Three years later, I achieved what I wanted academically. I will share with you my personal strategy on keeping motivated and ways to build a base of confidence to pull you through your adult learning life. As with any long-term project, you really need to start by building a solid motivational storehouse as a foundation to keep you anchored along the way.

These are my five key sources of motivational energy.

Focus on Wanting Change

Seriously ask yourself this, “Why do I need a higher education? Why would I want to be in Statistics class at 7pm on a Friday evening?” I imagined some would answer, ‘”My boss wants me to study so that I can get a promotion”, others: “I need a paper qualification so that I will not lose out in the future.” Without a doubt, for most people, higher education equates to a better salary ie. more money. It actually does, but money isn’t a real motivation.

What you should be telling yourself: I am ready for Change and I want it.

Simply, if you are NOT ready for change and a disruption to your regular lifestyle, then the road ahead will be fraught with worries and resentment. I’m saying this with the benefit of hindsight, of course. But after three years of examinations and numerous study project cycles, what really kept me going was the fact that I had changed dramatically with every turn. My thinking had evolved, my comprehension of the external world had grown and I learned how to deal better with difficult people. The more knowledge and learning I gathered, the more change took place within and around me. So it is really a win-win situation.

Make sure you want change bad enough and, in time, the transformational power of new knowledge and learning will make you yearn for more change. But of course, this will only work if you put in your share of effort in deep studying.

Set Clear and Specific Targets

Start thinking of clear and specific targets that you want to achieve while in school. These could be statements such as, “I want to achieve perfect As at the end of the program” or “I want to graduated with a First Class Honours with Distinction.” In fact, those were the exact lofty objectives that I had set for myself.

Simply saying “I want to graduate with a degree” or “I hope to pass all my modules” is doing yourself a huge disfavour. If you are a football club declaring a fight for an end-season mid-table league position, one of two things will happen: you’ll never fight for top honours and, if you do, very likely you’ll attribute it to ‘just lucky’. But get this, it wasn’t Lady Luck kicking a ball on the field, it was really YOU.

Without specific achievement targets (ideally difficult and lofty in nature), you will continue to under-perform and never quite realise your true potential. You are also likely to miss out on top grades you are actually capable of. I can assure you now, the difference in rewards between first and second place is remarkably vast.

You may ask, what if I fail after setting such high targets? As long as you know you really tried hard enough, this disappointment will not last. Lofty targets are meant to be so that you can truly achieve the next level of high achievement. Just beneath the clouds is still a lot of sky.

In practice, I did not achieve perfect As but I still graduated top of my diploma cohort. Also, I did not attain a Distinction degree but I ‘settled’ for a First Class Honours instead. Just beneath the clouds is really not that bad after all.

Have a Future Master Plan

For a majority of adult learners, their main motivation once they started on an adult learning program are the ‘visible’’ end-objectives: ‘Let’s nail the final exams and graduate!’ or ‘Finish this and I’ll get my life back’. Fair enough. An adult learning program is tough, with many sacrifices along the way.

However, I had a different approach. I simply looked beyond the final exam and the last project submission. I asked the questions, ‘What am I going to do with a degree?’, ‘What shall I study next?’, ‘What kind of career path should I have?’, ‘How can my family benefit from this?’ etc. Not just the tasks at hand, but I wanted to take care of ‘What’s Next’ as well.

My strategy: I nurtured a Future Master Plan as a source of motivation.

Two weeks into my 18-month diploma class, I was already making plans on enrolling in a degree program. Weeks into the degree program, I was already devising my career path and making concrete choices. What kept me super motivated at every stage was a concern that went like this:

‘’If I don’t do well enough this time, I won’t be able to (fill in the blanks) next time”‘. (Example, ‘getting considered for a quality MBA program’ or ‘land a job I really want’)

I am pretty sure each of you will complete your programs eventually but, with a little re-engineering of thinking, you’ll be better focused at motivating yourself for the present moment AND making sure you start with a bang on whatever you are up to next.

Tell Everyone Your Plans

Formal adult learning is a tough road to be on. Most of you are likely to be juggling career and family commitments. At some point when it gets really tough and a little weary, you will feel like the loneliest person in the world.

My advice is, tell everyone about your plans. Share more with people who really care about you.

Everyone being your family, colleagues and friends. Share with them about your plans for school and beyond. Not constantly (you don’t want to irritate them), but at least once. (After the initial sharing, they will likely to be the one asking you about school.)

Two reasons why you should do this: 1. When people you care about check in to ask about your studies occasionally, that should, at the very least, spur you on and keep you on track. This was very true for my former bosses at Oracle. I told them once about school and they continued to ask and remained interested in my progress.

2. At some point (especially near the end), people who really care about you will be your only pillars of support. They are your spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends and your parents.

Your objective is to have them believe in you and be part of your journey. By being frank about school and the future you are working towards, they will better understand what you are going through and ‘see the bigger picture’. This will really help, especially if you are going to be constantly missing at family gatherings or social meet ups with friends.

Create Benchmarks and Healthy Competition

In order to do well at anything or even improve on something that is already good, you will need to set quality benchmarks. Find the person in class who is really rocking with great grades and set yourself against this person’s standards. Motivate yourself to ensure your performance is either comparable or better than the person’s at every stage (eg. test, semester, project, etc). This alone should keep you awake at night.

Another good way to create motivation is to have a healthy competition among your peers. You can do this within your working or project groups. One real benefit of this is, your group will naturally perform above average because everyone is motivated to ‘beat’ each other. The converse is true as well, find yourself in an unmotivated and ‘run-of-the-mill’ group and your collective results will turn out mediocre.

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And that is my motivational secret. Tell me what you think, will these work for you? Or why not share your own motivational strategy that others and I should know about.

Forget ‘success’? ‘Contribution’? Like Mother Theresa?

Then it all made sense.

All our lives we’ve been told to be ‘successful’ and ‘over-achieve’ (a default if you’re a Singaporean). Our success is measured on the kind of education that we receive, the grades we hauled home, the jobs we land, the lifestyle we adopt and the property we live in. A very singular pursuit indeed.

Nothing wrong with personal wealth and accolades (perhaps some of you contributed a few million dollars to your company’s bottom line that enriched the lives of your colleagues.) But can we do more? Can we make a daily difference to the lives of others? Can we help others achieve and replicate our own success stories? Can we contribute meaningfully?

Success Through Contribution

No debate, we are part of a society, surrounded by family, friends, colleagues and even strangers. Hence, I truly believe it is only natural that our success is measured through our contribution to others around us. