Intentional learning occurs when it is the primary goal of a learner. For example, someone who wants to learn a new language reads a book in a language and looks up new words that they encounter to improve their vocabulary.This is contrasted with incidental learning, where the same learner just picks up words while talking with someone in the target language without attempting to learn new vocabulary. When we understand intentional learning, we can optimise learning and teaching.

Intentional learning

Intentional learning involves learning that's active and autonomous. Characteristics include: <ul><li>Motivation to learn</li><li>Specific learning goals</li><li>Attempts to improve the learning process</li><li>Analytical engagement with relevant material</li><li>Questioning things such as experiences and facts</li><li>Organizing new knowledge and ideas into useful systems of facts</li><li>Connecting new and old knowledge</li><li>Reflecting on what, how, and why the learner is learning</li><li>Adapting to new situations and needs.</li></ul>

Characteristics of intentional learning

<ul><li>Incidental learning occurs during activities where learning is not a goal for the learner. For example, when someone plays a sport just for fun, but ends up improving their skills over time.</li><li>Intentional learning involves learning as a deliberate and primary goal.</li></ul> Neither type of learning is inherently better. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on the person and circumstances.

Intentional vs incidental learning

<ul><li>It can be more effective, such as learning an advanced mathematical concept for an exam.</li><li>It can be more efficient.</li><li>It can be more enjoyable.</li></ul> In other situations, intentional learning is less effective, efficient or enjoyable, and incidental learning is preferred.

Benefits of intentional learning

<ul><li>Encourage the main antecedents of intentional learning, including motivation, belief in your learning ability, and recognising your need to learn.</li><li>Identify your goals, such as figuring out what concepts you’re trying to learn.</li><li>Plan your learning.  Find out where and when you will learn and which learning strategies you will use.</li><li>Actively question information that you encounter.</li></ul>

How to learn intentionally

<ul><li>Develop the antecedents of intentional learning, such as helping people recognize the need for learning.</li><li>Help learners identify their learning goals.</li><li>Help learners plan their learning. For example, figuring out where and when they’re going to learn.</li><li>Encourage the use of effective learning strategies.</li></ul>

How to promote intentional learning in others

Stashed ideas

Setting Learning as a Deliberate Goal – Effectiviology

There are times in your career where a raise is justified and expected. 
Asking for a raise is a sign that you know what you're worth and often indicates that a professional is taking their career seriously. Therefore, it is critical to recognise when it is time to ask for a raise.

If you're underpaid, you're undervalued

<ul><li>Your employer posted strong quarterly earnings.</li><li>You had an excellent performance review.</li><li>You made a significant achievement. Ask for a raise right after a recent big win.</li><li>You find out you're being underpaid after researching your market value.</li><li>You took on more job responsibilities and establish a track record of delivering excellent work.</li><li>You received a job offer from another company.</li><li>You've just hit the one-year mark. Assuming you've delivered great work over the past year, you're in a good position to ask for a raise.</li><li>You received a promotion. Ask your boss if your new title comes with a raise.</li></ul>

When to ask for a raise

Just because you asked for a raise doesn't mean you'll get what you deserve. If your boss deflects or the company shows signs of financial hardship, it's worth putting some feelers out.

Know when to walk away

Knowing when to ask for a raise can put the odds in your favor when you approach your boss. Don't miss out on any of these opportunities to earn more money.

When to Ask for a Raise

Conscious “excluders,” who despite various corporate interventions, continue to treat some folks differently due to their social group membership, may help explain the recent stagnation in progress toward gender equality in organizational leadership. Excluders disadvantage women’s employment opportunities, perpetuating inequality in various ways. This exclusion isn’t exclusive to gender diversity. These five practices can detect the bad apples who exclude women, mothers, childfree women, people with disabilities, members of racial and ethnic minorities, mature employees, LGBTQ+ persons, etc.

Gender Inequality: Conscious Exclusions

Excluders disadvantage women’s employment opportunities, perpetuating inequality in various ways:Disadvantage in hiring and promotions: The bias that can negatively affect an individual applicant’s hiring or promotion success comes in two forms: Direct bias caused by a hiring manager’s bias affecting their own decision, or indirect bias caused by channelling the bias of another.Work-family policies: Comments like those of the board member above inform a company’s work-family policies, their use, and reactions to their use throughout the company via top-down influence and behaviour.

Common Ways Excluders Function

The practice of exclusion should be visible and include specific individual behaviors (e.g., inviting the same, incomplete part of a team for lunch or after-work drinks) and organizational behaviors. The repeated action proves the wrong practice, and can therefore be dealt with appropriately by the managers

Establishing a clear definition of exclusion

Contacting candidates’ references can often reveal excluders before they make it into your company. You can also ask candidates to write or speak about their specific experience with and approach to working with individuals from diverse communities, as well as how they might foster inclusion at work and in their teams.

