#5 - Knowledge is the new money
Kara Monroe
Welcome to the six new subscribers since last week’s edition. I’m so glad you’re here! A big shout out to Deb who also joined me on Medium. It’s where I publish essays and thoughts throughout the week. It’s a great community of writers and readers and home to loads of high quality content.
Knowledge is the new money
Since leaving my “9 to 5” job and launching my own business, I’ve had more time for learning. My public library offers LinkedIn learning classes for free. I have a membership to Coursera where I’ve always got a course or two in progress. And, of course, I’m reading and writing more than I’ve had time for since college.
Learning is like water to me. It’s necessary. It is simply part of who I am. I’m an introverted, Enneagram 5 who scores so high on learning on StrengthsFinder that the rest of my top strengths barely have room to breathe. The willingness and ability to learn new things is my greatest strength. I have a theory about strengths. Our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.
Several years ago, I recognized that I would spend time learning, learning, learning…I’d acquire knowledge on top of knowledge. Yet, we don’t demonstrate that we’ve learned through acquisition of knowledge. We demonstrate we have learned through application of knowledge. I had a doing problem.
A Medium article by Michael Simmons caught my attention recently: 5-hour Rule - If you’re not spending 5 hours per week learning, you’re being irresponsible. The title of this week’s newsletter is a direct quote from Simmons’s essay. Simmons highlights a variety of people who have invested in learning and obviously seen success.
He hits well on the point I missed for so long - you have to want to apply knowledge - and do so thoughtfully and intentionally - or all of that investment in acquiring knowledge will not pay off in the ways that it could.
I’m much more strategic about how I spend my time learning now than I was when I was in my 20s and 30s. I still invest at least 5 hours a week in learning and I am trying to apply that knowledge immediately so that it can benefit me and others. I think that’s the other incredible thing about knowledge - it compounds as we share it. Our own understanding improves as we share what we know with others.
I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call Knowledge the “new money” but I do think knowledge is one of the most powerful forces we have to change the world.
What knowledge are you holding onto that you need to start sharing with the world through writing, mentoring, teaching, or some other form of sharing?
Join Me
While I’m a member of Medium and I might have stumbled across Simmons’s article on my own, it was actually included in my daily Refind roundup. Refind is one of a number of content curation services that take your interests and find a few articles each day to deliver to your inbox so you can get a little smarter. The service is free to join and start getting their daily emails. They do have a premium version but it hasn’t seemed worth it to me to try yet. If you’d like to try it out, join at https://refind.com/kara-monroe?invite=5b6614eb99
What I published this week
The next few weeks are EXTRA busy from a publishing standpoint as a new round of Ship 30 for 30 just started. (This ship has already set sail for this cohort, but you can still join the April cruise which sets sail April 18th) I’m having so much fun getting to know even more writers and aspiring writers in this incredible community. It also means I’m publishing daily so you’ll see a lot more in this section for the next few weeks. I joined to practice my writing; I stayed for the community.
Don't fail on your next technology implementation
Invest in people first whenever you invest in technology. It’s an all too typical story… I was chatting with a colleague this week about a new system her organization implemented. The new technology tool was implemented with the intent of stopping loads of emails pinging back and forth between offices, getting stuck in overstuffed inboxes, and lost to the vagaries of poorly documented - or completely undocumented procedures. The intention was fabulous. The implementation, unfortunately, was an
“Hey @ship30for30 shippers - whether new or returning. The goal is to ship daily. You can start anytime. And if you miss a day, start again. That’s the most important lesson to learn. We’re all starting again every day.”
Use Readwise to Track The Books You Want To Read | by Kara Monroe | Mar, 2022 | Medium
I’m a big fan of the application Readwise. Readwise allows you to store, tag, and learn from all the books, articles, and even tweets you read every day. I’ve written a few other articles on Readwise…
iwannabemewhenigrowup.medium.com
Curate to Create — 3 Tools for Your Content Diet | by Kara Monroe | Mar, 2022 | Medium
If you want to start creating rather than procrasti-researching, it’s time to curate your content diet. Here are a few tools to get you started. If you want to stop scrolling and start creating, try…
iwannabemewhenigrowup.medium.com
Ideas are the fuel of our productivity and creativity. We often kill our own ideas before they even get a chance to see the light of day. Want to give your ideas a space to breathe and try to take…
iwannabemewhenigrowup.medium.com
Tool or Tip
I’m adding a section to this week’s newsletter. Each week or, at least when I have one to share, I’ll toss in a tool or a tip that I think might be of interest to you. I love helping people with tech questions so if you’ve got one, hit reply and let me know what you would like to see here.
My sister turned me on to “Get Upside”. It’s a free app that has cash back offers you can claim and use if you will put a credit card in the app. They have discounts on gas, restaurants, and groceries (although there are never any grocery offers in any town I’ve been in yet). So far, I’ve earned about $6.00 in a month. That’s an extra stop at Starbucks each month or whatever other indulgence you’re currently trying to make your budget stretch to accommodate.
You can check it out on their website, in the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Use invite code KARA3995.
Diversion
A hotline, set up by a small school in California, let’s you get a pep talk from kindergartners. This simple school project in a sleepy little town has attracted almost 9000 calls an hour since it launched (thank you viral Internet). What follows is a brief excerpt of the Washington Post article about the hotline and it’s unplanned success. The article includes even more fun about this special little school project.
The hotline, called PepToc, was created by students at West Side School in Healdsburg, Calif., in Sonoma County, and was the idea of art teacher Jessica Martin.
A flier for the PepToc hotline, where elementary school students offer callers life advice. (Jessica Martin)
It was intended to be part of a community project for the small school, which has 141 students in kindergarten through sixth grade.
That’s all for this week. Keep learning. Keep doing good.
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Kara Monroe, 11640 Winding Wood Drive, Indianapolis, IN 46235