We are so fortunate to live in our current times of free online learning opportunities that our only excuse for not furthering ourselves is laziness. I wrote a couple posts about New Year’s resolutions: picking synergistic New Year’s Resolutions and share or keep private your New Year’s Resolutions, so I figured I should step up and discuss my resolutions relating to furthering my own education, beyond my Phd, along with sharing with you a few of the free online opportunities that exists that all of you should be grabbing for yourself. There are fare less reasons for excuses anymore. Your location doesn’t matter, and it won’t even cost you any money.

I believe one should always be learning, and so my resolutions included taking some entrepreneur courses to help me prepare for my startup idea, and a year long online programming course.

Free Education from the Leading Universities.

I am interested in founding my own startup so I searched to see what courses were available out there. I imagined I would have to travel to the startup hubs of Silicon Valley, Boston, or such other such hubs. But on google+ multiple people linked to the free online courses being offered by Stanford University and MIT. I jumped at the opportunity – I would be crazy not to.

Here are 16 free courses offered by Stanford in 2012. I have signed up for the Lean launchPad course taught by the well known startup guru Steve Blank. I also signed up for the Technology Entrepreneurship class. How much are these classes worth if you had to pay for them, not to mention moving to Palo Alto and living there? You can imagine.

And we are able to take these courses from anywhere in the world – you don’t have to be living in the high-cost of living location of Silicon valley. I will be taking these courses from Riga Latvia, as I can take advantage of a little geoarbritraging, where I am currently living as I travel around the world.

Stanford is not the only university that are offering such free courses, another leading example is MIT (among many others). And a new initiative offered in the spring of 2012 by MIT are the MITx courses (taking a page from TEDx), where you can even get certificates/credits for the courses, for a ‘modest’ fee, but the exact details are still being worked out.

Learning to Program for Free Online (complete with a bit of gamification)

I learned to program quite a few years ago but with my interests in forming a startup I figured I should learn the modern programming language of javascript. With the advent of HTML5 the ability to develop once and have cross platform capability is very impressive, and efficient. While I have been reading a couple HTML5/javascript books I decided to take the New Year’s challenge and sign up for ‘Code Year‘, over at Codecademy.

I like the idea of them sending you a weekly email pointing me to my lessons. Not only does this give you a friendly reminder, but it shells out digestible amounts of information so it does’t become overwhelming. But this morning with my first email from codeademy I dove in and got a week worth of lessons done in about an hour. Codecademy makes it easy to learn coding since you code in the codecademy site. So a person new to coding doesn’t have to worry about some of the technicalities such as having a convenient text editor or javascript (even though javascript is built into most browsers). It removes a couple small barriers but this gets you started right away, and we all know that removing any barriers improves the likelihood people will do anything – be it exercise or learning. And judging from the first set of lessons codeademy gives you baby steps to get you started in programming, and I found it enjoyable, and got started learning javascript. There is even some gamification as you earn points and trophies as you progress through the lessons.

Startup Opportunities

Codeacdemy is a startup itself, and I think has a bright future. And speaking of startup it is crazy how many opportunities there are for people interested in founding their own startup. Just go take a look at the list of startup incubators over at Startup Weekend. There are over 60 of them listed for USA, and plenty of other ones all over the world. A plethora of opportunities to get guidance and funding. Now obviously it is very competitive to get into the best of these incubators, but the opportunity is there.

No Money – What about Kickstarter?

Beyond having the educational opportunities the other stumbling block mentioned often is no startup money, but kickstarter can help solve this problem. Kickstarter is a ‘new way to fund and follow your creativity’, or as described on wiki: “Kickstarter is an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects”.  Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor or Wired, talked about how kickstarter has been transformational in a google+ post:

There is a small revival of small-time manufacturing. Highly transparent information about where to find niche producers (globally), plus techniques for operating shorter runs (small scale), plus crowd-sourced funding (quicker, smaller sums), plus viral marketing equals DIY manufacturing.

But it is not just physically built projects that kickstart funds, for it can be used to raise starting funds for movies, webseries, books, music, comics, etc. There is a nice year in review write up of 2011 in Kickstart land.

Here is one example of kickstarter project of using telepresence robotics to help the disabled, which has already raised over 10,000 dollars. There are just so many opportunities here to do projects that are very difficult to raise funds for using more traditional methods.

Kickstarter Update:

The amount of pledging in 2011 was just shy of 100 million dollars ($ 99,344,382) ! Extremely impressive. And here is a very inspiring story of the use of kickstarter from crowdsourcing:

Vlach had (and still has) two options: fit a wireless webcam into her eye, or wait for a new generation of cameras that could be connected directly to the brain. She chose the former and, last June, launched an appeal on the Kickstarter crowdfunding site to raise $15,000 (£9,300) to develop an eyecam that could be installed inside her prosthesis. By the beginning of August, thanks to donations from more than 300 people, she had raised almost $20,000 for her project.

