but this week I have experienced very little creativity as I slogged away reading and editing contributions to an e-book. But 'creating' the e-book is a really important part of  our developmental strategy and giving feedback on each draft manuscript is essential to helping the contributors develop their piece. 

The experience caused me to reflect on the role of 'slogging' - in developmental processes.  To slog is to keep doing something even though it is difficult or boring. Slogging involves working on something in a steady, determined, methodical and often repetitive way. It also implies that progress is slow and perhaps laborious, in contrast to starting something new which is full of enjoyment or finishing something where there is a sense of achievement and fulfilment.

When you start something your imagination is engaged and you think freely and adventurously about the what it is you want to do. You feel energised as you put the building blocks in place like new relationships, infrastructure or the making of tools and you see a lot of progress in a short space of time. But after this initial excitement there is often a much longer period of 'slog', when you just have to knuckle down to work that is more systematic and routine and is perhaps not so interesting and exciting, but which is absolutely necessary for the success of the project. Slogging is often the way you complete something that you started and its where most of the effort and least of the reward resides.

Every significant developmental process has elements of slogging within it and the harder and more challenging it is the more slog there is. In fact for some development projects perhaps 80 or 90% of the time can be categorised as a slog. Slogging away at something requires persistence and determination and focus. It's easy to get distracted when you are in slogging mode. I recognise the symptoms of continuously looking for things to do other than the things that I should be working on - including writing this piece.

So how do I deal with this need to slog in a development process? The first strategy I use is to convince myself that it has to be done, not tomorrow or the next day but now, and the best way of doing this is to publicly commit to a timeline. Another strategy is to break the job that needs doing into smaller bits and set a target - I'm going to do these things by this time. The third thing I do is reward myself by taking a break and doing more interesting things when I have done a certain amount of slogging. My daughter who has been revising solidly for her mock GCSE's for several weeks became very adept in this technique. The fourth thing I do is periodically make a list of what I have done so I can see the progress I have actually made.

But even when we are slogging we can still be inspired if we are able to notice the right things. I watch my daughter, who is a mum to three young children including 18 month old twins... slogging away day after day. It's a good word to describe the daily routines she undertakes. I know it's hard work because I look after the twins one day a week.. The only thing she ever complains about is not having enough sleep and the effect that this has on her ability to perform her motherly duties the next day. The way she approaches her tasks  teaches me how to extract pleasure and joy from the many moments that emerge when you are looking after children if you approach them positively and imaginatively, and you look for the good and interesting things to emerge. She is a master at turning  the repetitive and mundane into joyful experience. And I guess this is where the inner motivation to sustain herself resides as well as the sense of purpose, duty and responsibility for the care and wellbeing of her children. I guess the reward for all the slogging involved in bringing up young children is to see them learn and develop so that they are able to do the things they need to be able to do to be successful in life.

Perhaps we derive different psychological benefits from starting something and slogging through it. Starting gives us the motivational force derived from visions and being able to see a different future while slogging enables us to build resolve and determination to secure that future. Looking back over the last few days I didn't feel at all creative and perhaps there is little in the way of opportunity for creativity when you are slogging away at something. But one thing is certain, while creativity is essential to the success of a development project so is slogging. Please share your experiences and insights of slogging in the development process.

On Monday I received an email from the creativity conference organisers in Macao politely asking me for my paper which I had not yet started so this week has been spent putting it together.  I went through my usual process of struggling for a couple of days assembling bits and pieces from different sources I had written in the past without any sort of enjoyment. But on the third day I began to make some useful additions to my own understanding and gain some fresh insights and that was when I began to experience some joy which motivated to put in more effort. It was that sense of making progress with ideas - 'moving them from one state to another'.  Naturally in my internet wanderings I have been open to new ideas relating to creativity and I came across this interesting passage on a website by Michael Michalko which casts light on the way our creative mind works.

IMAGE: Researchers at MIT have found a neural circuit
astrocytes that helps us build long-lasting memories. This neural circuit works best when the brain is paying attention to what we are seeing. Paying attention to something causes the release of a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine that stimulates the neurocircuit. Read more: 

'Because we think sequentially and no faster than the speed of life, we cannot pay attention to everything effectively. Our attention becomes too scattered to be of any use. You’ll find that your intention will create criteria, which will determine what—out of the vast range of possible experiences—you are attending to at the time, will help you reach your goal. In short, what you intend determines what you perceive in your world.

