Legacy of Lore

LOL Personality Traits

2010-04-10T17:56:00.000-07:00

My first job and the recommendation letters I've received are all related to my personality traits. With the focus of improving and growing, it's important to have quality goals to aim for, and these are traits that will help attain success. Selflessness helps in dealing with people, which we all have to do at some point. Work ethic helps build your reputation, in a good way. Open mindedness gives amazing ideas a chance to change our lives.

These are logical promotions of the Guidelines to Personality Traits. In a way it is like level two of the Guidelines, where they have become a part of who we are, rather than just something we try to do.

Selflessness

Everybody you meet is somebody you have to deal with in some way, so considering their wants, needs and approach to life can improve interactions with them. The more value you add to their life, the more likely they are to add value to your life. It also helps us craft our messages to those we are speaking to, so they understand and appreciate what we have to say more.

Work Ethic

Having the goal to do a good job is having work ethic. If you are always trying to do a good job, people notice, and those people are a source of opportunities. Always trying to do a good job also improves the results of our efforts, which leads to even more opportunities. All the while, work ethic protects us from a lot of the stress of success and failure, because doing the task, and doing it well, is our focus.

Open Mindedness

If we aren't willing to consider, or entertain, an idea, it doesn't matter how brilliant or wonderfully life changing it may be. That's why taking a moment to gauge the value of an idea is important. Without taking a moment to look at the idea, we are rejecting possible improvement and gain.

LOL Learning Cycles

2010-04-05T15:53:00.000-07:00

As a student (in a formal school, the school of hard knocks or just of life) being a fast learner, and being able to get the most out of your learning opportunities helps. I had a programming professor have a hard time believing how little time I'd been studying the topic. By understanding these three learning cycles, I can better optimize my efforts. First is the theory and practice cycle where compare them to keep ourselves on track. Second is the motivation, effort and goals cycle taking us through all of our actions, which are learning opportunities. Last are those eureka moments that seem to strike out of the blue.

With all the different breakdowns of learning behaviors, it seems pointless to try to create a general approach using subjective parts. These three cycles show the objective structure I see in learning. It's like writing. The tools, personal way of holding the tools, handwriting style and more are all individualized, but the act of writing can be shown generally to help everybody with the letters, words, tools types and mediums used in writing.

Theory & Practice

Theory is all in our heads, while practice is what's done with our hands. Theory without practice lacks a grounding in reality, while practice without theory is grounded from flights of fancy. By putting them together with connect dreams with reality, so we can find ways to make dreams into reality.

Motivation, Effort & Goals

This learning cycle is a general doing cycle. Without motivation, there is no effort. Without effort, goals will not be reached. With motivation, we will put out effort, which is needed to reach a goal. The types of motivation, effort and goals affect how effective we will be.

Eureka

Our efforts, fueled by motivation and guided by goals and what we have found out, can blind us to more success. It's simply that we need to take breaks, act in moderation and do other things. The different patterns in life can show us new ways of thinking about a problem. If we do new things, while motivated to do more, we increase the odds of having eureka moments.

There is an e-mail list for those interested in hearing more about this content, and the book project as a whole. To sign up, enter your e-mail address into the sign up field under the feed subscription options.

LOL The Three C's

2010-03-31T15:37:00.000-07:00

In one of my recommendation letters a former employee says I consistently out performed some of his other employees who had more experience. The secret to that kind of problem solving is I'm using communication, contemplation and creation to get the task done, and done well. Communication informs me about the situation. Contemplation makes conclusions from that information that I can act on. Creation is making things happen, based on my conclusions. Yes, the guidelines, learning cycles and personality traits I have and will share help, but it's the Three C's that they help.

While I generally talk about the Three C's as a positive reinforcement loop, we actually should do all three at once. It's just generally easier to focus on improving one at a time. When communicating, we share ideas, think about those ideas and create with those ideas. The same is true for contemplation and creation, as we should be informed, thoughtful and active in whatever it is we do.

