Training Methods

This excellent image popped up on my social media feeds and it’s another that I felt that I had to share.

Which training methods do you use in your company?

Which methods to you prefer for your own learning?

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the original source on this, if anyone can find it then let me know so I can credit the appropriate person.

I’ve written in the past about my preference for gamification of learning, along with the benefits of micro learning as repetition is the key to memorisation. There is some really interesting work being done in this field to develop the learning methods used in business and I should be able to share some of these with you in more detail soon.

 

Social Media for Your Brand – Part Two

Following on from my previous post on the variety of Social Media, I’ve come across this brilliant infographic from Likeable Media.

It gives an excellent rundown of some of the plus points of the different networks available.

The Democracy Problem

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Source

I was recently having an interesting discussion about the problems with our electoral system in this country. Anyone who takes and interest in politics seems to have an opinion on this so I thought that I’d take the opportunity to discuss some of those problems that I view as the biggest.

No political topic of this kind feels appropriate without a disclaimer at the beginning but mine will be slightly different. I fully endorse and support all the views that I put forward. I invite anyone disagreeing to engage in a discussion, or even an argument if you would prefer. While my aim in any political discussion is certainly not to offend, I won’t apologise for doing so.

My most important disclaimer for this post is that I don’t have any solutions. I’d love to discuss this further and hope that some of my readers may be able to add to the points made here.

 

The first problem is a problem with the people that we elect, politicians. A slur commonly thrown at politicians is that they are power hungry and just in it for themselves. This is an accusation that I don’t believe. It certainly takes a certain type of person to become a politician, to be willing to stand up in front of the world and debate matters of global importance but I don’t believe that many get into politics with bad intentions. A more pressing problem is the manner in which we elect them. Those that succeed, that are elected, are not those that are best for the job. They just have to convince the electorate that they are the best for the job. In short, we’re not interviewing professionals as if for a job, we voting for the best salesperson.

Every single politician has got to where they are on the basis of selling themselves to the electorate. Once in power their policies and decisions have a greater bearing on their sales, before this they are just selling ideas.

 

The second is a question of qualification. An interesting fact that I stumbled across during the last budget was the fact that the last Chancellor with an Economics degree was Norman Lamont in 1993. That means that for the past 23 years the UK economy has been run without a qualified Chancellor at the head. This is of course, prevalent across any government. I couldn’t find a full list of qualifications anywhere so I have compiled one here.

It is interesting to see how few of the cabinet have degrees that are relevant to their department.

I am firmly in the camp that not having a degree should not bar you from success in a career. Personally, I have embarked on a career in finance without a degree but am gaining the professional qualifications as I work in order to combat this.

But with the regularity of cabinet reshuffles, appointments and resignations of ministers is it even feasible that a minister has the time to truly understand their remit without a strong grounding in the subject before appointment?

 

 

A further issue of the process is the four year election cycle itself. The problems that this produces are twofold. The first being the fact that every four years, there is a popularity contest in order for, not just every MP, but the government itself to keep their jobs. This is damning to the possibility of any long term projects being implemented. If a project does not have a return within the four year cycle, then an MP has no stake in seeing the project come to fruition. Many projects do get the green light only to be torn down by the succeeding government.

The second issue is that of four years being too long, rather than too short of a cycle. I don’t know of another career that only has performance reviews every four years. Once elected, that politician is guaranteed their job until the next election (barring exceptional circumstances). What motivation is there to follow through on any pre-election promises? In four years time your electorate may have forgotten, the situation will have changed and if it goes particularly badly you can stand for election in a different seat. You only need to convince the public once, on one day, that you can do the job and you are guaranteed for four years.

 

The final point I’d like to leave you with is one that is best summed up by another quote, this following quote is often attributed to Winston Churchill although I can find no evidence of this being the case.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Please do comment below if I’ve missed an obvious one.

Breakdown of Cabinet Ministers by Qualification

The current Cabinet degree qualifications break down as follows:

Prime Minister – PPE

Chancellor – Modern History

Home Minister – Geography

Foreign Minister – PPE

Justice Minister – English

Defence Minister – Classics and Ancient History

Work and Pensions Minister – Politics

Health Minister – PPE

Leader of the Commons Minister – History

International Development Minister – Economics

Education Minister – Law

Leader of the Lords – N/A

Transport Minister – N/A

Business Minister – Economics and Politics

First Minister of Northern Ireland – Law

Environment Minister – PPE

Communities Minister – Economics

Secretary of State for Wales – Business Administration

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – Philosophy

Culture Minister – Economics

Secretary of State for Scotland – Law

Climate Change Minister – History

The Rise of Peer to Peer Lending

Peer-To-Peer lending is fast becoming big business. If you’re switched on to the financial news, you may be wondering why it has taken so long to catch on. Zopa launched all the way back in 2005.

