How can I develop a HyperThinking mindset?
Taking a variety of courses has always been a treat for me. An unexpected plus during COVID? Extra time in my schedule while sequestered at home. What better activity to pass the time than consuming more classes?
What started as a suggestion from my writing partner to help me re-engage with book arts, turned into many classes from Domestika. Think Master Class here in the US, but with an international audience and way cheaper. I explored their online catalog and signed up for some 30 classes.
know, I know. I haven’t taken all of them. I even gifted some to my daughters I was so excited about the range of possibilities:
How could I not sign up for a class with HyperThinking in the title? Philip Weiss, the CEO of ZD Consulting in Belgium, teaches “HyperThinking: Personal Online Branding.”
Philip explains “if you shift perception, you change behavior. If you change behavior, you change the world.” In his toolkit he walks through the elements of HyperThinking:
HyperShift: believing you can learn new things and change your perspective
HyperLearn: self-learning at your own pace and interests
HyperLink: mapping your networks
HyperAct: experimenting and learning from your failures
The image above illustrates my completed "Circle of Interests" worksheet from the class. Philip reinforced the importance of knowing what not to engage in within the public town square (or at extended family dinners).
All my life I’ve enjoyed learning new things, some only cursory, others more in-depth. Philip’s course focuses on our business lives. But there is such a squishy barrier between our personal and professional interests. I found going through the exercise helped organize my life, not only my business persona.
Booby Trap from Idea, circa 1965
Remember the game Booby Trap from the 1960s? Pressure holds the little wooden pegs tight and every time you remove one you try to pick one that doesn't cause the pins to shift. If they do, the pegs explode and you lose?
I’m an idea chaser. I’ve been searching for a container — something large enough to hold the complexity of my interests and my thought echoes. By identifying my interests in clusters, my internal Bobby Trap shifted, but nothing exploded. I'll admit, Interest #4 (justice, advocacy, racism, sexism, -isms) is political so I work at treading lightly in my public exposure.
How do you think about the areas of your life when engaging in the public square? And how do you organize your life?
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