Let us imagine that your intention is to make a canoe. You will have, at first, some idea of the kind of canoe you wished to make. You will visualize the kind of canoe you wish to make. You will visualize the canoe, then  you will go into the woods and look at the trees. Your desired outcome will determine your criteria for the tree you need. Your criteria might involve size, usefulness, and beauty of the tree.  Criteria both filter your perceptions and invest a particular situation with meaning and thereby, informs  your experience and behaviour at the time. Out of the many trees in the woods, you will end up focusing on the few that meet your criteria, until you  find  the perfect tree.

You will cut the tree down; remove the branches from the trunk;  take off the bark; hollow out the trunk; carve the outside shape of the hull; form the prow and the stern; and then, perhaps, carve decorations on the prow. In this way you will produce the canoe.

The process is so ordinary, so simple, so direct that we fail to see the beauty and simplicity of it. You  have the intention to make a canoe, visualize an outcome, and give birth to something whole, a canoe. Your intention to make a canoe gives you direction and also imposes criteria on your choices, consciously and unconsciously.

Intention has a way of bringing to our awareness only those things that our brain deems important. You’ll begin to see ideas for your canoe pop up everywhere in your environment. You’ll see them in tables, magazines, on television, and in other structures, while walking down the street. You’ll see them in the most unlikely things,  such as a refrigerator,  that you use every day without giving them much thought. How the brain accomplishes such miracles has long been one of neuroscience’s great mysteries.'

So the sudden insights we gain when we are struggling with a problem that has occupied us for a while are merely the brain paying attention to aspects of our problem as we go about our daily lives and unconsciously drawing our attention (consciousness) to what it discovers in the process. It might seem like a mysterious process and it is a wonderful feeling when it happens but our brain is merely doing what it is designed to do...

The paper I wrote for Macao

Opportunities to help shape thinking about the future of learning and education don't come very often so I jumped at the chance to submit a paper to the European Commission Call for Visionary Papers on the Future of Open Education. It was one of those opportunities that came out of the blue.. It was the Monday four days before I was going to China and I had a lot of things to do when I suddenly came across an email from the Future of Learning Linked in group saying that there was a call for vision papers. I knew I had to go for it so I immediately put together a one page summary of an idea for an EU-wide Lifewide Development Award and sent it off to some of the members of the team I thought might be interested. All replied quickly in an encouraging way and I gained some very useful feedback. I set about crafting a short six page paper and by Wednesday, in spite of everything else I had to do, I had the basic content, again I circulated for comment and again I got back some useful feedback with a couple of pointers that helped me refine what I had written. I banged it off to the organisers and went off to China. While I was there I got an email saying thanks for your paper which was quickly followed by another saying that the paper was considered to be one of the winning entries and I have been invited to a workshop in Seville at the end of April. So what do I learn from this? It reinforces my view that opportunities emerge and you have to a) in some way be connected to them b) be able to recognise them c) be able to respond to them. The latter may not be easy given that generally we are always busy with other things but if you miss the chance you might not get another.  So hopefully good things will come from this opportunity.All the papers can be viewed at http://blogs.ec.europa.eu/openeducation2030/vision-papers-on-open-education-2030-part-1-lifelong-learning/

The sun is shining and spring is in the air and I just completed my bimonthly report in which I reflect on the progress we have made in the lifewide education enterprise. I circulated my report to the team to let them have my overview and invited them to add items that I don't know about. In this way we can all keep up to date. I also hope that the information will help convey a sense of achievement and pride. I suppose I am using it as both a tool for monitoring progress and a means of trying to keep people involved.  All in all I feel we have made good progress in most of the areas we identified in our 2013 work plan. 

I gave myself a break to wander around the garden looking for signs of spring which I captured in some lovely photos. I noiiced that the pathway I had made in September now looked as if it had always been a part of the woods which looked as if they were j

This week will be interesting because I'm contributing to a survey LWE survey aimed at revealing how, what and why we learn through our everyday experiences. It should reveal the ecology of  my lifwide learning. Three times a day I will spend  about 10mins recording these things and at the end of the week pool them with other contributors to see what emerges. I will also reflect on what my log tells me. Anyone is welcome to join the survey even if its only for a few days.  DOWNLOAD SURVEY TEMPLATE

 





Here is my completed log for the week

A Week in My Life - making sense of my activities and the learning/meaning I derive from them 

My week was atypical in the sense that it is not every week that I get the chance to participate in a conference and interact with people who shared the same sorts of interests and values as I have. But the rest of the week was typical of my current life. So what have I learnt from the process of recording and thinking about my experiences? 

