Quote

Share: “If you want freedom, then you need to have discipline”

10 Dec

This rings true:

If you want freedom, then you need to have discipline…”

Cal Newport has great thoughts on productivity and I’ve read his Deep Work book.

This book by Jocko Willink is going to go on my want to read list.

Read the full post here: http://calnewport.com/blog/2017/12/11/jocko-willink-on-the-power-of-discipline/

It reminds me of how I try to frame decisions sometimes: which of the options I have will better get me where I want to be a year or two from now?

It take discipline to use that mindset and it is much easier to choose what seems better in the moment or for the immediate future. But that immediate future isn’t what you want long term.

This kind of thinking works as a parent, too. It takes discipline to set limits for your kids, especially in the moment when it is easier to give in. But you’ll have long-term better results when you are consistent in the limits you set.

Ownership vs. Responsibility

27 Oct

It is easy to own something. You go out and buy it.
It is even easier to assume that certain rights come with owning whatever the thing is.
We assume that we have a right to “do what we want” with that thing.
We assume someone else can only use that thing with our permission.
And for some reason, we seem to have a drive to own more and more because of these rights that come along with owning something.
I suspect owning many things gives us a sense of security.

Because we focus so much on owning things, we tend to neglect the responsibilities that come with owning things.

More importantly, we tent to neglect the responsibilities we have for things we don’t own.

Reading List 2016

9 Jan


Loved this book. I great look at what it takes to really do good in the world.
Access to technology is never the starting point.
Start with an “aspirations assessment”.

  • January 9, 2016

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Emmy Noether Honored by Google Doodle Today

23 Mar

Albert Einstein once called her “the most significant creative mathematical genius thus far produced.”

–Read the story on Vox now

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New Google Doodle Honors Anna Atkins, Photography Pioneer

16 Mar

Cool honoring of Anna Atkins…

TIME

To celebrate what would have been the 216th birthday of Anna Atkins, a new Google Doodle features images of leaves reminiscent of the botanist’s groundbreaking contribution to photography.

Atkins used a version of “sun-printing” to create a book of photographed botanical specimens. Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions was self-published in 1843 and is considered to be the first book illustrated with photographs.

The method Atkins used for developing photos is called the Cyanotype technique. It is an iron-based chemical method that creates a white image appearing on a blue background. Exposure to sunlight is required for the process to work correctly, hence “sun-printing.”

Through her career, Atkins collected hundreds of specimens and in 1865 she donated her entire collection to the British Museum.

Born in Kent, southern England, on March 16, 1799, Atkins was raised by her father, a respected scientist, after her mother died during her daughter’s…

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Optimizing Your Student Debt

4 Mar

Optimizing Your Student Debt(This is a post by Kaitlin Butler of CommonBond. I’ve recently looked for ways to optimize the student loan debt I have and she graciously offered some thoughts. I like the idea of maximizing the return on education investment she mentions below. Please leave your feedback in the comments. ~Mike)

Optimizing Your Student Debt

By Kaitlin Butler, CommonBond

There’s no “one size fits all” repayment strategy for the millions of Americans tackling student debt. Like nearly everything else in personal finance, it’s up to you to identify the best way to optimize your debt based on your financial goals and needs, and we’re here to help. Here’s what you need to know to take control of your student loans and maximize the return on the investment you made in your education, starting today.

The government offers more repayment plans; private lenders offer more savings.

Federal student loans come with a robust set of repayment options. The federal government offers repayment plans that private lenders can’t offer, including Income-Based Repayment and even Public Service Loan Forgiveness. (See the full list of options here.) However, these repayment plans don’t make sense for all borrowers. If you’re not in the public sector or you’re a high earner, you may not be able to take advantage of many of these options. If that’s the case, consider student loan refinancing, which will help you get a lower interest rate that will help you start saving quickly.

Refinancing gives you a second chance at picking your ideal student loan.

When you refinance, you trade out your old student loan for a new loan, giving you a second chance to customize your debt repayment plan. Besides applying for a lower interest rate alone, you can also choose a new loan type – fixed, variable, or hybrid – and loan term, typically from 5 to 20 years. That means that you can choose a loan type tailored to your own risk tolerance and long- and medium-term goals. (This blog post helps you find the right student loan for your personal situation, and there are no fees when you refinance through CommonBond.)

Reamortizing helps you pay off your loans faster and lowers your monthly payment.

If you save up a lump sum payment – like an annual bonus – that you plan to put towards your debt, make it go the extra mile with reamortization. This is when you make a significant extra payment and then reset your monthly loan payment schedule based on that big drop in your balance. To take advantage of this, ask your lender if you can reamortize (and if there’s a limit to how many times you can do so on one loan). When you reamortize you’ll reduce your loan balance and have lower monthly payments each month based on this new balance.

One final tip for anyone with loans? Make sure you’re signed up for autopay, also known as ACH, where your loan payments are made automatically out of your checking account. Lenders will often offer you a 0.25% interest rate discount just for signing up, and you can rest easy, knowing you’ll never miss a payment.

Kaitlin is Content Manager at CommonBond, a student lending platform that provides a better student loan experience through lower rates, exceptional customer service, and technology. Her articles have appeared on Lifehacker, the Huffington Post, Yahoo!Finance, and more. 

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How to Develop an Internal Grant Communication Plan

5 Feb

internal grant communication plan pictureIn the late fall of 2014, I presented at the Grant Professionals Association National Conference. I had quite a good time and received positive feedback about the session.

