Another great idea given by Pink or as he called it: "20 percent downtime."(pg. 162) The idea is to give free time off to everyone to just do what they want during the day. It's the equivalent of lunch but instead of having lunch, people may do what they want for only a period of time.
This keeps the people from losing their minds and may be productive at the same time. An equivalent of such is our school's Creativity Week where we all take a week off to do whatever we choose. I can voucher for that because I can say that it really did help to take one whole week off and do what I love to do best: "jam out." It helped get the stress out of school and it gave me a chance to work on my mastery of the drum kit. When I finally returned back to school the following week, I felt rejuvenated and ready to do some more work. In other words, this works.
(This gave me another idea to give my students a period of time to mess around with the drum kit to familiarize with the sounds and other aspects. It is also a sure way to give them a break from the lessons and give myself a break also.)
Showing posts with label Dan Pink. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan Pink. Show all posts
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Mastery: a difficult path
Pink put it best when he described Mastery, "As wonderful as flow is, the path to mastery-becoming ever better at something you care about-is not lined with daisies and spanned by a rainbow. If it were, more of us would make the trip. Mastery hurts." (pg. 124)
This is easily quite identifiable by many painters, musicians, architects, and the list goes on. To master something is to be familiar with every aspect of your job or skill. Even this is difficult to do and Pink also wrote it best when he said it takes at least a decade to actually master something if one was arduous at it. In other such cases it may take longer An example of such can be shown when Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica, admits to having not mastered his skill in an interview by saying, "I suck," in a magazine. Keep in mind that he has been playing with Metallica for more than several decades and playing drums even longer. This shows how much hard is to actually master a skill. Even then, it is difficult to say if one has mastered a skill because there is still so much to learn about that skill. Just like the old saying goes, "The more you know, the less you know."
(In my project, it is best to keep my students from believing they are going to master their instrument within the year. If they gain this type of thinking, they may believe they may take it easy and never actually try. With this said, it is best to keep them from thinking they are going to be top-notched, A grade, or five star drummers.)
This is easily quite identifiable by many painters, musicians, architects, and the list goes on. To master something is to be familiar with every aspect of your job or skill. Even this is difficult to do and Pink also wrote it best when he said it takes at least a decade to actually master something if one was arduous at it. In other such cases it may take longer An example of such can be shown when Lars Ulrich, the drummer of Metallica, admits to having not mastered his skill in an interview by saying, "I suck," in a magazine. Keep in mind that he has been playing with Metallica for more than several decades and playing drums even longer. This shows how much hard is to actually master a skill. Even then, it is difficult to say if one has mastered a skill because there is still so much to learn about that skill. Just like the old saying goes, "The more you know, the less you know."
(In my project, it is best to keep my students from believing they are going to master their instrument within the year. If they gain this type of thinking, they may believe they may take it easy and never actually try. With this said, it is best to keep them from thinking they are going to be top-notched, A grade, or five star drummers.)
Good Motivation and Bad Motivation
Pink makes a lot of connections to how we motivate ourselves such as goals and their rewards: "Goals that people set for themselves and that are devoted to attaining mastery are usually healthy. But goals imposed by others-sale targets, quarterly returns, standardized test scores, and so on-can sometimes have dangerous side effects." (pg. 50) Rewards are often given as soon as a goal is reached and this may be a good thing to motivate people, but it also may be a bad idea.
As in the example of Eduardo and SAT scores, it may be bad to give out the SAT. It may actually harm our way of thinking by saying this is what to expect in our first year of universities and more harm is even done when universities use the SAT to pick out students they want their first year. This motivates us to do well in the SAT and we set goals to achieve a high score. But as Pink just noted, this is the wrong type of motivation. By spending too much time trying to boost SAT scores, one may devote his whole time trying to do so and forget most of his other goals. (This is if it is one of that person's major goals.) In other words there is such a thing as bad goals and motivation and people may fall for it even though it may look like the reward at the end of the goal may be good enough.
(As for in my project, I want to set goals for my students but not something exaggerating such as the SAT. I really want to give them something besides skills to motivate them. But I fear that if I give them too much of a good reward, they might forget their school work and practice too much. But if I give them a too small reward, they may not even care about the lessons and neglect what I'm trying to teach them. This is something I have to further ponder.)
As in the example of Eduardo and SAT scores, it may be bad to give out the SAT. It may actually harm our way of thinking by saying this is what to expect in our first year of universities and more harm is even done when universities use the SAT to pick out students they want their first year. This motivates us to do well in the SAT and we set goals to achieve a high score. But as Pink just noted, this is the wrong type of motivation. By spending too much time trying to boost SAT scores, one may devote his whole time trying to do so and forget most of his other goals. (This is if it is one of that person's major goals.) In other words there is such a thing as bad goals and motivation and people may fall for it even though it may look like the reward at the end of the goal may be good enough.
(As for in my project, I want to set goals for my students but not something exaggerating such as the SAT. I really want to give them something besides skills to motivate them. But I fear that if I give them too much of a good reward, they might forget their school work and practice too much. But if I give them a too small reward, they may not even care about the lessons and neglect what I'm trying to teach them. This is something I have to further ponder.)