ACTIVITIES
Out of a possible 168 hours (7x24h) I was active for about 112h (averaging about 16h per day). These were broken down into the following categories of activity 

WORK About 50 hours includes work for my company Chalk Mountain and Lifewide Education. This week it including  attending a conference. This week I spent considerably more time on LWE work. Also includes 6h for this recording and reflecting exercise. Quite a lot of my time was spent either preparing for the conference or trying to fix a problem with a website.            

FAMILY About 24h this includes family at home (my wife and daughter), family elsewhere (children at university and children/grandchildren living locally), and family overseas (mother and father in Australia and sisters in Australia).

DOWNTIME about 18h includes reading, listening to music, watching TV/ youtube for pleasure and education like Time Team and playing my drums

TRAVELLING about 14h mainly time in the car being a taxi service or travelling to friends and family. This week included travelling to and from Leeds to participate in a conference

CHORES about 6h includes - cleaning, shopping, preparing meals, ironing, doing odd jobs in house/garden

HABBITS
I am clearly a creature of habit and my life is quite routinised. I get up and go to bed at more or less the same time. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner at more or less the same time,   and the pattern of what I do each day when I am at home is more or less the same. I start working at around 8am and work until 12ish.. I eat lunch and watch time team, I work pm until late afternoon or evening. I have dinner at more or less the same time with my family and we use this opportunity of being together to learn about each other's lives, discuss family and make plans. Evenings after dinner are generally devoted to relaxing and I seem to do the same sort of things most evenings..  This routine might be seen in a negative way but they do not feel boring or constraining because I generally value what I am doing and derive meaning and enjoyment from the things I am doing most of the time. Indeed, negative emotions generally emerge when things get in the way of the things I am trying to do - like having to complete my tax returns.

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
My main social interaction day to day is with my family wife and children, and thanks to my sister's call - my family in Australia. Some of these interactions are face to face and some via email/skype/telephone. Conversations and activities encourage the sharing  of daily events or news in each others lives the disclosure of feelings and practical and emotional support.

Another sort of social interaction is related to work and this is mainly focused on trying to make progress. Communication is mainly through email and I am grateful for the help and support given to me by other people involved in LWE.

Life is punctuated by less regular events like participating in conferences and this provides opportunity for face to face social interaction. 

PLANNED & UNPLANNED ACTIVITY
While there is a consistency regarding the pattern of my  activity the detail is only roughly planned from day to day. At the start of the week I know roughly what I want to try and achieve. But the details of each day only unfold within the day. There are also unanticipated events that emerge and create problems and new opportunities. This week I had two emergent situations. The first involved having to resolve a problem with the LWE website created by the person who hosts it making changes to the front page that I didn't like. The second event involved me responding to an email from Rob Ward offering me the chance to design and facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference on Friday. This is how it happened..

********************************
From: Rob Ward 
Sent: 19 November 2012 10:10
To: Norman Jasckson
Subject: Forthcoming Residential
Importance: High

Hi Norman
I'm needing to do some last minute tweaking of the Residential programme as the final short session on 'Creativity and PDP' (plenary workshop,
14.20-15.00 on Friday) can't now go ahead as planned.  Would you bewilling/able to offer a short contribution on this theme here?

Apologies for the short notice! BW Rob
********************************

Once I had thought about it I did see it as a real opportunity to try something new and develop myself in the process. 

**********************************************
From: Norman Jasckson
Sent: Mon 11/19/2012 2:14 PM
To: Rob Ward
Subject: RE: Forthcoming Residential
Okay how about trying to model creative use of technology? This process would need the room to be connected to internet and two CRA
staff to support - 1 connected to twitter, 1 connected to weebly.com a website building tool

THEME 'Using technology to stimulate students' creativity in recording ideas, experiences, learning and achievement'
Participants to assume that there are no constraints on the way technology might be used in their own PDP environments ie a blank sheet of paper.