Conscious Exclusion: Making it an explicit hiring criteria

Clear, measurable criteria and accountability are key here. Accurate, up-to-date data can be integrated into 360 performance reviews alongside assessments of other organizationally relevant KPIs and used to identify potential excluders in their annual performance reviews.

Making Inclusion an explicit performance criteria

Reward inclusive leaders with incentives and recognition, such as highlighting them as role models within the organization, publicly recognizing or celebrating inclusive behaviors and practices, or linking specific inclusive behavior to bonuses. For example, The Lego Group tracks, promotes and celebrates some of these leadership initiatives.

Rewards and Recognition: The practice of Inclusion

Use anonymous hotlines for “exclusion” whistleblowers to facilitate confidential reports of exclusionary acts — perhaps particularly when perpetrated by leaders — because those who speak up to intervene often face backlash.

Anonymous Whistleblowers

Conscious Exclusion and what leaders can do about it.

Five practices to help you keep excluders out of your organization — and identify and deal with any who are already there.

What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women

Low code and no code are widely defined as visual approaches to web development. With low code and no code, website building platforms can automate nearly every step of the development process and streamline builds, drastically increasing development speed for web professionals.There are two main areas of low-code and no-code development:<ul><li>One type is design-first platforms, which allow web professionals to build visually engaging web applications.</li><li>The other type is functionality-first platforms. These were built around providing functionality and are best used as internal tools to automate IT processes swiftly.</li></ul>

What exactly is low code and no code?

It is much quicker to train someone to use a low-code or no-code platform than to turn them into a skilled web developer. Currently, it’s common for people to go to college or spend years getting certified as web developers. However, the number of people doing this is likely to drop significantly as low-code and no-code platforms expand services and continue to find clever ways to match the product quality of advanced coding.

Rapid training

Much can be achieved with low code and no code, however, it’s not always necessary to create a website from scratch. When combining a low-code or no-code platform with white-label integrations, designers build what they need to quickly, with no code, while complex software that has already been built by others integrates seamlessly into a single solution. This combination allows design agencies, SaaS platforms and freelance web designers to produce at a higher frequency, which leads to increased productivity, sales, and client satisfaction. Although there are a lot of things that can be developed with low code and no code, sometimes it makes even more sense to integrate and use white-label solutions offered by others.

The power of white-labeling

Low-code and no-code platforms are building sites that are just as impressive as ones built by skilled developers, and do it in less than half the time of their counterparts. 

Low-Code and No-Code Design Is the Future of Website Building

There's a lot of chatter about "self-care". Between wellness and beauty companies promising to release feel-good endorphins with every product and being told to take more baths and learn to meditate, it can be confusing to determine what "you" time really should be—and shouldn't be.

The confusing self-care movement 

Self Improvement

Self-care isn't spending all our money on shopping therapy, having an extra drink because we 'deserve it' after a hard day, or taking too much time away from our responsibilities for an expensive spa day or trip.When we make these excuses for ourselves, we aren't reaping the real benefits, since they provide instant gratification without a long-lasting impact.

Don't mistake self-care for overindulgence

What benefits you mentally and physically may not be the same for your best friend or colleague or partner.At the core of the self-care movement is the need to renew your spirit, to choose activities—or a complete lack thereof—that help you feel both relaxed and rejuvenated. Self-care is ultimately about taking a pause to do what you need to to be happier, calmer, and healthier.

Self-care: an individualized experience

Don't mistake self care for overindulgence or expensive luxuries. Health experts help break down what counts as self care—and what not to do.

This Is What Self-Care Actually Is—and What It Isn't

Aristotle believed that happiness could be achieved through living a life of virtue. It is the highest desire and ambition of all human beings and nothing can stop them from achieving so.
Cultivating one's virtue is the surefire way of reaching happiness. It's more than a lifestyle. It's practicing the prudence of character and having a good fate.
Many of his ideas bear great similarities with the principles of the Judeo-Christian religions.

Aristotle and Metaphysical Happiness

Epicurus contradicted that of metaphysical philosophers. He believed that happiness had more to do with earthly dimensions more than its involvement in the spiritual world.
He is widely known for founding the school of thought of "Epicureanism" and proposed the principle of which balance and temperance were what created the space for happiness.
He once said that "he who is not satisfied with little, is satisfied with nothing."

Epicurus and Hedonistic Happiness

Nietzsche is the philosopher who believed that the people who desire to live a life with no worries are mediocre people that do not give greater meaning to life.
Happiness to him is an ephemeral and fleeting condition that could end at any possible moment. He believed that contentment can only be found with having vital strength and a fighting spirit in order to overcome life's adversities.

