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28/4/2020

Motivation for online courses

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Hands up if you find buying courses on platforms like Udemy much easier than actually finishing (or even starting) them?! I've got a bunch of self-help books I've bought over the years that lie unread in my bookshelf. I also have a few courses I've signed up for and haven't done to completion. So how do you ensure that you actually start and finish the courses you've bought?

Here are a few suggestions to help keep you focused to the end!

Take courses you are genuinely interested in, particularly if this is one of your first courses or you know that you struggle with motivation. If you enjoy the content, motivation becomes much easier.

Consider why you are doing this course. If you think it will benefit your career, list the reasons it will help. Focus on the benefits to you if you complete the course. Write the reasons on a post-it note and place the note somewhere prominent to remind you why you are doing this.
Visualise completing the course. Vividly imagine the feeling of accomplishment if you finish the course and consider the benefits that learning the new skils will bring you. Think about how you'll let yourself down if you don't finish the course. Try to make the feelings real so they make an impression in your mind.

Schedule a time of day that you will do the course. Block out this time in your calendar to show you are unavailable. Do NOT consider this time as optional. Tell your family or colleagues so they don't disturb you.
Make sure you are being realistic in terms of how much time you dedicate to training per day. Whilst it may be tempting to block out hours per day, training can often be tiring and therefore it makes better sense to allocate a shorter duration per day. Rather aim for a manageable slot (say 1 hour) per day and achieve this consistently than try doing 5 hours and failing on day 2.

Reward yourself if you complete your scheduled training. Think of something you really enjoy and then promise yourself this reward if you complete your training. You can give yourself minor rewards for completing each day and then a significant reward for completing the entire course.

Tell someone about your plan. Agree to update them on your progress on a regular basis and put this meeting in both of your calendars. This will keep you motivated as it will be embarrassing to explain that you have fallen behind. Ask that person to really encourage you and give you praise if you do manage to achieve your goals. They could even give you your rewards to keep you honest!
If you do fail to meet your goal, don't be too hard on yourself. Give yourself a pep talk, tell your sponsor what happened, think of the reasons why you failed and attempt to eliminate the issue from causing you further problems. Pick it up again tomorrow.
Don't give up! Like anything, motivation takes practice. Even if you fail to meet your goals, keep working at it and it should become easier and more natural. If you need to reconsider your plan to make it more achievable, go ahead and rework it. Rather build up to doing more as your confidence grows.

We hope that some of the tips above help you to get stuck into your online course backlog.

Until next time...

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17/4/2020

The day after tomorrow

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We’re living in strange times! This period we’re in now will be talked about by our grandchildren! They’ll ask what it was like living through the Coronavirus Pandemic and how we felt and weren’t we scared of dying.

Of course, at some point, this period of lockdown will end. What will the world look like when we re-emerge from our isolation pods? How will people change their behaviour and how will businesses need to adapt to meet the changed expectations of their customers? These are questions that you should be thinking about now, so that you can start to adapt in preparation for when we all get back to work in a post-pandemic world.

There are likely to be two distinct periods with different behaviour patterns. In the first period, lockdown restrictions will be eased, but no vaccine will have yet been developed and so people will still be at risk from contracting Covid-19.

People will need to take a number of precautions to reduce the chances of them getting ill. It is quite likely that additional (hopefully shorter) lockdown periods may be necessary to keep the infection rate under control.

However, at some point, it is hoped that scientists will work out a vaccine that can be used to give the majority of people immunity to the virus. Once this is in place and a mass vaccination process has given the general public herd immunity, people will be able to return to ways of behaviour more in line with what was seen before the pandemic struck. Unfortunately, experts estimate that a vaccine is likely to take 12 to 18 months to develop even with a fast track approach. So we should expect that this second phase will not occur for quite some time.

How will behaviour change?

There are undoubtedly going to be changes in the way people behave once lockdown is over. In a word, we’re going to become more reclusive. After 2 months of avoiding contact with others, it’s going to be ingrained in our subconscious behaviour patterns. This will be reinforced by government mandates requiring people to avoid too much contact as a way to mitigate further surges in infections.

Work from home will become the norm
We’ll definitely be working from home much more than was the case beforehand. We’ll have to get used to using video conferencing for some time to come. Get yourself organised to make meetings of this kind as effective as possible. This might mean setting yourself up with a good quality headset and second screen. It’s very easy to connect a desk screen to your laptop which gives you more working real estate to hold a meeting whilst referring to information on your second screen. This really helps when doing video calls. Also, make sure you have set up your microphone and speaker correctly. I heard about someone who kept having problems with his audio until he discovered that he was using his laptop microphone rather than the fancy microphone in his headset, resulting in drastically reduced audio quality!

You may want to consider getting a background green screen so that you can limit how much of your home colleagues and clients get to see! Many of the video conferencing products allow you to replace your actual background with a virtual background. This works well if you have a solid background colour. The software cannot handle a mixed background colour. These can be purchased online or made by hanging a green sheet behind you.

You cannot work on your bed or the lounge floor for the next 6 months, so if you have been working like this in the hope this work from home phase will soon end, I suggest that you get a desk that is large enough to work on comfortably.

Ideally, this will be placed in a room where you can close the door to isolate yourself in the event you have an important meeting. It's funny when a dog (or 4 year old) noisily barges in mid-conversation when it happens to someone else but rather embarassing when it happens to you! Train your kids/spouse/flatmate to understand that a closed door means “NO ENTRY”! But only close your door when necessary. Colleagues and customers need to understand that you share your home with others.

Travel will be curtailed
We can also expect travel both via public transportation and air to be something people consider much more carefully. The practice of popping on a flight from one city to another for a 2-hour meeting will become a much rarer phenomenon. Companies may be more inclined to postpone or cancel large company events, including internal meetings, conferences and parties. You can expect the end of year event to be subdued and local!

You'll need to reach out
If you are spending less time at the office, you’ll need to be more proactive in terms of reaching out to your colleagues. Having virtual get-togethers might be a good way to keep team spirit up. You could have a weekly session where you play a game with your workmates over video conference. This is going to be one of those areas which will require real effort as it’s so easy to downplay the importance of the social connections with your colleagues. If you are in a customer-facing role such as sales, you may have to be creative in terms of how best to engage with customers and develop rapport without necessarily having face to face time.

Training will be done remotely
Something else that we foresee changing is the way that training is done. Keeping your skills up to date would usually involve spending time in a classroom with colleagues or strangers - something you’re going to want to avoid for the foreseeable future. So options like online training and virtual training (training with a live teacher delivered via video conferencing) become even more important.

We’re actively developing our online facilities at the moment, improving our range of Udemy courses with refreshes and enhancements and adding new courses.

The coming months are likely to be tough for many businesses though we believe that for many economies, there’ll be a rapid improvement once the lockdown restrictions are reduced. For those businesses that manage to survive the lockdown and get through those first few months when the impact on the economy is likely to mean continued famine, the land of plenty could well beckon since the lean times will have thinned the competitive herd. The companies and individuals that will do best will be those that adapt to the new realities. The time to start thinking about how you will do so is now.

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Motivation for online courses

The day after tomorrow

How will behaviour change?

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