In Summary:

So personally I am taking advantage of the great opportunity to grab great education for leading teachers from Standford University to learn more about being an technology entrepreneur and running a successful lean startup. Additionally, as part of my New Year’s resolution I learning/relearning how to program.

What about you – what opportunities are you going to take advantage of: a kickstarter project, apply to a startup incubator, learn how to program, take a free online University course?

Right now there are so many opportunities over a wide range of subjects, in which I only touched on a few here. We no longer have excuses of I don’t live in the right place, I don’t have enough money. Now it just take the willingness to take the initiative.

I encourage you to make a start at something – just take the first step and get started.

 

 

With the New Year approaching us many of you will be thinking about making our New Year’s Resolutions. The questions is what does the research tell us about which produces the better outcome: keeping your resolution private or publicly sharing it?

A couple days ago I wrote about picking synergistic New Year’s resolutions to increase the chances of your success, along with increasing your overall efficiency. Today, we will examine if keeping quite or publicly shouting out your resolutions leads to the best results.

The case for keeping your resolution and goals a secret

A fairly large body of research that goes back as far as the 1930s suggests that keeping goals to yourself, and away from family and friends, until one has achieved them results in better success. The suggested reason behind this is by publicly stating your goal you prematurely feel like you have accomplished it. As if by taking the step to publicly declare your intention is more than half the battle, and therefore you slack off instead of striving forward to the actual goal.

Since both actions and talk create symbols in your brain, talking satisfies the brain enough that it “neglects the pursuit of further symbols.”

Half-way in-between

A large component of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is centered around publicly declaring to a small group (but not the media) your problem along with your desire to quit your addiction. A wired article explains that while we still don’t exactly know how AA works, but overall it is as good as any other treatment option. However, they have found the belonging to a group is a vital component of AA. The bonds that are formed, and the shared journey and camaraderie goes a long way to helping many of the members.

Now I am not sure how many of AA members tell their family and friends their intentions, I am guessing it is mixed. And I have not run across a study examining the difference between those that did and didn’t.

So you can see how AA might be half-way between publicly declaring your intentions and keeping them to yourself.

A website called secretgoals.com has taken inspiration from AA, and offers an anonymous but social location to find support and help. If you would like your resolutions to be anonymous but would like some shared support you might want to give this site a try.

The case for public sharing of resolutions and goals

Another website called stickk.com takes the opposite approach by encouraging you to make a very public commitment contract. And they site a study done by a Yale Professors that demonstrated that making a commitment resulted in a 81% increase in saving rate. One of the professors involved in the research, Ian Ayres, has recently written a book about the approach: Carrot and Sticks. The logic on the website (and book) is something all of us are familiar with: that we don’t always do what we claim we are going to, and incentives get people to do things.

In what they bill as the smartest way to set and achieve goals: you first state your goal, decide on how much money you are willing to place on this (you give them your credit card number) and where the money will go (such as charity or who you have a friendly wager with), choose a referee to monitor your progress (or failure) and give names of your supporters (more public declaring).

Now you could provide names of supporters but still not tell your family or close friends, but I think in this case most people are only tell the above two groups. Now the one problem I had with this site is while they claim many research papers support their approach, the one paper they actually linked to didn’t quite seem to match their paradigm. But that said I can see how have a friendly bet among your friends on the outcome could motivate the better.

Summary:

It is interesting that both camps: keep goals to yourself, and publicly declaring your goals are offering University research to back their claims.

Now, the stickk site isn’t just about publically declaring your goals, since you now have money riding on the outcome. In most cases this amount of money isn’t about not being able to afford to eat or go to the movies, it is more a friendly bet. However, your pride is on the line, and now it is a matter of winning the bet with your friend. And we all know how powerful a little friendly wager can be.

On the other hand from what I came across there is actually more research supporting the concept of keeping the resolutions and goals private. It could be just a matter of there has been less research testing out the other approach.

Additionally, particular goals might be better suited for one approach or the other, and each of us as individuals might find one of the approaches works better for them than the other.

Bottom Line:

Choose which one best fits your mindset and give it a try. I am hoping all of you make a New Year’s resolution to improve yourself in someway and that you are successful. If you choose the publicly sharing approach please feel free to leave a comment on this blog of what your resolutions are.

 

 

The New Year is almost here and many of you are probably thinking about making resolutions. I want to give you a few ideas on how to pick synergistic resolutions, to increase your motivation, and chances of following through with your resolutions, along with bumping up your overall success and efficiency.

 

In business people are always talking about leveraging. Leveraging their money, their work, their contacts, their platform. What about our normal lives?

New Year’s Resolutions:

Most people don’t make one resolution, but rather maybe 2 to 5 (and only an 8% success rate). What can we do to improve New Year’s resolutions success rate?