For the majority of us, it is a new concept and one that is worth knowing about.

 

What is Peer-to-Peer?

Peer-to-Peer is a method of lending and borrowing money without the involvement of the middleman of a bank. Whilst the system still requires a middleman of sorts, normally a website, the terms of the lending agreement are between the investor and the borrower.

When you keep your savings in a bank they offer you a set rate of return, or interest, on your savings. They then take this money and offer it out to other consumers, charging them a higher rate of interest. This is the primary way in which banks make their profits. Their profit is the difference between the two interest rates.

In order to maximise their profits, it is in the bank’s interest to keep the interest that they pay to their investors (customers) as low as possible and to keep the interest rate they charge for providing a loan as high possible.

When you invest through a Peer-to-Peer website there is no middleman in these agreements. The interest rate is agreed between the investor and the borrower. Of course, this is affected by market forces. If you’re offering to lend your money out at 50% interest and everyone else is offering their’s at 40%, no one will take you up on the offer.

Of course, every company needs to make a profit and Peer-to-Peer brokers are no different but, in general, they take a predefined percentage of your profits and not only is this made clear on investment but compared to traditional banking, their cut is incredibly low.

Why now?

The rise of the Peer-to-Peer format was perhaps an inevitable effect of the advancement of technology. We’ve seen the concept of peer-to-peer gain traction in almost every industry. Well known examples that you may have heard of include AirBnB and Uber.

The more and more connected our world becomes, the easier it is to connect people directly and this is disrupting many traditional industries. It will be very interesting over the next few years as these upstart Peer-to-Peer models become the establishment standard and then begin the push for profits that every corporation eventually undertakes. Will they be true to their model?

There has been another enormous factor in the prevalence of Peer-to-Peer lenders and that was the financial crisis, credit crunch, call it what you will.

Interest rates plummeted and those with the money to start saving saw the returns offered by the high street banks disappear to almost nothing. So people did what they always do, started searching for the better option.

So why Peer-to-Peer? The difference is enormous.

I bank with a high street building society. If I wanted to use my bank for savings, the most generous account on offer at the moment would offer me 1.25% annual return.

A quick glance at Ratesetter‘s front page offers me up to 6.2% interest, Funding Circle is offering me an estimated return of 7.3%.

If you’ve got the money to put away it’s a no-brainer.

 

Where can I get involved?

There are a multitude of sites available for you to investigate and each offers different advantages and disadvantages.

The current main players are:

Zopa

RateSetter

Funding Circle

But there are many others out there now so don’t be afraid of doing your own research.

No idea how to decide? I’ll give you a few pointers on what to look out for.

• The Rate of Return – Don’t just go by the big number on the front page. Dig deeper and see what the actual current rates are
• The Charges – Each of these companies makes money. Find out how much you’ll be paying them.
• The Risk – Some of them offer contingency funds to cover bad debts, but not all of them.
• Access to Money – You can’t always freely access your investment money in these schemes, although they do often offer a secondary market to sell your stake if you want out quickly.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the Peer-to-Peer industry is now regulated, offering you greater security. New regulation is coming in all the time, have a quick read up on the latest developments before diving in.

As you can begin investing from as little as £10 this is a great way to start saving and start controlling your investments. I highly recommend it.

 

 

 

 

The Key to Confidence

Most of us are not blessed with a natural confidence but, just like any skill, it is something that can be taught and can be learned.

Many things have been written over the years regarding the best way to achieve confidence. The most oft repeated quote in my experience is to:

Fake it until you make it

The idea being that if you pretend that you are confident, and act in this way, then to the world outside of your own head you are confident. By other people considering you to be confident, they react in the desired manner which leads to an increase in your actual confidence.

This self-reinforcing loop is a useful psychological trick that can actually be applied to any habit-forming exercise but I don’t think it is as appropriate in this case as many make it out to be.

If the goal of the exercise is to achieve a certain feat, such as giving a presentation or navigating the way through the rigors of public speaking, then this method is certainly helpful. In such circumstances, all that is needed is the appearance of confidence, this is not a true possession of confidence.

 

So how is true confidence achieved?

First we must consider what we are defining as confidence. It is certainly not the ability to appear confident, this we have addressed above.

To quote the Cambridge Dictionary, confidence is:

the ​quality of being ​certain of ​your ​abilities or of having ​trust in ​people, ​plans, or the ​future.