DESIGN - process
1) Self-organise into groups of about 4 people. Groups must include someone with a smart phone.
2) 10mins - pool ideas in the group drawn from personal or imagined experiences
3) 10mins - choose 1 idea and create a poster on a sheet of flip chart paper to explain the idea also prepare a 1 min pitch
4) 5mins - find a quiet corner and person with smart phone a) takes a photo of poster  b) records 1 min explanatory pitch on phone
5) 5 mins group composes 140 character tweet to capture the essence of theiridea for twitter and tweet, photo of poster and 1 min video clip emailed to
CRA address
6) 10 mins CRA colleagues a) post tweets & images on twitter & B) upload video clips to weebly website..

outcome
The tweets would be displayed on the projector screen and if we had two screens we could also display the video clips.. People can go away and look
at the results.
*********************************************************

Between this email and the workshop I did the preparatory work necessary to make it work, I got support from JW who provided illustrative poster and recording and I liaised with DB from CRA to make sure we could do it. The workshop worked very well and I know I can add this sort of technologically enabled workshop to my repertoire of facilitation techniques. I had no idea that this would happen at the start of the week.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
Unusually for me this week some of my learning was formal in the sense that I put myself into situations (presentations and workshops) with the intention of learning something. But, more typically, most of my learning was informal usually goal/achievement driven... a) completing my book project or b) trying to advance LWE. I did try several things I hadn't done before including a workshop design that seemed to engage participants and get some great results. Much of my learning was simply about gaining some new knowledge and much of it was through conversation mainly with people I already knew but who I had lost touch with. Most of my follow-up actions will be linked to this relational knowledge.  I would say that quite a lot of activity I engaged in did not lead to any significant or recognisable learning.  In terms of personal development - what I can do now that I couldn't do before the week started I would identify the workshop I facilitated and the techniques I developed to engage people and record their creations. That experiential knowledge, the capability I developed and used and the confidence I gained can be used again.

Most of my learning was driven by my needs. I needed to modify a logo so I learnt how to use photoshop top do it. I uploaded a slide show to weebly for the first time. I learned how to design and facilitate a workshop I took on. Some of my learning was simply a biproduct of enjoying myself.. like searching for music on Youtube, spotting a new band I liked on Later with Jools Holland. There is also learning of a more strategic in nature which is linked to my work namely reading articles and books that enable me to add to my understanding. This week I read a transcript and watched a video clip of John Seeley Brown's talk on the entrepreneurial learner which I think LWE can use. I had picked this up from a link in a blog by Jane Hart that I was examining with a view to commissioning a chapter for LWE e-book. Much of my learning comes from this sort of intelligent and sometimes haphazard searching.

I also continued to develop my understandings of the ways of thinking promoted by Clayton Christiensen by reading his book and trying to apply his ideas to what I was doing which I know will  have significance for LWE. 

Some of my learning has come from using tools like stat counter to monitor how my websites are being used. This is a new form of learning over the time the knowledge will be valuable to know what interventions draw people to our resources.

In a more typical week I would do a lot more writing. For me writing is a very important way of developing and organising my thinking, creating meaning and recording my understandings.  This log and the reflective piece served as my main writing task this week. 

MEANINGIn my family context meaning is created through the day to interactions and conversations we have and the things we do to help and encourage each other and give each other emotional and practical support.

In the work context meaning is created through my book and in developing and promoting LWE. I feel I made quite a lot of progress with the later this week both in the redesign of the website and in my involvement with the conference. Meaning is also created through interaction with my family and feeling that I am in some way helping them. Reflecting on my experience of participating at the CRA conference I felt that I had, at least momentarily, regained a lost identity and renewed a set of friendships/relationships with people and higher education that had been eroded because it was no longer part of my everyday experience. This meant a lot to me and it has taught me the value of trying to find or create these opportunities for my own wellbeing. I devoted a lot of time this week to intentionally learn about my own learning and meaning making. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours this week recording and analysing my activities and what I have learnt from them. The value in the process is that it has enabled me to examine more systematically what I'm doing and how I draw meaning and learning from my activities.

VALUES  & IDENTITIES
One of the purposes of this exercise was to examine the ways in which activities and behaviours, and what motivates them, reflect values and identities. Through the week I was mainly working with two sorts of identity.