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Notes From Drive 8/15/2010
Here are some notes I've taken but whether they're good or not is up to y'all.
1. How do I motivate myself to do anything at all?
- Pink writes that if someone is given his/her own schedule(that they can follow), then it's more likely they will do their job and produce something of good quality.
I like this notion because whenever we're given deadlines, I start to get a bit nervous as to how the result will turn out. Don't get me wrong, I'm serious about my education but the best results that anyone is going to get from me is in A. They give me enough time and B. Don't ask me every minute, hour, day about how the project is coming along. (I'll just leave it here for now)
- Mr. Pink suggests that in between work, we take some time off.
I think he called this ROWE but I'm not too certain. Working for a big company and having to stay there from various hour of the night can be frustrating and exhausting. As an employee, will I finish the work by the end of my shift, probably? Will I give it 100%, not so sure about that one. Anyhow, ROWE suggests we take a break from the heavy work load and relax. Let's us contemplate about other things such as how this years soccer team will improve. Little things can really put us at ease and I think this will help a lot of Chinquapin students, especially the seniors since we have to not only focus on school work but on college applications.
2. What I really think about Mr. Pink and his book.
This book just serves to prove another point that Chinquapin also tries to plant in our heads: You have to go beyond normality and do something that defines you as a person. That's why this is a good book for young people(such as myself) to remember why we go to school and after that it becomes more about the decisions that we make that will take toll in our lives. I thought also this was a sneaky way to make me realize, my gosh, I've yet to learn anything. There is so much that the world has to offer, I haven't even begun to understand what lies ahead. Drive, Drive, it can mean so many things but it's up to you, me and the rest of the world to make it what we want it to be.
1. How do I motivate myself to do anything at all?
- Pink writes that if someone is given his/her own schedule(that they can follow), then it's more likely they will do their job and produce something of good quality.
I like this notion because whenever we're given deadlines, I start to get a bit nervous as to how the result will turn out. Don't get me wrong, I'm serious about my education but the best results that anyone is going to get from me is in A. They give me enough time and B. Don't ask me every minute, hour, day about how the project is coming along. (I'll just leave it here for now)
- Mr. Pink suggests that in between work, we take some time off.
I think he called this ROWE but I'm not too certain. Working for a big company and having to stay there from various hour of the night can be frustrating and exhausting. As an employee, will I finish the work by the end of my shift, probably? Will I give it 100%, not so sure about that one. Anyhow, ROWE suggests we take a break from the heavy work load and relax. Let's us contemplate about other things such as how this years soccer team will improve. Little things can really put us at ease and I think this will help a lot of Chinquapin students, especially the seniors since we have to not only focus on school work but on college applications.
2. What I really think about Mr. Pink and his book.
This book just serves to prove another point that Chinquapin also tries to plant in our heads: You have to go beyond normality and do something that defines you as a person. That's why this is a good book for young people(such as myself) to remember why we go to school and after that it becomes more about the decisions that we make that will take toll in our lives. I thought also this was a sneaky way to make me realize, my gosh, I've yet to learn anything. There is so much that the world has to offer, I haven't even begun to understand what lies ahead. Drive, Drive, it can mean so many things but it's up to you, me and the rest of the world to make it what we want it to be.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
You're Off...!
I'm glad to see more members of the Class of 2011 starting to make an appearance here, and I'm even more thrilled to see the conversations beginning to emerge! If you are still a lurker and don't know where to start, you might pick a passage from Pink's book to respond to, or you might raise a question about one of his key points. In the end, though, you should bring all of this back to you -- how does what you learn from Pink relate to your understanding of your own sense of motivation and how you might cultivate it?
Now that this blog is beginning to take off, I am going to invite more faculty to comment on what you are saying. The faculty is reading Drive too! And, who knows, before the end of the summer, I might invite Dan Pink himself! Meanwhile, you might not hear so much from me -- I am actually going on vacation in Maine, where I may or may not have Internet access. I hope when I get back to find an explosion of creative ideas and discussion here!
PS. Don't forget to add labels for your posts. Also, you can begin playing with adding links to other relevant sites or videos or photographs. Remember, if you add material from others that you need to credit your source and only add material you have permission to disseminate (look for "Creative Commons" permissions to be safe). I'm adding a video below of Dan Pink's presentation for TED. TED Talks makes its "ideas worth spreading" available to others via Creative Commons permissions.
Now that this blog is beginning to take off, I am going to invite more faculty to comment on what you are saying. The faculty is reading Drive too! And, who knows, before the end of the summer, I might invite Dan Pink himself! Meanwhile, you might not hear so much from me -- I am actually going on vacation in Maine, where I may or may not have Internet access. I hope when I get back to find an explosion of creative ideas and discussion here!
PS. Don't forget to add labels for your posts. Also, you can begin playing with adding links to other relevant sites or videos or photographs. Remember, if you add material from others that you need to credit your source and only add material you have permission to disseminate (look for "Creative Commons" permissions to be safe). I'm adding a video below of Dan Pink's presentation for TED. TED Talks makes its "ideas worth spreading" available to others via Creative Commons permissions.
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