The importance of doing stuff by yourself

In school, at work, in our social lives; we are constantly being encouraged to mingle and interact with other people. Even the learning methods that I read about and write about on here are focused on collaboration and team work. But its important not to forget about the importance on spending time with yourself, having time to think and reflect and work thing out by yourself.

In this TED Talk, Susan Cain makes the case for the introvert, and shows how important it is to encourage both the outgoing and the self-contained amongst us.

Edward De Bono and his Headwear Collection

After watching that St. Christopher's video mention about Edward De Bono's Six Thinking Hats, I'm reading up on them a bit. It's interesting, what he describes is quite simple; it's just about a team thinking about a problem from 6 different standpoints in succession (actual hats not required - but it adds a sense of flamboyancy to the exercise).

Its kinda like a boiled-down Design Specification but reversed, and then discussed within a team. And sure, to maximise creativity, viewpoints such as caution (Black Hat) should be left until last. There's nothing worse than a meeting where ideas are shot down as soon as they are suggested - thats just counter productive.

I also see parallels with things like the 'Whiteboard' from PBL methods (Hmelo-Silver, 2004). Whiteboards encourage problem solvers to tackle a problem using 4 columns on a whiteboard: Facts, Ideas, Learning Issues and Action Plans. This is similar to De Bono's White Hat (known information, missing information), Green Hat (creativity, new ideas, possibilities) and Blue Hat (overview, direction). However De Bono adds other variants which force each team member to counter their feelings of a situation; its aim being to remove the effects of bias, ego or timidity.

Seems obvious when you're told it, and this guy is making a mint from it. Save your money from lining his pocket by watching 1 hour's worth of YouTube videos of him talking about it.

Delicious

Since starting my studies, I've found myself more and more interested in the tools available for capturing everything you see in my day-to-day. This blog just one of them, as I find it good to slap down the more prominent ideas, and allows myself to debate it with myself. Like a journal, it is often useful to see your thoughts and ideas in writing in order to reflect on them more. The good thing about putting them in a blog means anyone can see them, so they can weigh in on their opinion, ideas or knowledge, or just tell you that you're plain wrong.

I have also recently setup an RSS feed connected to a myriad of different links, from literature journals to design blogs. This gives me a constantly updating, concise feed of everything thats being published or talked about relevant to my studies. I read this through Google Reader.

However, not everything that comes up on the feed is relevant enough to take note of, and not everything relevant is important enough to take the time to write up on here. So I need a middle ground, a list of links that are relevant, but I just want to take note of them, or put them to one side to address later on.

As I write this, I have 16 tabs open on this browser window, and another 8 open on an extra window (I have a sort of phobia, worried that the tabs will get so small they disappear, so I limit each window to under 20...). I have had these tabs open for at least a month; they contain things I've started but not finished, or things I've thought would be useful, but dont want them to be lost in my ever growing forest of bookmarks.

So today I open a Delicious account. On here, you can make lists of links you find could be useful or interesting, and then name that list as something. With each list you can give a quick overview of why you liked it and add keyword tags for easy searching later on. Whats more, I can share these lists with others who are interested in this subject, or follow theirs as an RSS feed. I'll be keeping a link to my Delicious account on the side somewhere, but in the mean time, you can watch as I add my tabs to it here.