Plan & Do

Okay, for anyone who has been following this 90-day process, I've been slacking off.  At least as far as the listen to two CDs daily.  I have actually been watching a variety of videos each day (kind of a YouTube conference).  The topics have been related more to a variety of services that people offer to help (me or someone else) get on track to have a better life,related to fitness, forgiveness, fun, etc.  Most of these sounded interesting enough when I signed up, but have done very little to help me focus on achieving my Family Life Educator goal.  This is partly why I haven't been reporting progress daily - by the time I've watched an hour of some workshop, I don't have enough time to listen to CDs also.  (Excuses are done.)

Back on topic, this week is called "Plan and Do".  My understanding of how this differs from vision is that vision is the idea of wanting to accomplish something.  However, dreaming is not enough.  In order to get better at anything, you have to start taking steps.  The "plan" part is to decide to act in a way that will stretch you. If it takes 10,000 hours of work before becoming an expert, those 10,000 hours cannot just be a repetition of the same thing over and over.  Our abilities only improve when we are willing to try new things, discover what needs improvement, and try again.  
 
My hours of watching videos might relate to this process.  One of the possibilities I have for teaching family life skills is to create workshops on specific topics of interest to present either live or on camera.  Through watching a dozen different presenters over the last two weeks, I have thought about the need to outline content clearly, to decide whether or not to use visual aids (like a white board), what types of outfits and backgrounds aid or distract from the message, and whether recording a live lecture brings more interest than someone recording for just the camera.    In order to move this research into practice, I need to act on what I have observed and try it myself.  

"Plan and Do" includes the assumption that not all efforts will be successful.  If I am truly inspired in my effort to teach, I have to be willing to try things that are out of my comfort zone, and be willing to make mistakes. (That's the part that makes me nervous.) 

I hope by next week I can report something that I have done.  Let's say...I will make an outline of my subject matter.  Its time to start progressing on my "work in progress".