"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing."
- Edmund Burke

Passively communicating, contemplating and creating seems to me to be due to fear, while respect actively chooses how to do those things. There are many fears that hold us back from taking action, and fully living our lives. Sometimes respect and fear get seriously mixed up, because they have common ground. Carefully picking your fights is an example. Some will say a coward doesn't stand up and fight, while others will say it is foolish to fight that same battle. My question is, are you letting fear make the choice for you? It could be fear of how the situation could go, fear of your peers reactions or fear of something else entirely. If you are fearful and unsettled, take a moment, maybe use the Three C's, calm down and make your choice with respect to your situation, values and beliefs.

Communication

Communication is a dialogue sharing information. It doesn't need words, as even just one's presence can be used to communicate. As a dialogue, it's two ways, so it's just as important to give as to receive information, however, listening is better for you.

Contemplation

Thinking about the information we have is contemplating. Conclusions, plans, opinions and views are all a part of this, but we should take our time and make sure we remember that we can always be wrong. Over looking our mistaken conclusions is like overlooking an untied shoe-lace. Sure, you may not trip over it, but you might, or something else just as bad could happen like someone else stepping on it.

Creation

Producing results, crafting a product and creating a mood are all the same in the Three C's. Just because we know does not mean we understand. Just because we understand does not mean we will act. Without action, purposefully choosing to do based on what we know, value and believe, it's just lifeless information in our heads, and we aren't living, merely existing.

If you are interested in the compiled materials, take a look on the right where there should be a place to enter your e-mail. By entering your e-mail you enable me to send you information about the book project, like where to get more free related content.

LOL Guidelines to Success

2010-03-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

All through school I've been told that I have high aptitude, lots of potential and have been surprising teachers with what I can do, because of these guidelines. The Legacy Of Lore guidelines are to handle insanity, to approach things with a play mentality and following the 80% rule. Emotions, intellect and instincts drive us insane, regularly if we let them. Dealing with stress, frustration and mistakes is generally easier if we are "playing". If we only put 80% into an activity we have something extra for the unforeseen and the helpful. So, let's take a closer look at these guidelines that will be included in the book project.

One of the first things to point out is that we have to slow down to implement something new into our lives. If it's your first time, and you are learning about it, remember this quote from Albert Einstein, "If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?" Researching, through resources and testing things out can be a big help, if we pay attention and apply what we learn. As Bruce Lee said, “Knowing is not enough, we must do. Willing is not enough, we must apply.” If we take the time to learn, to apply and then to refine and relax into it, we can do a lot more than we might think. It wasn't that long go that I didn't think I could be doing something like this, but know I am because of this approach.

Handling Insanity

If we are not in touch with reality we will have a hard time dealing with real life. Being uninformed and misinformed are the results of letting your intellect, emotions or instincts take control. They are tools, complex tools like computers, and we all know how often they can mess-up. Computers run on nothing but logic, and are a great example of being limited by amazing capabilities.

Play and Work Mentalities

If we think more about the repercussions than the activity at hand we risk a bunch of problems, much like insanity. The difference is in the focus. Insanity is your traits taking control, while your mentality is how you choose to approach a situation. Play is informed by goals, rules and being considerate of others, and then focuses in doing the activities we decide to do.

80% Rule

If we go all out, full bore and never take a break, we all know that eventually we will burn out or crash and burn. So, we take breaks, relax, have fun, blow off steam and more to keep going and maintain perspective. The 80% rule is simply to not put more than 80% into our efforts, so that we have 20% left over to handle the unexpected and maintain ourselves.

Those are the three guidelines, and I find them very helpful in preventing problems. Hopefully they will be helpful for you.

LOL Book Concept

2010-03-22T16:41:00.000-07:00

In the effort to help students, teachers and learners of all varieties (everybody), I decided to write a little booklet on my approach to life, learning and problem solving. Eventually the LOL (Legacy Of Lore) booklet will expand into a full fledged book, but it has a lot of growing to do till then. I intend to share it with those I am trying to help personally, and with anybody else interested.