The first identity I embodied was my working identity - my work is essentially academic (eg being a writer/scholar - the book commission I worked on), educational (applying my knowledge of how people learn to the concept of lifewide learning)  and educational developer (trying to influence other educators). The central values here are those of being professional in these fields and trying, through hard work, thinking and creativity to progress each of my work enterprises. An important part of my identity as a teacher is my ability to communicate ideas and engage people in using them. Because of the conference I was able to do both of these in presenting my ideas on lifewide development and facilitating a couple of workshops which enabled people to try out some tools I had developed, or enabled small groups to share ideas and create some original educational designs. It is very important for me to maintain this part of my identity but which is quite hard to do now that I am no longer working in an institution. As a result of reflecting on this I strengthened the way I market this aspect of my professional work on my website.

The second identity I embodied relates to me as a member of a large family and a complex set of relationships that make up my family ... as a father/step father, husband, grandfather, brother and son.... the central value here is the love for my family and my desire to care for and help family members and the value of staying in touch with each other.  This week, thanks to technology I was able to have interactions and good conversations with my wife and daughter at home.. with my daughter and son at university - telephone/skype, with my wife when I was a away and she was away by telephone and skype, with my mum and dad in Australia (telephone), my two sisters in Australia (skype) and my daughter and my three grandsons. This record shows the value of the technologies we have for enabling us to communicate across the world.

I also experienced two other sorts of identity during the week..

The first was a sense of regaining, at least for a short time, an identity I held a few years ago as a respected thought leader in higher education. By being with a group or people I had worked with, including people from two agencies I had worked for, and being reminded of the roles I played in enabling change to happen in the HE system, I felt part of that society or community again. Here the values were around championing an educational cause (PDP, and providing concrete practical support to enabling it to be implemented. The fact that my commitment has carried on beyond employment gives me credibility in this respect.

Another identity I nurtured was my identity as a drummer in a band. We normally practice every week so this identity gets validated when we come together. When I'm listening to music in the car I sometimes play our own music or I imagine playing the drums to whatever is being played. This week we didn't have a practice but I had an hours work out on Sunday. Here my values relate to my love of music and of making music particularly with others and trying to improve myself as a drummer.

COMPARISON OF HOW I USED MY RESOURCES WITH MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
This is the first time I have ever taken a week of my life and tried to record how I have used it. In his book on Measuring Your Life Clayton Christensen (p62) talks about strategy -   Real strategy .. in our daily lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how we spend our resources (our time). As you're living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you are holding in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they are not supporting the strategy you have decided upon, then you're not implementing that strategy at all.  The personal development plan I made in September identified my most important goals as:

1 To lead and contribute to the further development and promotion of the Lifewide Education enterprise
2 To grow the Chalk Mountain business and deliver a good service to clients
3 To support my (large) family - do whatever is necessary to help them
4 To build a recording studio and develop the technical skills to record my band
5 To create a woodland garden
6 To be open and responsive to new possibilities and adapt to or take advantage of the unplanned and unexpected

I think my life this week has supported achievement of the first three goals and I had a good example of responding to goal six in accepting at short notice, the challenge to facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference.  Goals 4&5 are much lower in my list of priorities than the first three goals. So it would appear that, this week at least, is quite closely aligned to my personal strategy.

CONTEXTS & PROBLEM SOLVING
I often use John Stephenson's contexts and challenges tool to help me reflect on the things I am doing.  I would say that this week. Most of my activities have been in the familiar context and familiar problems domain but the conference and the activities I undertook did put me outside my comfort zone (unfamiliar context) and tackle an unfamiliar challenge ( the workshop on creative use of technology).


VALUE OF THE EXERCISE
I estimate that the whole exercise of recording and analysing my log took me about 7 hours which I have allocated to LWE work. So was it worth it? I think it's helped me appreciate the value of this sort of tool and reflective process to helping people appreciate their learning and development in their everyday lives. I now think that the process and outcomes could be usefully integrated into the Lifewide Development Award.

