Get Off Your A** 🦘
GOYA, On knowledge and relationships, Green Schools, and Learning RSS Feeds
Hey learners,
Welcome to Issue 15 of the Design Your Learning Newsletter. This week I share what I’m thinking, doing, and exploring in the world of experiential learning.
Get Off Your Ass
My professor in university, Mr. Boman Moradian a.k.a God of Operations taught us many of his self devised corporate theories that continue to guide me.
One acronym he popularized in our college was ‘GOYA - Get Off Your Ass’ which simply was a call to action when running operations in a business.
In his words, “Its very easy for managers to sit in AC offices, wear suits and a cutlangot around their neck (Tie!) and tell what is to be done and not to be done. But actual management takes place by visiting sites. Its called Managing by Walking Around (MBWA). I call it GOYA - Get off your Ass".
His stories outlined examples of executives who went out of their way and threw themselves deep in the process to solve problems.
In today’s internet-dependent world, I often expect to get all the answer on Google comfortable sitting on my desk which is not always ideal.
2 ways I found GOYA helpful recently:
1 - Work:
I’m in Bangalore currently and trying to help out in my family business in a few areas. We’ve failed constantly to find reliable local staff for the role of cashiers and always wondered how the other restaurants did it, assuming they must be paying a wage we can’t afford.
Last week, the manager and I decided to go to a cafe early morning (when it’s empty) and straight-up asked the cashier about her salary, how she heard about the job and even asked her to recommend friends for our openings.
We had more insights after a 5 minute conversation than any amount of Google search could have revealed.
2 - Non-Work:
When I was in Tamil Nadu last month, after countless searches and looking for routes on bus aggregators, we could not find the best way to reach from Pondicherry to Kodaikanal. All the routes were either too long or too expensive without any clarity.
Finally, my cousin and I decided to walk straight to the bus station and ask around. Thankfully, local bus drivers helped us out and gave us all the info we needed, again in just 5 minutes. We then laughed about the hours spent on Google search.
All we needed to do was get out and talk to a real human.
Most of our problems, whether in business or in life, can be solved by just getting off our asses, observing and asking questions to real humans, not machines.
This is a lesson I constantly remind myself of.
Relationships > Knowledge
I finished reading The Time of The Black Jaguar last month, a book containing insights from ancient indigenous cultures written by Arkan Lushwala.
From Goodreads - Indigenous people believe that we humans have all the necessary talents to be caretakers of Mother Earth. This book reveals our true capacities in a strong and clear way, offering the reader not only information, but a real opportunity to participate in the work that needs to be done to save our planet.
It contains much-needed wisdom on living and working in harmony with nature, but here’s my favorite quote from it:
“Knowledge is very useful, but to preserve the healthy continuity of life, good relationships are more important than knowledge, and in the end, respectful and intimate relationships sustained over time naturally produce the most profound knowledge”
Invest time in strong relationships, people.
Here’s a soothing video by the author himself:
Ana Lorena’s Fab Fridays Newsletter
is full of coolest things in the education space.
Check out this fun School or Prison Game where you have to guess whether the building shown is a school or a prison.
And then look at this gorgeous school in Bali - Green School.
Quick Learning Break
How to Use RSS Feeds - http://activatelearning.com.au/2021/02/how-to-use-rss-feeds/
If you’re relying on social networks to serve you up the content you want to read – you’re not in control. RSS stands for ‘really simple syndication; and is a program designed for systems to make content ‘pleasant to look at’ as well as stay up to date with your favorite news, content host, or blogger. You can add feeds from pretty much any website – including YouTube (if you don’t want to miss the videos from your favorite YouTuber).
Getting Projects Creatively Under Way - https://www.ayushjain.net/getting-projects-creatively-under-way/
Short summary of a project planning framework by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done. It’s a fairly straightforward process that brings a lot of clarity when starting something new, restarting old projects, or just fixing what’s happening.
That’s all for this week, folks!
If you have any feedback or comments on what you’d like to read more of, I’d love to hear from you, just hit reply :)