Reading, Listening, Cross-fertilizing

When I first started this blog + podcast, I thought I was going to concentrate primarily on the podcast and the blog would just serve as a simple way to announce new podcasts. The podcast was a learning podcast, but the blog was not really a learning blog.

Recently I’ve started thinking that this way of doing things isn’t serving my readers. Some readers have told me that they don’t have time to listen to the podcast just yet for various reasons but will do so when they have some more time. Well, that time may never come and so they may not get the opportunity to hear the content.

So I started asking myself: instead of having to wait for a chunk of time to open up in their lives to listen to the podcast, why am I not providing them self-contained pastries of information right in a blog post? Why am I saving all the content for the podcast? Why don’t I start sharing the content in bite-sized blog posts as well? Wouldn’t it be valuable to read a few sentences or a few paragraphs during our busy day and enjoy a moment of reflection and learning? Wouldn’t that be worthwhile?

So I’ve decided to post more of the content inside the blog posts themselves so that the podcasts won’t be the only source for that information. Does that mean I’m going to repeat myself? You bet. Repetition is a key to learning. When was the last time you learned something by doing it just once?

Yes, the ideas I share with you in the blog posts will mirror the ideas I talk about on the podcasts and vice versa. But sometimes I may go into more detail in a blog post and sometimes I may do it in the podcast. My goal is to have the blog and the podcast reinforce and cross-fertilize each other. That way you get exposed multiple times to the same content and then you have a better chance of learning it: by reading it *and* listening to it.

Some people like to listen, so for them I have podcasts. Some people like to read blogs, so for them I’ll have the blog posts. Some like a book in their hand, so for them I’m working on a couple of books. Some people like to be taught in person, so for them I’m preparing some talks and workshops. This has all been a reminder to me that no matter how useful the content might be, it must be delivered to people in multiple ways so that they can take full advantage of it based on their moods and styles of learning.

But ultimately your learning will take place when you take these ideas and use them in your own life and adapt them to your own unique needs, far beyond anything I might have imagined about them initially. One of the greatest joys in my life is to help spark that process in you.

Are there other ways I can serve you better?

I’m all ears.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 12:32 am and is filed under Misc. Find similar posts by selecting any of the following tags: . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.