The exercise has:
1) enabled me to see my life as an integrated whole (during this period of time) and see how different parts of my life interact
2) revealed the patterns of daily activity in my life highlighting routines and more unusual activity and the motives for engaging in such activity
3) forced me to think about the learning that is associated with different sorts of activity and the potential ways in which I have developed/changed through only a week of living - indeed this reflective exercise has made a significant contribution to my learning this week added to my understanding of how to promote reflection on our own LWE
4) encouraged me to see the meaning I attribute to different activity in my life
5) enabled me to check how I am allocating my resources to the things I value and confirmed  that I am spending my time in ways that are consistent with the goals I set out in my personal development plan
6) enabled me to recognise that the identities I embody and enact  which are closely related to the things I value 
7) enabled me to apply some of the wisdom I have recently discovered in Clayton Christensen's book  to reflect on my own activity and behaviour. This has helped me see how some of the ideas in this book might be incorporated into the guidance and support we give to lifewide learners.

At least where work is concerned setting goals and trying to keep to them is an important discipline for achieving things. Its Sunday November 11th and two months ago- with three chapters to write, I set this as the target date for completing the writing for the book I have been commissioned to write.  I wasn't being held to it by anyone else - indeed other people want to give me more time but I know that things have a habit of drifting if boundaries become fluid or fuzzy. I'm pleased to say I have managed to do it although at times I felt I wasn't going to manage it. We also managed to hit our target for publishing Lifewide Magazine so that is great too..

I suppose doing something we say we are going to do is an important part of managing ourselves but it is also part of who we are and if we don't manage to do something on time it affects us emotionally - we are disappointed or angry with ourselves. The converse is also true if we manage to hit a target we set for ourselves we are more likely to be feel a sense of satisfaction. So for the moment I'm content to know that I did what I said I would do.

For a long time I have pondered setting up a Linked-In Group for Lifewide Education but never got round to it even though I know it is in the interests of LWE that I do it. 'Pondering' seems a more comfortable word than 'procrastinating' which according to Wikipedia means the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of lower priority, or doing something from which one derives enjoyment, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time. Sadly, I think I'm often guilty of this.

According to Freud, the pleasure principle may be responsible for procrastination; humans do not prefer negative emotions, and putting off a stressful task until a further date, is enjoyable. So as someone who seeks out joy that sounds plausible.

The concept that humans work best under pressure provides additional enjoyment and motivation to postponing a task. Some psychologists cite such behaviour as a mechanism for coping with the anxiety associated with starting or completing any task or decision. Other psychologists indicate that anxiety is just as likely to get people to start working early as late and the focus should be impulsiveness. That is, anxiety will cause people to delay only if they are impulsive. Again, if I'm honest I do put things off until I can't put them off any longer and I start to get a bit agitated.

Sadly, my post does not fall into the three criteria for behaviour to be classified as procrastination  Schraw, Wadkins, and Olafson namely it must be counterproductive, needless, and delaying.[4] Similarly, Steel (2007) reviews all previous attempts to define procrastination, indicating it is "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting to be worse off for the delay."

Procrastination may result in stress, a sense of guilt and crisis, severe loss of personal productivity, as well as social disapproval for not meeting responsibilities or commitments (I like to think that none of these things applies to the level at which I procrastinate). 

These feelings combined may promote further procrastination. While it is regarded as normal for people to procrastinate to some degree (well that's a relief) it becomes a problem when it impedes normal functioning. Chronic procrastination may be a sign of an underlying psychological disorder. Such procrastinators may have difficulty seeking support due to social stigma and the belief that task-aversion is caused by laziness, low willpower or low ambition.

I like to think that a degree of procrastination can be an advantage. It must be the case when you are trying to juggle many balls and keep progressing along many fronts simultaneously. Time spent in doing something that enables you to make a contribution or make progress on one front might be viewed as procrastination from another angle but actually it all contributes to the bigger picture of achievement. And perhaps at the end of the day its the way we maintain our positive emotional spirit. A little digression can help stoke the fires for another tussle with something that is tough and not so enjoyable.

I find procrastination can be overcome with a trigger and this week I was talking to NC about marketing LWE and I felt I couldn't defend not having a Linked-in group so I did it. And what's more we have seven members within 24hrs. Far more than our facebook page!! LIFEWIDE EDUCATION LINKED IN GROUP  Now I enter the other reason for procrastination - I know its going to consume my time and energy to make it work!

Schraw, Gregory; Wadkins, Theresa; Olafson, Lori (2007). "Doing the things we do: A grounded theory of academic procrastination". Journal of Educational Psychology 99: 12. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.99.1.12.

Wikepedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrastination#cite_note-3

My activities this week have been mainly focused on three areas of my life - my family, my work (ChalkMountain book project) and LifewideEducation (launching our Award). 

1 Chalk Mountain - Last week I talked about how difficult it is sometimes to make a start. The chapter I have been writing has been a struggle over a long period of time. I put it off and put it off. I did bits here and there and generally hated doing it which is very unusual for me when the task involves writing. But eventually, when I couldn't put it off any longer, and having missed my own deadline twice, I did knuckle down and did it and the result was okay. At least it got us to the stage where we can see where to go next with it. This was in complete contrast to the experience I had writing another chapter the week before which was a joy and just flowed from my mind... I am not sure I learnt much from this struggle but I did get valuable feedback on both chapters which means I can now shape them to make a better fit with what the institution wants.. So the learning is reinforcing what I already know about the need for feedback in order to produce work that is useful.

 2 Lifewide Education - My biggest achievement this week was to launch the Lifewide Development Award on the 28/09. I spent time preparing a slide show for the introductory talk and gave the talk to students on the MA Human Resources Management course at Southampton Solent University. I have worked for a long time to reach this moment and done much work to create the guidance and the website infrastructure. It gave me a real sense of satisfaction in talking about what we are doing and explaining the strong positive ideas that underpin the practice.

 'Making' the slide show was enjoyable and I felt creative. It  resulted in some useful materials to help me explain the background, purposes,  structure, process and tools underlying the scheme. I realise that this slideshow is an important tool and I can see how I might produce a podcast for the  website from the materials. I think this was an example of 'learning by making  a tool'. It's always hard to judge what participants are thinking but my sense is that they found it interesting and I am hoping they will want to participate.

 In putting the materials together I came across the old African proverb - it takes a village to raise a child and recognised the wisdom in this and its value to LWE as a concept. It is a great metaphor for thecommunity-based enterprise that will have to underlie the Award if it is to be successful.  I'm delighted that the on-line Community Forum I established two weeks ago is working really well and I hope that we can draw in the learners to share their experiences.
 
3 My third area of activity relates to my family.. At the weekend my wife and I took our daughter to university. Not surprisingly she was  apprehensive and anxious moving away from home for the first time.  We had prepared her as best we could and she had prepared herself by spending three weeks in France - her first independent holiday. After an emotional farewell we left her to get on with it. A week later she tells us how hard it's been - surprisingly she is 'having to juggle loads of things' and
'it's been so frustrating spending three days trying to get logged on to the university system' and 'everywhere is so big and it's easy to get lost' and 'the buses don't come and I spent an hour waiting for one in the rain'. This is why
going to university is good for you - it's a nice (protected) wake up call to the real world after years of timetabled familiarity..

My oldest daughter is very much in the real world with one child of 5 and two month old twins and a husband in America.. So I spent some time trying to help.. I was even left for 2 hours by myself with them - that was quite an experience and only filled me even more with admiration.  But at least I can feed them both at the same time now and I am growing in confidence and experience of how to look after them.. Incidentally, she is also two thirds through on OU degree trying to
fit in the assignments around babies and no sleep.. Its quite humbling...

 So an interesting week in which I think I have achieved in three areas of my development plan..

Learning in passing -I clicked a Linked-In Learning without Frontiers  link to a blog by Gaurav Gupta http://agoodschool.blogspot.co.uk and discovered a lovely little blog site called the Good School site..In it I
found the it takes a village to raise a child proverb and I contacted the writer (an Indian) with an invitation to write a short piece for Lifewide Magazine which he is doing.. I feel its a good example of useful knowledge and relationships emerging by just following links.

Putting the first mark on the paper is a scary thing but I know once I get going it's not so bad. The psychological barrier we have to confront when we make a start can be very hard to overcome. I recently spent 6 or 7 weeks prevaricating over a
chapter I had to write that I knew was going to be hard. Sadly, when I eventually started it was hard and I find it very easy to put it to one side  and start (and finish)something else. Not a good habit I know but I have managed to convince myself its part of my creative process and that because it's at the back of my mind (actually playing on my mind!) I'm still working on the ideas. So my question is do other people suffer from this problem and if they do have they learnt any strategies for
dealing with it. Generally once I get going my attitude changes and I become more positive so something obviously happens in the mind once a start has been made. 