From this we can infer our own working definition.

Confidence is not the ability to act like a situation does not bother us, but the belief in our own ability to succeed in a given situation.

Merely acting as if we are confident, does not give us the self-belief necessary to achieve this but it can help in reinforcing it.

To achieve this level of self-belief requires honest and thorough self-assessment.

One who is sure in their abilities can be absolutely confident. This does not mean that only those with exceptional abilities can be confident, quite the reverse. It is just as important to understand our own limitations and boundaries. By keeping our situations within these boundaries you can achieve complete confidence in everything that you do.

Of course, this leads to the issue of limiting one’s horizons. If we only put ourselves in the positions where we are confident that we can succeed then how can we grow? How can we experience new things? How do we push ourselves to achieve our potential without working outside of our comfort zone?

And more than this, does it imply that only those with experience in a situation can be confident? Otherwise any confidence in a new situation would be misplaced.

 

This is where a greater understanding of self-assessment is necessary and a greater understanding of self as a whole. It is not only our practical skills that we need to assess, not only our experiences or history that are important. When trying to find this key to our psyche we must realise that there are many other parameters at work.

It is entirely possible to stride into the unknown with a true basis of confidence and self-belief. To achieve this, we need to look at some of the more esoteric psychological limitations that we have.

Stop and consider your own abilities in the following terms.

What is your ability to learn?

What is your ability to improvise?

What is your ability to adapt?

By framing our abilities in more flexible terms you can see that having absolute self belief that a situation is within our abilities to learn, improvise and adapt will leave you much more confident in dealing with the situation.

These are just a few examples of those skills that are not often focused on when considering how prepared we are. Take the time to consider what these secondary abilities are for you personally. Very few people will be confident it all things, rather try to establish your own limitations and your own abilities. You’ll find that the confidence will come after the greater understanding of your own skills.

 

Three questions to save the world.

What would your three questions be?

Success Doesn’t Need To Be Lonely

I’d like to use this post to address a worrying trend that I’ve noticed across my Social Media channels recently.

Many of my contacts, on LinkedIn especially, are in the habit of sharing motivational pictures. I’m sure you know the type, the quotes that used to adorn posters of sunsets or mountains in school classrooms and doctors surgeries and now spread across the internet in their most recent form of block text against a black background.

Most of these are inoffensive, if stale, mantras explaining that you need to work hard in order to be successful. This point is one that I won’t argue with, it’s certainly true that hard work is one of the precursors to success.

I will say that I’m unconvinced on the benefits of posting these on social media, does reading that make me more successful? Does posting it? Does taking the time to make it an easily shareable image count as success?

However, the benefits of these are not what has concerned me. It’s the recent tread of assuming that success has to be lonely. Another example of this is this Renegade Press post, from Chris Nicholas, whose blog is always an interesting read. His statement being that there are only two options in life; you can either be a bored sheep or a lonely wolf.

This appears to be based out of the assumption that in order to be successful, you must make sacrifices. That, again, is a point that I agree with. Making a success of something, whatever your goal, takes time. Time is one of the resources that is most precious to anyone as we have such a finite amount.

But sacrifice and loneliness are not identical. It may be the case that in order to make your project, be it a business or a book, work you have to sacrifice some free time and spend less time with your friends and family than you might want. It may be that you have to work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. It may be that you have to travel and leave people behind. These are all choices that we make, but none of those options need be lonely.

Rather, you need to gather the right people around you. People that will spur you to success, despite the sacrifices you may need to make.

If your nearest and dearest are like-minded, then they’ll appreciate why you may be constantly working, why you may not be able to make social commitments, and why this doesn’t mean that you don’t want to connect with people.

Rather than pushing people away so that you can foster your singular creativity in a vacuum, gather people in. As many as you can. Invite them to share in the life you’re creating and the success you’re building. What could be more rewarding to a driven person than to share that excitement?

There seems to be a sense of self-martyrdom around this new trend, a trend of people that romanticise the idea of a reclusive loner, people that want to be a lone wolf. How can your genius be truly appreciated if you’re not troubled by it?

Perhaps it is the very articles and posts that promote the idea that prove to be a better argument against than I could ever write. What other purpose could there be to writing an article about being a lone wolf and the troubles it entails, than to create a sense of empathy with a reader, a sense of pity, a connection.

Apparently, even a wolf needs friends.

 

An Apology

I’d like to issue a quick apology for the drop off in posts over recent weeks.

I have several new projects in the works that are taking up the bulk of my time.

Watch this space for announcements!