This post was inspired by a post put out last year at this time at ribbonfarm. Venkatesh Rao proposed the idea of using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs for leveraging your resolutions.

My related take on this idea is that you want to seek synergistic resolutions. Instead of picking 3, 4 or 5 non-related resolutions such as lose weight, and travel to Paris, you need to think how a series of resolutions could link together to form a synergism: the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

Taking physiology, at the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid, is a good place to start. You can think of your health resolutions in general at this level: eating right, exercising, not consuming excessive amount of alcohol. But we might first need to take a look at the common resolutions before we can figure out how we can combine them for synergistic purpose.

Top New Year’s Resolutions:

Here are some of the top 10 resolutions for 2012 (via 43things): lose weight (#1: makes sense since more than 50% of North Americans are overweight), read at least one book a month (#2), … get enough sleep (#5), take charge of financial life (#6), to mention a few.

At USA.gov we can see that the top 10 list includes: eat healthy food, get fit, lose weight, manage debt, save money.

Breaking New Year’s resolutions to percentages:

• 34% set resolutions related to money
• 38% set resolutions related to weight
• 47% set resolutions related to self-improvement or education
• 31% set resolutions related to relationships

So let us take a fairly typical example of a person who want to lose 20 pounds, and find the time and energy to start their own after work business so they can both get out of debt and save money – and hopefully turning the part time business into a full time venture.

Losing Weight and getting Fit

The best way to lose weight is to combine exercise with eating a healthier diet. But to start a new business, or improve the one you already have, you need to find a fair chunk of time, and exercise is going to take up time. Additionally, to start a business you probably need to digest a fair bit on information: how to use social media to grow your business, how to outsource, etc.

Synergy # 1, Multi-task: Learning via audio while you exercise.

We all know the importance of constantly learning, and reading a book a month was one of the leading resolutions people are making. So why not listen to either a good podcast that is teaching you valuable information, or to an audiobook while you exercise. This accomplishes two things at the same time.

You are making a set time and situation where you will be learning new material (or listening to a good book), and getting your exercise done. In fact I find I really look forward to my exercise session because I get to continue with an audio book that I am really interested in, and I feel the same when a new podcasts comes out. Therefore, you might find by combining listening to a book or podcast with exercise that it might increase your motivation to exercise.

Tip: Shoot for 30 to 45 minutes of exercise. Anymore and for most people it might not be time efficient, as not only does the exercising take up more time, but you are likely going to take a longer time to recover.

Synergy # 2: Additional Benefits of an Exercise Routine – Better Sleep.

Beyond the exercise, with the free time bonus of learning something new at the same time, there are additional benefits to your exercise time. By exercising you will likely  get a better night sleep, which is something many people struggle with. There is plenty of research out there that demonstrate that exercise will increase the quality of your sleep – and hence you will wake up with more energy that will help you through out the rest of the day.

Eating healthy:

If you can manage to eat a healthier diet you can also increase your productivity. The majority of people suffer from an afternoon lag period where their productivity level drops significantly as they feel sleepy and lethargic. By reducing the amount of fast carbs and eating a healthier lunch you can avoid this loss of productivity and increase your health. So again we are getting a 2 for 1 gain on our resolutions here, as there is heavy synergism between a healthy diet and better productivity.

Paleo diet option:

Another eating option is to try a paleo diet. Now this is really a case of different responses depending on the individual but for some switching to a paleodiet, or mostly paleo diet can completely eliminate the afternoon dip.

Measure and Modify

No matter what health diet choices you make, the general thinking at startup you is to test and measure your individual results. Learn from the outcomes and modify things when required. You want to measure everything you can: what and how much you eat, how much exercise you are doing, and combine this with recording the quality and amount of sleep, your weight, and your general productivity. Test out various options and see which works best for you as an individual.

Running your own business

Not only will exercise help with your sleep but it will also give you more stamina (if you don’t over do it). And with more stamina and energy you can take on new projects and give you the opportunity of making more money and fulfilling various dreams you have. By eating healthier you are likely to notice increased productivity, from not having the afternoon dip, which will further help toward your financial goals. With all the extra energy and productivity you could finally start your business, or dedicate more time to the one you already have.

Summary:

I have only offered you a few examples above, but the general idea is you want to leverage your resolutions – find synergies between resolutions – so the sum is greater than its part.

Increasing your general health, by doing a small amount of exercise and eating a healthier diet, not only can you lose weight, but you will get a better quality of sleep, which will increase your general day time energy, but you can also be learning the material you need while exercising, and also have increased stamina and energy to be able to start your part time business in your off work hours.

Give it a try, what to you got to lose – other than a few pounds and some debt?

Come back in the next couple days as I will be discussing another resolution issue: to share publicly or keep your resolutions private – which one produces the best results?