Reflections on PreCapstone 'Tools of Gaia'
In my PreCapstone OP5, I highlighted my favorite 'Tools of Gaia'
• PoDAPO
• Design methodologies
• MTMP: Managing Time, Managing Promises
• GTD: Getting Things Done
• Points of Intervention
• Competence & Attention
• Worldview
• Zone 0 Cultivation
• Patrix Busting
Reflections on PreCapstone Tools
This year, I want to express that all of these have become essential tools in my new utility belt.
Indeed, the enhancement in my process around learning has grown through these important pattern level awarenesses of how I learn.
PoDAPO: I am now intimately familiar with PoDAPO and this helps clarify for me what the needs are within the community to do these OP's correctly and well. I am also more aware of the concept of metrics and the value of understanding what criteria I need to measure up to within any system.
Design methodologies: I have explored 1-2 different design methodologies in each of my OP's and I often do quick ones for smaller projects in my life. I am much more conscious of being a designer and design many things. I design conscious awareness and articulation around goal-setting and then I remember to leave space and time for brainstorming. The cyclical nature of design has empowered me to actively experiment and trust that failure is the greatest teacher. Consequently, reflection and documentation are huge themes for me. Learning to weave a narrative is another growing edge in design methodologies. Other favorite aspects include brainstorming and setting SMART goals.
MTMP: I feel much clearer about my relationship to time and promises. There is still abundant room for growth but I necessarily balance this with my laid back attitude of not wanting to over-schedule my life.
Working collaboratively much more has given me ample opportunity to explore how I manage time and promises. One thing that I have certainly learned is that everybody hears different things so written communication of what expectations are after a meeting is crucial. I also feel a unity in my personal and professional life to such a heightened degree now that I am constantly doing and now learning how to MTMP with a few different metrics (professional growth, personal growth, partnership)
GTD: Just do it and the power in making decisions remains the greatest learning for me. Active Experimentation has greatly risen in my life. I am very regularly still making Now/Sooner/Later To Do lists. "Perfection truly is the enemy of the good." and I do much better when I allow learnings from my failures/setbacks.
Zone 0 Cultivation got flushed out considerably within my OP 2: Health & Happiness. This was personally extremely transformative for me and I hope it will prove to be a professional asset as my life continues to unfold. I can see that doing our own work is hugely important in order to coach and mentor others. Lending permaculture language to my professional life as a healer and personal journey as a spiritual seeker was fun and rewarding.
Patrix Busting: There has been radical growth for me in the arena of Patrix busting as I believe there is a national awareness of media bias. Ironically, Fox news has picked up on media bias and plays that card harder and louder than the liberal Patrix busters. For me, the most significant development along this line is the understanding that adults rarely know what they are doing and want to be helpful/useful. As a child, I had a naive attitude that adults who did their job were usually "right" about what they were pronouncing. I now with greater clarity see that very few adults know what they are talking about. Many of the literature papers I wrote while receiving my BA at Stanford was about the subversive and that in literature, a theme could simultaneously purport itself and its opposite. In this world of lit-crit, I am not sure I ever translated this subversiveness to a full understanding of the workings of people in real life. It has been in this cycle that I see that even scientists sway their data and my theory is that everybody wants to contribute to society so spending 4 years in a lab on a study and then coming out and saying "we discovered nothing." is something only the most humble and confident are capable of. Everybody wants to have value in their life for the past few years and I think for many people wrongfully (not maliciously) but without clarity decreeing their findings feels better than saying, "yeah, we didn't really do anything." I include this under patrix busting even though my original view of the patrix is in some ways an intentional power cabal that is aiming to keep their authority as opposed to the weakness of humans and how they want to contribute and so much of our lives are meaningless. Indeed, many of us would do better to simply connect with the communities around us than to try to contribute something of global significance.
Competence and Attention: My growth involves the work I have done on embracing the "Just do it" attitude and possible failure inherent within Active Experimentation. I have invited "Attention" into my Competence by recognizing that the paralysis does not serve me.
Suffice it to say, I continue to grow with each of these tools indispensable in my new utility belt.
Pathway Tools Introduced by Gaia
We are each the project manager of our life. Let us bring consciousness to this project’s pathway. Let us be inspired to establish healthy commitments eased through our ability to renegotiate. Let us reflect and document with conscious awareness to yield maximum growth and effectiveness of the project and process. Upon completion, let us synthesize our experience and share the key outcomes of the project and our experience of the project. This often will include a reflection on what went well, what was challenging what we would do differently next time, sharing points of intervention along the journey and any next steps to take from where we have arrived. Tools we can use in this reflection and documentation include: Design Methodologies, PoDAPO, GTD, MTMP, Discharging Distresses, Competence&Attention, Worldview, Patrix Busting, and Zone 0 Cultivation.
Any new tools?
Metrics:
What are the Metrics? Gaia's metrics of PoDAPO have given me a great lens into two things:
• Valuable considerations to keep in mind when presenting my information to others.
• The concept of metrics: naming to the audience, student, group that these are key themes to keep in my mind is critical.
PoDAPO is one set of metrics that Gaia U uses to evaluate OP's for the associates. Within any system, learning the metrics for me is recognizing what is of value in this worldview/community. This potentially includes:
• discovering consensual values and mission statements with new communities/groups.
• clear communication with employees regarding expectations.
• offering a glossary of terms for any specialized system to include people not within that system.
Curriculum
Pattern level action learning
Curriculum creation is one of the most powerful conversations in our culture of action learners in the world of internet learning and self directed learning.
Deciding on what we are educating kids for. Do we want schools to train kids to be factory or cubicle workers or do we want to foster innovation. I prefer the latter and believe I may homeschool my children in an attempt to foster this type of critical thinker.
The primary technique I employ in my Curriculum Creation is that I have started to watch dozens of youtube videos on any topic that I am interested in. Invariably, there are common themes among the various clips and other things where only one or two people mention it. I have begun to form my curricula upon those common themes, the themes everybody acknowledges as critical to Chocolates or Cordial Making or Land Stewardship.
And the next level of refinement is teasing out which of the themes that 'everybody' doesn't know are actually important to me.
Active Experimentation:
I saw that Active Experimentation was my most challenging of Kolb's learning styles. Therefore, I embraced it and successfully actively experimented with chocolates, cordials, and propagation styles and soil creation styles. I don't think I was ever a perfectionist (having known a few and not resonating) However, I still seemed paralyzed as I wanted the decision I made to be the right/best one. Now, I see that even the wrong decision with conscious awareness yields growth and learning (often greater growth than simple confirmation of a previously held belief:
• Very freeing
• Good to approach with an attitude that failure is okay or perhaps even the best way to learn
• One method of GTD
• Points of Intervention tie into this in some way as I think recognizing that I don't need to stay attached to my original plan is quite a valuable asset
SMART goals -- one method of GTD
I have long been a fan of concrete and specific goals. Gaia has helped me set up charts and graphs to make my goals measurable.