Another year begins.

A fresh start.

A new page.

I’ve always liked this time of year because it feels like so much is possible. Looking back and last year is done and like the years before we can’t change what has happened. The past is in the past as they say. But this year is just getting started and I’m feeling optimistic about the coming year because to a large extent what I want the year to be is up to me.

Last year was a quiet one for me on the blogging and sharing front (I’m feeling rusty writing this post). This was partly due to having a young child which brings about a shift in priorities in a good way. The need for sleep becomes way more important. Despite this, I tried to stay in touch with the happenings in the learning field when I could by reading articles/posts and listening to podcasts here and there. There still seems to be a lot of people talking about what L&D needs to do, with far fewer sharing the how.

My other reason for less blogging was that I felt flat, lacked motivation and that I’d lost my purpose for writing. I was tired of the constant content focus in learning – the course as the default. I was tired of creating eLearning content dumps where more meaningless interactivity was the goal. Unfortunately, the content design approach is still widespread and as a result we’ve conditioned stakeholders, SME’s, clients and decision makers that this is what we do. The people that suffer are those taking the modules.

I’ve said before that our role is to support the people in our organisations who do the actual work. Working in learning presents an opportunity to get closer to our organisations and find out what people do, how they do it and what their challenges are. Then we’ll be better placed to offer solutions and experiences that have real impact rather than focusing on the number of objects we produce.

Nothing will change if we keep doing the same thing. So that’s my goal for this year, to do things differently, evolve my practice and to reflect and share via this blog.

Happy 2019!