“You must learn a new way to think before you can learn a new way to be.”
Marianne Williamson
Whatever holiday you celebrate, wherever you are in the world I hope this finds you safe and sound with people you care about. Merry everything and happy forever!
Thanks for reading!
What I’m Listening to: I discovered Merry Mixmas over a decade ago and it remains one of my favorite parts of the Christmas holiday. These are super fun mashups and remixes of traditional holiday songs. I love them and I hope you do too! (Let me know what you think?)
Last week’s most clicked item:
77 PowerPoint Christmas cards to download and share!
Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Books of 2020

Check out this great collection of behavioral science books from this year, as well as some ones to watch for coming in 2021. Have you read any of these that I should read?
https://behavioralscientist.org/behavioral-science-notable-books-of-2020/
3 Questions Answered By An L&D Giant: Julie Dirksen
The third in this awesome series from Mirjam Neelen and Guy Wallace is with the lovely and smart Julie Dirksen, author of “Design for How People Learn”. Among her recommendations are that we should look to do more with spaced learning and pull in things from behavior science. Personally, I’m excited to learn more about the “Behavior Change Wheel” she mentioned.
Working Out Loud Community

John Stepper is building a new WOL Community he will be making available the free online Circle workbooks in six languages as well as guided Circle experiences, including WOL for Teams and WOL Mindfulness. There will also be meetups and groups with shared interests, like experimenting with WOL in education and healthcare or spreading WOL in companies. Visit http://community.workingoutloud.com/ to join.
https://workingoutloud.com/blog/an-invitation-for-early-adopters
Can Social Networks Help Us Be More Creative?
While I realize the presence of some of the ill-effects, social networks can have some benefits. For example, researchers in this paper say that they can steer us to people with ideas and interests different from our own and encourage new ways of thinking and different perspectives.
https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/can-social-networks-help-us-be-more-creative-463492/
Learner Intelligence Report

This report from Emerald Works is an interesting look at things like how to close the gap between strategy and practice, how L&D leaders can successfully change their approach and allow their employees to lead the way, and how L&D approaches have been changing during COVID-19.
A few other things just because I can.
Podcasts
Here are three podcast episodes from this week that are worth a listen:
- Stories of remote teams doing great things on the Collaboration Superpowers podcast
- Designing webinars with Kassy Laborie on the Train Like You Listen podcast
- What are we talking about? is a look back on one of my favorite L&D podcasts, The Learning Hack podcast that summarizes the main themes that surfaced over the course of the past year.
Tools & Resources
For more tools & resources like these check out my Tech Toolbox posts where I post new tools to help you work smarter, not harder.
- Library Extension Instantly lookup books you find to see if they’re available at your local library
- This is Readable. Readable is an application that helps you read more of the web. It cleans the crap and gives you a clean, easy to read page.
- Zave.co Save your most commonly used websites for personal reference or share them with the world
- Free Illustrations XYZ Big collection of illustration kits & constructor tools
- Polls.io Quick & easy polls that are easy to share
Where You Can Find Me
December 18 – Learning Rebels Coffee Chat Noon Eastern
Interested in the things that didn’t make the cut here? Follow me on Twitter or connect with me on LinkedIn
If you’re looking for a helping hand or someone to speak at your event, let’s talk!
Speaking and Workshop Information Sheet.