The more expertise you have in a subject, the more likely you are to try and ride out a drastic change caused by new contrary / negative information.
It's a good thing to trust your experience and wisdom. It makes you more confident and can greatly improve your competence.
The trouble is, it can also make you very attached to the way you've been doing things.
And when the world changes as fast as it does today, this can lead to problems.
I'm certainly guilty of relying more on my experience than listening to the "signs" around me.
When the pandemic hit, I was reluctant to transit my teaching online because:
a) I had spent months prior to the pandemic, producing my programmes.
These were science-based and centered around a lot of guided experiments and activities.
Not that much "lecturing", as they were aimed at students who were less inclined to sit and listen. So, how was I going to let them do the activities while I'm not present to moderate the flow and give guidance?
If this was a "soft skills" programme, I can modify it easily. But a science-based one?
That would take a lot of work and be nowhere nearly as effective or engaging.
My education partners agreed with my assessment.
b) I had spent 15 years as a trainer, all of it face-to-face.
To have to start messing around with lights and cameras and being unable to read my learners' body language properly (because webcams were, and still are, terrible at their job) seemed so much trouble.
I had spent so much time honing my live presentations that I never spent any time learning to do it virtually, and the notion of doing it scared me.
If I'm honest, point (b) was more of a barrier to me than (a). I could choose to invest another few months changing the curriculum (and I kind of did eventually), but the fear of change was so strong, it paralysed my thinking and, consequently, my actions.
And, as the pandemic raged on, the income loss added to the paralysis. Not just for me, but for a lot of trainers I knew and for a lot of education companies as well.
It's a lesson well-learned.
Trying to get to a point where I'm comfortable running online programmes took me time (partly due also to the fact that I'm a bit of laggard when it comes to technology - certainly not an early adopter).
It also took some useful gadgets and apps, which I'll be glad to share information on in a future post.
I'm still nowhere as proficient in online teaching as I am face-to-face, but I'm trying to get there.
I Had Hangups About Posting Online and Making Myself Visible. I Got Over Some of Them by Quitting Social Media.
"But I don't want to Hao Lian!*"
When I first learned about "building a personal brand" and "being visible online", this was the first thought that popped in my head.
*hao4 lian4 is a Teochew term used to describe a braggart, show-off, or someone who is unashamedly self-indulgent.
Growing up in an East Asian-influenced culture, Confucian ideals were infused into my behavioural expectations.
A key ideal in Confucian thought is that of humility. Clambering for attention and status are seen as dishonourable and crass behaviours. Above all, it is a cause for loss of ‘face’.
You can imagine how this would lead to me thinking that putting myself out there is no different from blowing my own trumpet, singing my own praises, proclaiming myself from the rooftops… you get the idea.
It wasn’t a desirable thing to do.
And when I examined a little more, I realised that I viewed people who were constantly clamouring for visibility in a low light.
I didn’t want to be like them.
Hence the resistance to making myself more visible online.
Now, obviously, the fact that you’re reading this suggests that something must have changed.
And something did.
I stopped all online activity for over a year.
Truth be told, I didn’t miss it.
Instead of agonising over what to post or what to show, I spent more time listening and reading.
Serendipitously, some of them discussed this topic, about being visible.
And I slowly started to see it in a different light.
What I used to think was “shameless self-promotion” and “narcissism” doesn’t need to be, as long as the intention is purposeful and useful to others.
Sure, there’ll always be people who take it wrongly, but that’s true of anything - whether expressed online or offline.
I started to see that letting others know what I know and offering information is helpful to them. It’s not about promoting myself and my views (though there is an unavoidable element of this in all public expression), it’s about sharing what I have.
Most people are clever enough to figure out the motivations behind your post, and if you share with good intentions, it’s better (and easier) to let them decide for themselves whether they want to read it.
So here we are.
It’s your decision.
We Hate Pain and Change. But A Baby Step At a Time is Better Than Staying Stagnant.
It doesn't take a crisis for people to change the ways they do things.
Yet, because most people are comfort-seeking and pain-avoiding, we tend to prefer staying where we are.
Unfortunately, that also means that when a crisis does hit, things go south really quickly.
But this isn't a doom and gloom post.
You don't have to change what you do.
You just have to change the way you do it.
And it doesn't have to be a huge change. A little step at a time.
In some ways, the target of this post is me. I'm far from an early adopter, and a frequent friend of analysis paralysis.
Even so, I've slowly and steadily begun my journey into digitilisation and accumulating assets online - for my workshops, thought processing, and outreach efforts.
And look, here's one of them. Thank you for being part of it.