Monthly Archives: July 2019

Online Courses – Start Learning Today!

Courses, Learning, , ,

2024 & Beyond – Learning is Key to Success

Are you curious to learn more and expand your knowledge?  In fact, curiosity and lifelong learning is listed as a top skill for the future of work by the World Economic Forum.  Curiosity drives creativity and innovation and enhances leadership skills – also essential skills for the future of work.  Clicking through the links below will get you any of my online courses at the best price possible for each of the courses.

Life long learning is a key skill/attribute that we all need to survive and thrive in today’s world of rapid change.  Change brought about as result of disruptive technologies as well as other forces such as climate change, the global pandemic and conflict.  Online courses for life long learning give us a wonderful opportunity to expand our knowledge, develop new skills and explore new topics.   Set time aside each day for learning and over time this effort will transform your life is so many positive ways. 

Click the course links below to see a free preview video and view the course content.  If you do decide to take a course there is a 30 day money back guarantee for each course.  You will also have lifetime access to the course including access to all future course updates! 

“A Year From Now You Will Wish You Had Started Today” ~Karen Lamb

Udemy Courses for Life Long Learning:

1. Curiosity Unleashed: Master Lifelong Learning

Curiosity is actually a superpower we are all born with – it got us crawling and walking and running!  The average 4 year old is said to ask around 300 questions every day.  Curiosity is a superpower that we can all rekindle and develop further. Curiosity drives lifelong learning, creative thinking and innovation.   It helped us collectively to learn how to fly and took us to the moon.  However curiosity is a skill that has to be practiced in order to build and strengthen.  This course will show you how to exercise your curiosity muscle.

Enroll Now: Udemy

2. Design Your Life with Futures Thinking

This is an exciting and life changing new course launched in June 2023.  The course will help you to design your life using futures thinking methods.  The first part of the course explains the principles of futures thinking.  We then look at your life past to present using a series of tools and exercises.  This is where you are now.  We will then look ahead to 6 potential futures using scenarios.  These scenarios are your more of the same future, a positive future, negative future, wild card future (positive and negative) and an aspirational future.  Next the course will help you decide the future you would actually like to build – your preferred future.  By the end of the course and exercises you will have developed a 10 year strategic plan to build your preferred future.  

Enroll Now: Udemy

3. Future Skills 2030: Prepare for the 4th Industrial Revolution

Future skills courses life long learning

Understand the technological changes happening all around you today and the skills needed to future-proof your career.  Changes are happening faster than ever now that we have the global COVID-19 pandemic.  Learn about these changes and how to remain relevant, reskill and upskill in this course.   This course is curated as part of the Udemy for Business Programme.  Udemy for Business includes top courses from Udemy and is used by 8,600 companies around the world, including top companies like Apple and Netflix, to upskill their workers.  As of May 2024, 12,575 students from 132 countries have enrolled on this course.  I am constantly working to update and improve the course to keep pace with developments in technology.  Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

4. An Introduction to Futures Thinking

Gain valuable perspectives into thinking about the future in a fast changing world. The major changes of our time are familiar to everyone: climate change, biodiversity loss, rapidly advancing technology, mass migrations, ageing populations, the worst war in Europe since 1945, a food and energy crisis and challenges associated with democracy. It’s no wonder that many people feel like their faith in the future is being tested!  Being a futurist is not for a select few – it’s for all of us! These skills of being a futurist are teachable and learnable. The more you think like a futurist, the better you can create the future you want.  While there will always be great uncertainty about the future, there is no uncertainty that it will unfold, so who is responsible for the future? I think we all are. So let’s get started. We all have a stake and interest in the future!

Enroll Now: Udemy

5. Reinvent yourself: 30 Experiments in Personal Change 2023

Reinvent yourself courses life long learning

This course contains thirty personal growth experiments to reinvent yourself and build the life you want.  The course takes an action research approach to personal development.  Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

6. Goal Setting 2023: Set & Achieve Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals

Goal setting 101

If you are not clear on what you want from life then this will seriously hamper your ability to be successful.  Learn how to identify your life’s purpose and vision, then how to set and achieve your own big hairy audacious long term goals.  Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

7. Beekeeping: A Basic Introduction for Aspiring Beekeepers

Basic Beekeeping Course

Beekeeping is a wonderful life changing hobby.  I have been a beekeeper since I was 10 year old!  This course is designed specifically for the non-beekeeper. Explore beekeeping as a new, exciting and rewarding lifetime activity.  Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

8. Background to Beekeeping: Start with Why!

Background to Beekeeping

This course take a deeper look at beekeeping and in  particular the many benefits of bees and beekeeping.  Understanding the ‘Why’ of doing something is essential to success.  Once you understand the ‘Why’ of beekeeping you can then delve into the ‘How’ of beekeeping in course number 6 below.  Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

9. Beginning in Beekeeping: Start Your Very First Beehive!

This is my latest and most comprehensive beekeeping course launched in 2021 and deals with the ‘How’ of beekeeping. This course is a Bestseller on Udemy. The course gives you step by step instruction on getting started in beekeeping for beginners. There are over 12 hours of video instruction. Please click the link for more details.