Saturday 15/09 - my mums birthday- 86 today

Today I have a good example of making a start. One of my goals in my current development plan is to create a memorial garden for my first wife Jill. Immediately after she died in 1999 I spent 3 or 4 months building a water garden. It gave me a lot of comfort and the physical toiling under a hot sun helped me work through my grief.. Since I moved house I have felt guilty that I have not created a physical space for her. But it's one thing saying you are going to do something and another to do it. Anyway its a lovely sunny day and I have been in the garden chopping down trees. I decided to move one of our
benches into the woods.. We have 3 acres of woodland and apart from the paths it just runs wild.. As I was carrying it down to the woods I decided I'd like to put it in the middle somewhere and as I started looking the idea of the memorial garden came into my head again.. There is a sort of drainage channel through the middle with lots of reeds and in spring there is a swathe of forgetmenots.. which flowers in early May - the time Jill died... I know my daughters also share my delight in the forgetmenots so I decided that the naturalistic 'garden' just had to be there.. so rather than prevaricate any more I worked out a route
from the existing path, cleared the bigger logs and drove the tractor in to make a start on the pathway.. Standing back from the particularities of the situation I think my goal is to create something that I, and my children will value. I had a vision of what it will be like- pretty and natural like she was and surrounded by wild woodland but in the more open spaces where the light comes shining through and the wild flowers grow in spring. While my vision and enthusiasm was still in my head (and ignoring the other jobs I was in the middle of) I began creating a pathway towards achieving the vision.. I know its just a start, and
there will be a lot of hard work ahead, but it feels already as if I am a significant way towards my goal. I took some photos before I started so I can see the changes I make. I feel quite positive about it having made a start.
Sunday 16/09

Knowing I had a busy day ahead of me I got up at 7am and went down to the woods and spent several hours laying out the pathway. It was laborious work cutting through fallen logs, lugging fallen trees to line the pathway and trying to dig through the chalky rubble to fill in some of the hollows. I fell over several times as my foot caught in the brambles and got stung by nettles. Altogether it was a sweaty exhausting process but I could see the progress I was making so that spurred me on. I could see that although I had a rough idea for the direction of the pathway and the detail was designed as I went in order to miss trees and stumps that I hadn't at first appreciated were there because they were overgrown. It made me feel bad when I realised that the 4' wide pathway was going to destroy a lot of plants in the middle part of the new pathway. After thinking about if for a while I decided that I would only use the lawn mower in the middle part and have a narrow pathway through the reeds and bracken. I recognised that this was a better solution.

Monday 17/09

I should have been doing other things but I spent a couple of hours in the woods. It was hard work filling in valleys and fissures in the path and there is a lot of this to do before I have anything like a proper footpath. When I'm walking in some out of the way place I often think of the people who must have made the path originally. Making paths for future generations of people to follow seems to me to be a special task in life and it can be used as a metaphor for leading others. Today my woodland work was inspected by my mother and father in law who are visiting us. They love walking and they could see what I was trying to do and they recognised it as a good thing. We talked about how gardeners don't just make things for themselves they are creating something that other people can enjoy in the future. My insight today was to do with design - now that I have done what I have done I can see much more the potential in what I'm doing. Its only after you have got someway into a project that this potential can be appreciated.
Tuesday 18/09

Well I think I have found a solution to my bumpy path problem. I went for a walk around the garden and behind some fir trees I found a pile of builders rubble which I had put there 4 years ago when we had a garage conversion done. The only snag is it's a long way to hump it down to the woods. So I have to convince myself the exercise will do me good. I spent a couple of hours humping the rubble down - altogether I made 4 trips with a full barrow.. fortunately its downhill and the last one I got a puncture and ended up having to pull the barrow. This is the slogging part of the process with little joy. It took me two hours to grade 2 meters so I can estimate that there is a couple of weeks work if I try to stick to my two hours a day. It was sunny though and paused to imagine several times what I could do when I start to create the woodland garden.. The results are good and I covered up the rubble with woodland soil so it looks fairly natural. Today's reflection is on the role of 'sustained slog' in trying to accomplish anything of significance. Once the initial enthusiasm of starting is over there is usually a lot of labour which is not very rewarding emotionally. I'm going to use John Cowan's idea of finding two hours a day to keep chipping away at the 'problem'. I probably won't make any more entries until I get to the next stage.