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Seth Godin's 20 Things

Seth Godin listed 20 things that are good to know when growing up.
First 5 here:
1. How to type.
2. How to speak in front of a group.
3. How to write clear prose that other people actually want to read.
4. How to manage a project.
5. The most important lessons from American history.

IT Conversations

Best Podcasts around for IT stuff: IT Conversations

Skating to where the puck will be

I stole the title of this post from John Robb a friend of mine writing an interesting blog from the East Coast. Originally Wayne Gretzky said it when asked why he was such a good hockey player.

Things that are going to be big in a very short time: Personal Fabrication or in Multiplayer Online Game that creates their own worlds: Second Life

Mission to Mars

Just saw the schedule of the NYLF event (unfortunately it is not online).

My session is in paralell to :
Human Missions to Mars: Planning the Trip of a Lifetime

I think that is not fair. Mission to Mars is of course so much cooler than making sure you have the pointers to find your fullfilling life.

How many people will actually go to Mars? How many will go out of my session and have created a post to share with everyone? Hopefully Everyone.

Perspective

Not everyone has a straight forward life growing up. Get a different perspective by getting to know people and their stories beyond your own school the area you grow up or even the US.

Chasse a friend of mine is helping out kids in a poorer Daily City neighborhood. With her help they created little videos of their life. Check them out, they are coming from the heart.

Here is a little selection: Video One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, All.

Biggest Fear

Traveling a lot lately I have seen Coach Carter twice. It is a bit sappy and painted a bit thick for my taste. There too, only after they have their day job school on an O.K. level were they allowed to follow their passion basketball.

Carter asked them over and over: " What are your biggest fear?". Until one student comes back and says:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most
frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented,
and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your
playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about
shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant
to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is
within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own
light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we
are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

I thought: Wow, that is deep. That can't come from the authors of the movie. Turns out it is from a speech by Nelson Mandela and was originally written by Marianne Williamson. [Correction: Nelson Mandela never used the quote.]

P.S. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for over 40 years. He came out of it and didn't have an Axe to grind, that puts him up there with the saints. His autobiography Long Walk to Freedom is available on the internet and very inspirational:

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed
and the oppressor both. Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that
that is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely
achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not
taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even
more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but
to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. The true test
of our devotion to freedom is just beginning.

School as Day Job

When I asked for good recommendations for this session Tim Freeman linked to Paul Graham's talk What you'll whished you'd known. I think it is excellent. Read it. The thing that stuck in my mind was treat School as Day Job:

If I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job. I
don't mean that I'd slack in school. Working at something as a day job doesn't
mean doing it badly. It means not being defined by it. I mean I wouldn't think
of myself as a high school student, just as a musician with a day job as a
waiter doesn't think of himself as a waiter. [3] And when I wasn't working at my
day job I'd start trying to do real work.

Do the necessary things to be good in school and focus the rest of the time on what you really want to do. It's a great mind set.

Learners

Quotes I stumbled over at my friends' Accelerating Times:

"In a time of change, it is learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves well equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." — Eric Hoffer"

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you did not do than those you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. Give yourself away to the sea of life." — Mark Twain

Time

There are ~ 31,557,600 seconds in a year. Life expectancy in the US is ~ 77 years which are 924 month or 28,124 days or 674,982 hours or 40,498,920 minutes or 2,429,935,200 seconds. You are about 13 years old your 410,248,800 seconds have already passed never to come back.

Troy Gardner's email signature is:

How you live your seconds, is how you live your days, is how you live your life.

Are we putting our seconds to good use? How should we live our seconds? We make choices every day.

My personal goal is to live a rich and fulfilled life. My choices are guided by the following principles (and I don't claim that these are the right ones for everyone):

• Active over passive: Play ball instead of watch ball.
• Live versus canned: Go see a rock concert versus watch one on TV.
• Create versus consume: Bake a cake instead of buy a cake.
• Together with friends or family versus alone.
• For a good cause.

These are only guiding principles. Sometimes it is great to relax and just get entertained by good movie alone, but make it a conscious choice. Reflect every day about how you spend your time and what to do better the next 86,400 seconds.

Links to Good To Know Things

If there are things that are good to know, that help you grow up, and aren't we all still growing up? Please post a comment.

The Students and I will greatly appreciated it. If you want to be added as a contributor write that too and I will send an invitation.

On the 30th of June I will present as many of these tips as I can cram into 40 minutes and the rest of the 1.5 hours I want the students themsleves to post their own tips for their peers.

I am really courious about how this will play out.

Inspired by the Greats

Read biographies of people that have achieved something big. Even better listen to tell it in their own words. One of the best examples is Steve Wozniak the force behind the Apple II. Listen to it from IT Conversations Brilliant in hardware as well as in software. His stories are really eye opening. (Others I like a lot: SIMs inventor Will Wright and Dough Engelbart there is also a video of his Future Salon presentation available on the Internet Archive)

Get inspired not discouraged by these exceptional biographies, they have tones of tips on why they got where they are now: Passion for what you are doing and discipline to really make it happen are only two of them.

Young Achievers

Even being young, you may be more capable then you think

There are examples in the history where amazing leadership was shown already in a very early age. Example is Admiral David Farragut who was a naval officer during the American Civil War.

When only 12 years old, he was given command of a prize ship taken by USS Essex, and brought her safely to port.

Flow

Flow is a very interesting concept. And as usual Wikipedia to the resuce if you want to make yourself familiar with it:

With flow the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi names the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment.

Although with the day to day living I often forget this, but FLOW is my target state of being. The thing I strive for being in. If you are in flow, you are fulfilling your own potential.

7 Habits

Steven Covey has studied highly effective people and distilled the essence in this book: 7 Habits of highly effective people.

Here they are with links from Leadership U:
Inside-Out
A New Level of Thinking
Overview
The Seven Habits -- An Overview
Habit 1
Be Proactive: Principles of Personal Vision
Habit 2
Begin with the End in Mind: Principles of Personal Leadership
Habit 3
Put First Things First: Principles of Personal Management
Habit 4
Think Win/Win: Principles of Interpersonal Leadership
Habit 5
Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
Habit 6
Synergize Principles of Creative Communication
Habit 7
Sharpen the Saw: Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal
Inside-Out Again
Final Thoughts