Habitica – Habit Forming Productivity

This is the first of a series of posts that aim to be a guide to some tools for self improvement. These applications all share some common themes, firstly they all follow a process known as Gamification. This is the application of the gaming reward principles used in a non-game environment, the hall marks of such an approach tend to be the awarding of achievements for progress and “levelling up”.

The first post on Duolingo can be found here.

Today we will be looking at Habitica.

In the past I have tried various different methods in order to organise myself, prioritise my tasks and schedule my week. This has taken several forms that, if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you will recognise.

I’ve had the full year wall planner above my desk, complete with colour coded stickers. I’ve written lists on bits of paper that are inevitably lost and only found months later. I’ve tried spreadsheets of to-do lists, that I never updated, and a check list in Microsoft OneNote on my phone, that I updated but never completed.

It wasn’t until I was looking into the concept of Gamification that I came across what is one of my favourite new applications, Habitica.

 

Overview

Originally named HabitRPG, Habitica is an amalgamation of a to-do list, a calendar and a straight up RPG (Role Playing Game).

Upon joining you have to customise two things, your character and your tasks. The tasks are split into three sections, Habits, Dailies and To-Dos.

Before getting into the technical details of the different types of tasks you can set I want to focus on the aspect that makes the site so exciting, the RPG elements.

When you create your account you also create an Avatar, in a gloriously retro pixel art style. This avatar is the character that you are working towards leveling up.

For each Habit that you complete, regardless of the type, you are awarded experience points and money (in character money only!). This allows your character to level up and to buy gear to improve your characters statistics, much like a normal RPG setup. This immediately adds a carrot to motivate you to complete your habits, but what about the stick?

For every daily task that is uncompleted or for any negative habits your avatar takes damage. With a health bar of fifty points, this can vanish before you even realise. Death means that your character loses a level and you use one piece of the equipment bought for your character.

 

Introducing Multiplayer

Habitica has so far provided you with a carrot and stick to become more effective in keeping up your habits, but there is another level that really brings it into its own class. This is where that most powerful of motivators comes into play, accountability. Once you have your character you can form a party. A party is a group of players that combine to complete quests.

A quest is normally in the form of a “Boss”. Each day, every habit or to-do that you complete is tallied and, at the end of the day, deals damage to the boss. However, every uncompleted daily or bad habit will cause the Boss to deal damage to the entire questing party! There’s nothing quite as motivating like having to complete that last thing on your list so that you don’t have a large group complaining at you the next day!

I’ve joined a group with complete strangers and have found this to work perfectly as motivation, but I can imagine that being held accountable by friends, relatives or colleagues would lead to even better results!

There are plenty of other aspects to the “Game” side of Habitica, such as pets, potions, customised rewards and guilds, but these aspects are better explored than read about. Suffice to say that there are plenty of collectibles to keep you interested!

 

Habit Types

From a productivity point of view, Habitica is essentially a To-Do list. Each habit fits into the three categories previously mentioned, Habits, Dailies and To-Dos.

Dailies are the basis of the RPG element and are the items that I am most motivated to complete. These are tasks that you have set to be completed on set days of the week, this can be any combination of days of the week or even be set to repeat after a certain number of days. A daily that you haven’t ticked off by midnight will deal damage to your character and your questing party, so these naturally become your priority.

Habits are for those items that either happen multiple times a day, or more infrequently. These can be set up to have both positive and negative consequences, but there is not automatic cut off time for these to be completed. An example of a habit I have entered would be a simple “Eating Healthily”. This has both a positive and negative option and after a meal I judge whether I think it was healthy or not and award myself the appropriate prize or punishment.

The final type of task is a To-Do. These are for longer term items and one-offs that you need to complete. These have a simple check box to mark their completion and award you the experience and money bonuses when they are completed. There is no negative side to these.

 

Additions

As well as the additions to the RPG side of Habitica, there is much greater scope for the customisation of goals than I have the space to write about above. This includes the ability to turn a single task into a checklist of smaller tasks, customisable difficulty levels for each task that affect the risk and reward received and challenges issued by guilds that can add tasks to the list of anyone that signs up.

Habitica also operates a colour coded system for every task, from red for bad to blue for good, on every single habit or task which allows you to see at a glance which areas you will have to improve on.

 

All in all, this is a fantastic site. It is an open source project and completely free to use, and with applications for Android, iOS and even Windows Phones it is truly universal and easy to use.

The only downsides that I have found so far are that the mobile applications have a limited functionality when compared to the website and that the website itself has problems loading on certain machines and browsers. However, as a non-profit that is constantly improving itself I have no doubt that these issues will be resolved and if you’re too impatient to wait then contact them and help!