As a Makers Academy student you are expected to be able to be in control of your own learning, this means that you have to leave any expectations of hand holding at the door. You are provided with broad goals that are meant to help you progress at Makers and beyond:
- I am equipped for long term growth
- I can make anything
- I help my teams succeed
I've spent a bit of time thinking about what it means to be equipped for long term growth and I think that this involves being able to diagnose your own learning needs and making sure that you are using your time effectively - this is especially important at Makers where the amount you need to learn drastically exceeds the time you have during the course. The coaches explain pretty early on that we are in charge of what content we decide to use to help us reach our learning goals - this is both empowering and slightly terrifying.
Each week we have set learning objectives that we need to cover and are provided with resources that we can go through, there are also optional workshops throughout the week which go over some of the core concepts we are expected to understand.
Weekly Process
I usually start the week by having a look at the learning objectives and plan to attend any workshops that are scheduled as I find these more useful than reading through docs. Any topics that are not covered will be added to my to do list for the week.
Daily Process
I'll usually set myself 2-3 daily goals which should be measurable e.g:
- I will take 6 breaks throughout the day
- I will spend an hour at the end of the day consolidating notes taken during the day or making notes related to a learning objective You should be able to easily answer yes or no to whether the goal has been met - goals should be ambigious e.g I will start a project as you won't have a clear idea of what that actually means
I usually use work cycles to plan my day which works nicely with the Pomodoro as you can have short bursts of uninterrupted periods of work followed by short breaks.
This is something that has helped me plan and track and measure my daily learning as well as manage my own wellbeing - my initial approach of trying to force my way through a problem wasn't getting me very far and working for long periods of time meant I would burn out by the end of the day.
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