Learning and Teaching

I know I’m not alone in being a faithful reader of Seth Godin’s daily blogs (and yes, I still can’t believe he blogs every day and I think once a week is a challenge). Monday, March 23, 2020, his blog ended with this challenge: “What will you learn today? Who will you teach?”

As we’re all living in what seems to be an alternative universe in which we are working from home and keeping our social distance from neighbors and friends, this challenge is perfect.  Seth comments that “we may not be able to anything about external events, but we have control over our actions.”

Like everyone, I’m spending a lot of time on Zoom and conference calls, and I’m learning where to place my laptop so that I’m not focused on how wrinkled my neck is. I hope I am using this time to learn and teach others.

How about you? What will you learn today and who will you teach? Maybe not every day of this period of time, but I hope that more days than not, I learn something new that then I can turn around a share with someone else.

One of my passions is helping people who are considering a job or career change. While this may not be an ideal time to be interviewing, I’m trying to think of other things people can do during this time. It is a great time to update a LinkedIn Profile or reach out to people in their network that they haven’t talked to in a while. No, this is probably not the time to meet for coffee or lunch but why not certainly can do a Zoom call or even an old-fashioned phone call to reconnect?

Another thing I can learn is how to make better use of video technology. I’ve done plenty of webinars over the past few years and am pretty comfortable doing them, but I’m less confident about my ability to use some of the great features of other platforms. Great time to give this a try. 

I’ve always believed that it was a good thing to be a lifelong learner and now, thanks to this pesky virus that has stopped so much of our world, I have the time to do it.  Let’s learn together and make these necessary life changes into something positive. Maybe I can get motivated to blog more often…and then again, maybe not.

Barbara Mitchell