Enroll Now: Udemy

10. How to make and sell beeswax candles

In this course I show you how to use this amazing natural product, beeswax to make your own candles. You can use these candles in your own home or give them as gifts to friends and family. There is also the potential to start your own small business making and selling beautiful beeswax candles. You don’t need to be a beekeeper – you just need a source of beeswax. The course will also direct you to sources of beeswax. Everyone needs a side hustle these days and beeswax candles could be yours! If you enjoy working with your hands you will enjoy making candles. The course is now live (launched June 16th 2022).

Enroll Now: Udemy

11. Making products from beeswax

In this course you will learn how to render pure beeswax from combs.  In addition, you will learn how to make 10 value added products from beeswax.  These products can be for home use of for sale. You don’t need to be a beekeeper to take this course – anyone with an interest in using beeswax can take the course.  In section 1 we will tell you where you can source pure beeswax. You will get huge satisfaction from making and using the beautiful beeswax products featured in this course.

Enroll Now: Udemy

I look forward to seeing you on any of the above courses! Remember lifelong learning is a key skill for the modern world. We all need to keep learning and growing or become obsolete. Make 2024 a year of learning!
Thanks very much for your support and see you in class.

Best wishes,
Tom Carroll, PhD

“The future depends on what you do today.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Find Your Life’s Purpose in 10 Minutes!

Life's purpose, Purpose, Reflection, Vision boards
Life's purposeWhat is your life’s purpose?

This is a big question and a question most of us ask ourselves from time to time.  I think it is a question that we all need to reflect on frequently.  The alternative to not asking the question is to go through life on auto-pilot and not live up to our true potential.  Both ourselves and the world will be worse off as a result.  I have had the diagram in figure 1 (below) on my office wall for the past two years.  Every so often I would look at the diagram and contemplate my life’s purpose.   The reflection on the questions has helped me to get a clearer vision of my own life’s purpose.  I believe that even if you only spend 10 minutes now reflecting on figure 1 and the three questions, they will bring you closer to being clear on your life’s purpose.

The Hedgehog Concept

The questions in figure 1 are based on a business book called Good to Great by Jim Collins.  The book describes the results of research in the US into companies and what makes a company become great and stay great.  The research showed that one of the factors which helped good companies become great companies was when they found what Collin’s calls their ‘Hedgehog’.   The Hedgehog Concept was originally based on an ancient Greek parable which stated, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”  Jim Collins, used this concept as a metaphor for business in his influential book.  The three components of the hedgehog concept are:

  1. What is the company passionate about
  2. What can the company be the best in the world at and
  3. What drives the economic engine (makes money).
Personal Hedgehog

I think Jim Collin’s hedgehog concept/questions used for companies can also be adapted to people.   If you take  questions and adapt them to people they become the 3 questions below:

1. What do you love to do?

What are the things that you enjoy doing?  Passion is a huge motivator. If you don’t have a passion for something then how can you possibly be great at it?  Passion will drive you to work harder and stay at something longer that others.  This reminds me of a quote from the great Physicist Albert Einstein:

Life's purpose

2. What are your really good at?

What can you be the best at, not what you want to be the best at.  I bet you know some of the things that you are really good at through experience.  If you want more ideas on what you can be the best at I suggest you take the Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test if you have not done so already.   If you Google this test then you will find the test online for free.  The MBTI test will give you very good ideas about the types of things you are naturally great at – the things that will come natural to you.

3. What pays well?

I think question number 3 is very important because if what you are naturally great at and love to do doesn’t pay well then you are not going to be very happy being broke!  You will have a great hobby!  You need to hit the target in figure 1 and get something that you love to do, you are naturally great at and also pays well.  That is a recipe for finding your life’s purpose and contentment in your life.

Life's Purpose

Figure 1:  Three key questions to ask yourself

Can I suggest that you print out the above diagram and reflect on it often.  I suspect that you already have ideas on something that hits the above target for you (the confluence between the 3 circles in figure 1).  If not don’t worry – allow your sub-conscious mind to reflect on the diagram in the coming weeks and months.

Example:  My Own Hedgehog

To help clarify the hedgehog concept I have shared my own example below.  I answer the three questions for myself and then I state what my own hedgehog is for my life.

1. What do I love to do?

  • Help others
  • Teach
  • Share knowledge and ideas

2.  What am I really good at doing?

  • Researching
  • Learning
  • Adapting, changing and transforming myself
  • My MBTI is:  INFJ – Introverted, Intuition, Feeling, and Judging.  Favourite career choices for INFJs point towards meaningful, humanity-based causes that contribute to others’ well-being.  INFJ personality types are good at helping others such as counselors, teachers and clergy.

3.  What pays well?

  • New technology
  • Solving problems
  • People needing to learn new skills, knowledge and ideas in a fast changing world

4.  My Hedgehog:

To research, create and market great information products such as books and online courses on personal development and technology.  Information products which will satisfy the needs of  my clients and significantly enhance their lives.  In return my clients will be willing to pay me well for my work.

I invite you to share your feedback/ideas on your own hedgehog concept in the comments under this blog post.  Sharing your own examples can help and inspire others.  Thank you.

Best wishes,

Tom

PS. If you are looking for new ideas or information to take your life in a new and exciting direction then have a look at my online course ‘Reinvent yourself: 30 Experiments in Personal Change‘.  Learn how to visualise your ideal future and set great goals.  Click the link below to get the course for the discounted price of €12.99.  You can take the free course preview.  The course comes with a 100% money back guarantee if you are not satisfied.  Please click here for further course details.