Right now I'm working on the draft of the booklet, and should have it finished in the next few weeks. In the mean time I will be sharing some content teasers to show what there is to look forward to.

The motto is, "Be real, have fun and smell the roses." This organization of three points is evident in all the sections. By "real" I mean true and of substance. Reality is kinda important, so it get's first billing. "Fun" isn't something I reference lightly, since I am a game designer. It's more about how you do an activity than what the activity is, since almost anything can be made into a game. "Roses" are gems of thought and inspiration, but if you don't take the time to smell the flowers and enjoy the rest of life, it can be really hard to notice, or apreciate, those roses.

That may seem too general to be really useful advice, but that's why there will be a few sections applying that general approach. For instance the first application section includes signs of insanity to watch out for, what is best to focus on in an activity and how to keep the wonderment in life. They are simple to understand, or so I hope. Feedback so far has been positive on the drafts, so I'm hopeful.

The sections are Guidelines, Skill Sets, Learning Cycles and Personality Traits, in that order. So, the first section tells about ways to generally do better, the second tells about skills to use to do better, the third covers learning and the fourth covers personality traits that you might want to aim for.

That's it for the first taste of what's to come, but keep an eye out because I will be posting more as the days go by.

Guidelines: http://www.legacyoflore.com/2010/03/lol-guidelines-to-success.html
Three C's: http://www.legacyoflore.com/2010/03/lol-three-cs.html

Introducing The Legacy Of Lore Project

2010-03-18T16:34:00.000-07:00

This project first came to mind around the spring of 2006 in a college calculus class. The trigger was looking for a simple definition, and either finding resources that were insufficient, or incomprehensible. Being the creative intellectual I am, the problem both irritated and intrigued me. First I designed a better resource framework than I could find, but it would be worth little without being implemented. So, I set about trying to find a way to do that. As time went, one challenge led to another. Now, nearly four years later I am able to start this project

The initial idea of the project was to create a resource framework for small pieces of content used like blocks to build larger resources. By organizing the resources with several variables, such as jargon, complexity and style there are several ways to alter the type of resource you are looking for. After using such a system for a while it should become obvious what kinds of resource preferences you have. With tools that support the process of finding, building and organizing the resources it should be easy to adapt the resources into solutions.

However, it seemed less effective to follow the pattern of remaking the wheel, like many resource collection do, so it made more sense to facilitate access to resources that already exist. This came to mind due to all the quality resources I've found over the years that could be given access to through a meta-collect; a collection of collections. Why make what's already in existence when just helping people find them will suffice. After all, that would have to be done whether the resources were made from scratch or not.

The tools, framework and much more have been theoretically designed, in general, but I don't have what it takes to test them, much less implement them right now. That's why I'm working on some other parts of the bigger project I've theoretically designed, such as community and helping people better understand what's needed for learning and problem solving. That's how the art club and book ideas started. With the possibility of helping people become better learners and problem solvers, comes the possibility of getting help to build the rest of the sub-projects.

My hope is that through the book project I'll be starting with, and the art club project built on top of the book project, people will start to gather around this umbrella project and help. As the one person behind the Legacy Of Lore project, I can do a little at a time. As a single person leading a dedicated group, backed by many others, I can guide the building and maintenance of the Legacy Of Lore efforts.

Now, for those who have noticed that Legacy Of Lore and Laugh Out Loud can both be shortened to LOL, yes I did that on purpose. Laughter is good for the body, heart and mind. I consider this part of the legacy we have been given. There are so many healthy ways to relax, have fun and enjoy life. If we learn how to appreciate the little things in life, recognize the opportunity for good in every situation and stop getting so hung up on our pride and selfishness, we will then have tools to live our lives despite what pain may come our way. There is much to learn, and so much good that can be done with that learning. That's what this project is about, learning and doing good with what we learn.