You can view the the presentation on developing an internal grant communication plan here:

Internal Grant Communication Plan – Michael Roman

In addition, there was an internal grant communication “getting started” template available for the session. You can download it here:

How to Develop an Internal Grant Communication Plan – Handout – Roman 7-31-14

The description of the workshop was as follows:

We all know the importance of providing timely and informative communications to our funders, but what about providing that same level of communication to our internal staff and volunteers? In this session you will learn how to develop an internal grant communication plan for your small to large organization. There are at least five reasons this can be beneficial to your grant program. Walk away from this session with a sample project timeline, a sample communication plan outline, a sample internal newsletter, at least three different free tools to help you with your newsletter, and many other practical ideas.

The benefits of this internal grant communication plan are that you:

  • keep the internal lines of communication open
  • don’t let staff and volunteers forget that work is grant funded
  • create a more “official” channel to regularly recognize staff achievements
  • can even simplify your grant data collection processes!

Just like funders and donors might need multiple “touches”, your staff and volunteer morale and motivation can improve with new and more targeted internal grant communications.

Session Learning objectives

You will learn how to:

  • determine your best outlet for communicating grant work internally
  • define your audience and its preferred methods of communication
  • develop your internal grant communication templates
  • more easily manage the writing process
  • encourage articles and updates from staff

You will walk through the following:

  • a process to inventory your current internal communication strategies
  • a process to develop your internal grant communication plan
  • a process to measure readership and feedback

Benefits of workshop to grant professional

This workshop will help you develop skills to facilitate internal communication around grant submissions, project progress, and staff and volunteer celebrations. You will take away templates, at least three free tools, and knowledge of the processes used to develop your internal grant communication plan and measure its success.

– –  – –  – –  – –  – –  – – – – – –  – – – –  – –  – –

Please let me know if I can help you in any way with your internal grant communication plan.

You can contact me at michael.e.roman@gmail.com or by filling out this form.

Thank you!

 

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Increasing Survey Responses for Conference Workshops

13 Nov

I wIncrease Workshop Feedbackas a little disappointed in the amount of feedback I received after presenting at a recent national grant conference. The conference organizers had switched to all electronic feedback forms.

Using electronic forms to capture workshop or class feedback has its benefits. The number one benefit may be that it decreases data entry time for the conference organizers.

But moving away from paper feedback forms can easily decrease your responses rate, as I saw. You must then pay extra attention to the ways you encourage and motivate your session attendees to give formal feedback.

Here is a simple-to-follow plan that you could use to increase feedback after your next conference, workshop, or class.

Build time into the schedule

When you create your schedule, make sure to mark specific five minute blocks after each session for feedback. It might look like this:

  • 8:00 Registration and refreshments
  • 8:30 Session 1
  • 9:15-Feedback forms open for Session 1
  • 9:30 Session 2
  • 10:15 Feedback forms open for Session 2
  • 10:20 Networking block
  • 11:00 Plenary Session
  • 12:00 Feedback forms open for Plenary Session
  • etc.

Announce the feedback forms

Additionally, if you have room monitors of any kind, make it an important part of their job to announce to the conference attendees that the time to give feedback is now, immediately after each session. Announce it before people leave.

If you don’t have room monitors, write up a short script for each presenter and build it into their duties to announce the feedback forms. It is for their benefit!

Send scheduled emails to the attendees

To pull this all together, use your email service to create scheduled emails to send five minutes before the scheduled end of each session. This way your room monitor or presenter can tell the attendees at the end of the session to check their inbox and fill out the feedback form while still sitting in the session.

For certain, a service like Mailchimp has this feature and can help you make your conference or workshop look super organized.

Advanced method – Create Pre-filled URLs for forms

If you use a service like Google Forms (which is free), you can create pre-filled forms by building special URLs (links). This makes things easier for the user so that she/he can click the link of his/her session instead of clicking a general link and then struggling to find their session from a drop down list. Try these examples below:

Clicking on any of these will allow you to go directly to the form with the session you clicked already filled in. This type of list is what would go in your scheduled email.

Conclusion – Improving conference or workshop feedback response rates

Using just these few simple methods can increase your conference or workshop feedback rates. It takes a bit of planning ahead but will be well worth the effort.

As always, if you have any questions or would like help implementing any of these ideas, please contact me by filling out the form below. Or, email me at michael.e.roman@gmail.com. Thanks!

Bonus Idea

For each feedback question, create a conference-wide benchmark to give to your presenters along with their individual feedback. Just giving a presenter his/her individual feedback won’t give him/her a sense of how they compared to other presenters across the conference.

Ask me a question about your feedback forms

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What You Eat Affects Your Productivity

17 Oct

Awesome!
We intuitively think this is true and that our food choices affect our productivity, but here is some data.
The suggestion to preplan food decisions is a great one. Makes me feel energized to eat this week!

Successful Leaders Don’t Focus on All the Details

4 Sep

What if a leader’s job is to look at most things out of focus?Leaders Don't Focus on All the Details

Typically, we think leaders should have a strong vision, focus on that vision, and help others focus on that vision.

But what if a leader’s job is to keep most things slightly out of focus?

When we hear words like micromanagement, isn’t that an indication that the particular leader doing the micromanagement has gotten too focused on some particular details of the organization? This leader would better serve the organization by bringing a situation slightly more into focus but not making it crystal clear. She or he should keep most things at an arm’s length, slightly out of focus.

This does not mean that someone else in the organization shouldn’t be focused or even hyper-focused on any particular situation’s details. This is why you have many people serving in different roles in the organization. Everyone is paying attention to different details.

Key Differences between Successful and Unsuccessful Leaders

But leaders need to separate the details important to them from all the rest. Leaders need to become comfortable with letting others manage details in areas out of the leader’s focus.

I suspect this is a key difference between successful and unsuccessful leaders. Successful leaders focus on only the most important details and let others manage the rest. Successful leaders have mastered the art of being comfortable with viewing many parts of the organization slightly out of focus.

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