Friedrich Nietzsche and The Criticism of Happiness

Jose Ortega y Gasset believed that happiness is found when the projected life and the effective life coincide with each other. This translates to "the paths of what we want to be and what we truly converge."
He believed that everyone has the desire to be happy and each person defines their own reality where they look for something that would satisfy and gratify them completely.

José Ortega y Gasset and Happiness As A Convergence

Zizek believes that true happiness is merely a matter of opinion not of truth.
To him, satisfaction and contentment are products that are born under capitalistic values where it promises eternal satisfaction through consumption. Unbeknownst to us, dissatisfaction reigns over because no one knows what they truly want.
The unconscious reality is that when we try to achieve something that will make us "invariably happy" is just another thing that will leave us further dissatisfied.

Slavoj Zizek and Happiness As A Paradox

Happiness is one of the hardest words to define. Mystical happiness has nothing to do with the happiness of a powerful man, or with that of everyday people.

Happiness According to 5 Famous Philosophers - Exploring your mind

Many of us feel overwhelmed in these strange times, and need to avoid the common mistakes we make:
<ol>
<li>Just Do It: We need to stop waiting for the exact ‘right’ moment and actually take action with the available options right now.</li>
<li>Your Unconscious Mind: Make use of it by sitting still and not engaging your mind at all times.</li>
<li>Don’t Be Self-Critical: Don’t self-sabotage yourself by negative thoughts and embrace self-compassion instead.</li>
<li>Use A Different Approach: Our own values and beliefs may need a rethink and we might require fresh, alternative solutions to our problem.</li>
<li>Connect With Loved Ones: Make sure you are not neglecting your support group, friends and family in these hard times.</li>
</ol>

Overwhelmed: Five Mistakes We Make And How To Avoid Them

5 Mistakes We Make When We’re Overwhelmed

Working from home carries with itself unique challenges that are not addressed or even acknowledged in many cases.
Dozing off during work is often an unwanted effect of longer working hours and family responsibilities. Lack of a good night’s sleep isn’t helping either.

Sleeping On The Job

Sleep is often regarded as an unwanted activity that hinders our enjoyment of life, but it is crucial for our health and wellness. Real alertness begins with a rested mind after a full night's sleep.
Sleep is our brain’s housekeeping time when metabolic waste, toxins and other junk is flushed out. For maximum alertness, while working, it is important to get seven to nine hours of quality sleep, free from digital devices, blue light and anything that distracts our sleep.

Our Perceptions About Sleep

Sleeping during the day while working from home is an enticing option, and can be utilized for maximum benefit: A power nap of 20 minutes or less post lunch.
Doing something which provides you freedom, and is not having any sort of responsibility provides the mind a much needed break to get back into work with optimum levels of energy and alertness.

Work From Home Blues

Staying hyper-focused can be draining, but working from home is still easier than working as a pilot, air traffic controller, surgeon, or other jobs that require high levels of alertness.
Some ways to control the dip in alertness is to have a chat with your colleague, go for a stroll, and ensure that the temperature and lighting are optimal for working.

Hyper Focused And Alert

The compulsion to doze off at your desk has perhaps never been stronger. How can we keep our eyes open when we’re worked to the bone?

How to stay awake and alert at work

Excellence is something that we have to demonstrate every waking moment of our lives, not something that is done once and then forgotten. Excellence is a way of life and is the operating system inside us which is coded through habits.
Stoics called excellence as Arete.

Arete: Excellence

There is nothing more powerful and effective as a habit. Our repetition, routine, rituals and daily actions become our habits and eventually define our success and happiness.
Our habits make us survive, thrive and live ahead, even during hard times. Each repeated action we do becomes a habit, as we add fuel to the fire. The more we do it, the more it is reinforced.

Habits Define Our Success

<ul>
<li>Some of the most successful and happy people are early risers. Waking up early could be the best productivity hack of your life. One does the best work in the morning when the day has just started. There are no distractions, no phones or doorbells ringing and no commotion at home.
</li>
<li>Studies show that early risers experience better emotional, physical, mental and spiritual well-being.
</li>
</ul>

Owning The Morning

Journaling provides clarity to the mind, provides space to reflect and records one’s thoughts, preparing us for the day. 
Journaling is the essence of Stoicism, making one live life with awareness and reflection, instead of living reactively and accidentally.

Journaling

The best form of relaxation of the mind can be done anywhere, through reading. Reading relaxes and nourishes the mind, giving it rich fodder to chew, as long as one goes into deep philosophy, history, or biographies of great people, and not the Twitter fights.
Practice reading daily, even if it is just fifteen minutes twice a day.

