Tag Archives: book reviews

A La Carte Education

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Let me first say this: College was one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I firmly believe that the 4 year journey we take through undergraduate colleges in America is one of the greatest rite of passage journeys that the world has ever known. 

Now, let me say this: There have been many times, since I left college, where I wanted to gain a new skill to start a business or to expand my realm of possibility. Times where I wanted something a little cheaper than a graduate degree, a little more structured than teaching my self, and a lot more flexible than a semester. There are certainly times where going back to college for a another full blown rite of passage just is not a fit.

So what is? Is there a more a-la-carte journey out there? A way to get bursts of learning without a full degree?

A couple sources have inspired my thinking on the topic recently:
1) Khan Academy: Revolutionary. Access to high quality lectures on wide range of topics for anyone with an internet connection. Khan believes in flipping classroom. This means lectures by video at home and homework collaboratively in the classroom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkMS6Glswig

2) Book: Reality is Broken by Jane Mcgonigal (http://www.amazon.com/Reality-Broken-Games-Better-Change/dp/1594202850). McGonigal Explains the idea of Leveling Up in education. Rather than semesters and grades subjects are given Levels and open time frames.

With Grades. Anything but an “A” means you fell short. A letter grade of “C” means the student only got about half as far as the teacher thought they should in a time frame (semester) that was set by the school.

Leveling up is different. Students progress at their own pace choosing their levels of expertise they want to obtain. Level 1 in chemistry might be “How not to blow yourself up in the kitchen”. Level 3 might be “Ace the AP Chem test”. Level 5 might be “wowzers… you just invented a new kind of compostable plastic”. You wear levels like you wear karate belts. There is no shame in any level. Some students have just journied farther than others.

My answer: A-la-Carte Education. Lab course series taught outside of colleges. Students pay per level and can come and go as they wish and continue from where they left off. Classes are all flipped: reading and lectures at home. Collaboartive problem solving (homework) in a weekly meeting with the teacher and other students.

2010 Reading Off to a Great Start

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I have greatly enjoyed each of the books I have read so far in 2010. Here is the list so far, and my few sentence take-away from each.

Siddhartha by Herman Hess
Every time I read this book I feel inspired and love it.  ”What other path was there?”

Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
 Wonderfully written characters immerse you in the recent history of Afghanistan.

The 4 Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris
 As an entrepreneur, make it your goal to decrease the amount of time you need to run your business. If you start working 12 hour days make it the point of your business to find efficiencies and ways to do the same in 4 hours. Its a great mentality that can lead to profitability, new ideas, and a healthy life style.

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
 The more I think about this book, the more I see running as a metaphor for life. We are endurance animals meant to persistently peruse solutions to our problems wearing them down not with bursts of sped or luck but with persistence and presence over time.

I love when the book talks about building endurance… getting to know the Beast (fatigue). Fatigue is not something you can beat in one training run or out sprint or out luck. As you train for endurance races, each time, its  a chance to get to know the Beast to spend a little bit long time in its presence to wear it down just a little bit and build up your tolerance/comfort to it. So many things in life are endurance races.

The final thought from the book: “We do not get old because we run. We get old because we stop running” Find ways… any way… to stay patiently and persistently active.

Rework by Jason Fried
 The best summary of this wonderful take on business is a review in the introduction: “This book’s assumption is that an organization is like a piece of software. Editable. Malleable. Sharable. Fault-tolerant.” Businesses, the smart ones, stay nimble and simple. Organizations have versions and features and milestones. When I stumbled into business, the only proven way I knew to build things was following the software development model. I have said, though not as clearly as this book, that the principles of good software development often apply to good business development. Release early and often. Create and Celebrate bite-sized milestones. Under do the competition. Planning is Guessing. Half but not Half Assed. This book presents an eloquent philosophy for business.

Next on the reading list is Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan.

Are We Born to Run?

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After a year and a half of fairly serious training, I finally became the dreaded statistic. Something like 8 out of 10 runners experience an injury every year. I am now one of those runners. One month on, a nagging IT Band pull that I thought would heal in one weekend, is still an issue. I am resting, slowly jogging and walking to build strength back up.

The widely held view is that running, over-time, is damaging to your body. It is simply too much impact. In my injury free years I never believed this… I never wanted to. But, this injury had me down and thinking like everyone else. I love how running makes me feel… the reflective clarity of long runs… the invigorating endurance that builds and runs through your body the next day. But every where I turn, those that love running as much as I do are finding it harder and harder because of the constant string injuries they have to battle.

A friend of mine had recently experienced the same melancholy of injury. He gave me the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall and told me it would change my running life. The author starts by asking the question of why running is “bad for us”. Through the story of the Tarahumara (a tribe known for its incredible distance runners), sports page commentary of elite ultra marathon racers, and interesting overview of cutting edge evolutionary biology on running, McDougall finds compelling evidence that its not running that is bad for us… its how we run that is.

In fact, we as a species evolved and were born to run long distances more than any other. This news was inspiring to me. We have neck muscles that only running species have, we can breath out of stride unlike any other mammal, and our feet (according to Da Vinci) are master pieces of engineering and efficiency.

How do we go about running incorrectly as cause injury? First, and most importantly somewhere along the way we stopped running for the joy of running. When we run for other reasons: $, or to loose weight, we increase in the number of injuries we expirence. There is compelling anecdotal evidence of this, but its hard to prove scientifically.

In my case this is exactly what happened. About one year into my return to running, it was not longer about peaceful reflection and just the joy of feeling healthy. I was gunning for time. I do believe this gunning type of training was not as effective. My times were not improving as fast as when I was running for joy. It took more work… more pain to get where I wanted to be. I also started to find more strange and nagging injuries popping up. This latest IT Band injury being the worst.

A second way we injury ourselves running is by using fancy equipment that weakens the natural ability of our foot to adsorb shock. About six months ago I went on a run with a group of friends who were wearing Vibram FiveFinger barefoot running shoes. I remember being amazed at the time by the way running barefoot immediately improved the form of my friends who were not regular runners. Without trying, they where running with backs straight, upright, with quick strides. They looked like elegant pros. They looked like I have been trying to teach my self to run for well over a year. By not being able to slam their heals into the ground, even the causal runners who never have been taught what good form is, naturally and instinctively fell into the efficient running form.

Seems like we are Born to Run. I thank my friend for passing along the book. McDougall tone and style is not one that I enjoy, but he has written a valuable and inspiring book. When I do return to the trails it will be for one purpose… the joy of running and none other. I also plan on slowing building up to barefoot runs. I can’t wait to see just how far my perfectly evolved feet can go pain free.