Reading

An outdoors walk lets us clear our minds and delve deep into the present moment while being connected with nature and the sunshine. Deep breathing and relaxed pondering while taking a walk is therapeutic.
Friedrich Nietzsche reportedly walked eight hours a day with a pencil and notebook in hand, as he believed that the ideas obtained while walking were gold. Other walkers include Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.

Walking For Clear Mind

Actively caring for the welfare of others is an essential part of living, and cannot be ignored. Connecting and deeply loving our friends, kids, spouse, siblings, parents, coworkers and anyone we meet regularly makes life worth living. Love is everything there is in this world, the spiritual glue that connects everyone. We feel a rush of happiness when others are happy and cared for, and that is a priceless feeling.
Reach out to your long lost teachers and mentors, write some letters, connect with your parents living far away, and inject love in your life.

Connecting With People

Epictetus said the right way to eat is in moderation, with restraint, justly and with self-control. Stoicism believes in being fighting fit, ready for anything. 
Eating rightly and in moderation makes us healthy and reserves our physical and mental energies in other important areas of life. People who ‘poison themselves with spice’ and ‘drown themselves in sauce’ are not worthy to be with.

Healthy Eating Habits

Every night, examine your day and actions, with self-awareness and self-reflection. According to stoicism, this is an essential activity when the day ends.
Observe, reflect, write, analyse, interrogate and take inventory of your words, actions and thoughts. This activity, if done rightly, makes you understand yourself, and that is the greatest achievement.

Review Your Day

Habits are formed by doing something constantly and regularly. The more it is repeated, the more it gains strength.
Trigger, Action and Reward: The process of habit formation is through a neurological loop which starts with a cue, or a trigger(like the time of the day) followed by the habit (action) and lastly the reward or the dopamine hit which satisfies and paves the way to follow the cue next time. To form a habit, however big, one can start small and then work on it on a regular basis.

Formation Of Habits

Bad Habits, those you would want to go away, are best eliminated by replacing them with something else.
The only thing that can be replaced in a habit cycle of Trigger, Action and Rewards is the Action, which is always a choice. Replacing the action makes us trick ourselves into changing our habit. Just remember to replace the bad habit with a good one.

Breaking The Habit

The Power of Habits: What The Ancients Knew About Making Good Ones & Breaking Bad Ones

In New York, February 1908, thousands of women who were garment workers went on strike. They marched through the city to protest against their working conditions, which included less organized workplaces (than the men), lower echelons, lower wages, and sexual harassment.
The strikes lasted for more than a year. In honour of the anniversary of those strikes, a National Women's Day was celebrated on Feb 28, 1909, spearheaded by the Socialist Party of America and led by German socialist Clara Zetkin.

Women protests led to Women's Day

History

Women's Day took on a truly revolutionary form in Russia in 1917. Russia was facing unrest for other reasons (war and widespread food shortages). 
The International Women's Day demonstration was held on Feb 23, 1917 - the equivalent of Mar 8 in the Russian calendar. Women were the core protesters and the ones on the breadline. This grew to daily mass strikes of workers from all sectors demanding bread, better rights and the end to autocracy.

Women's day on Mar 8

Russian women demanded the right to vote - and gained it in 1917 as a direct consequence of the March protests. Russia was the first major power to enact suffrage legislation for women. The U.K. and U.S. looked to Russia as an example.
Because of the political associations with the Soviet Union and socialism, the U.N. day observance was only established in 1975.

Suffrage and International Women’s Day

International Women's Day is marked with celebration as well as with protest, but the day's legacy remains a struggle for women's rights.
<ul>
<li>In Russia, recently there was an amendment signed to a law that decriminalise some forms of domestic violence.</li>
<li>Since the Women's March in early 2017, American women have been mobilised to action by conversations on sexual harassment, equal pay, threats to reproductive healthcare, etc.</li>
</ul>

International Women's Day and women's rights

International Women's Day has revolutionary roots in U.S. and Russian social movements. Here's how it came to be celebrated around the world

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Olivia Kaur
@olie_kaur

Setting Learning as a Deliberate Goal – Effectiviology

When to Ask for a Raise

What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women

Low-Code and No-Code Design Is the Future of Website Building

This Is What Self-Care Actually Is—and What It Isn't

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

Olivia Kaur@olie_kaur

Setting Learning as a Deliberate Goal – Effectiviology

When to Ask for a Raise

What to Do About Employees Who Consciously Exclude Women

Low-Code and No-Code Design Is the Future of Website Building

This Is What Self-Care Actually Is—and What It Isn't

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

Olivia Kaur
@olie_kaur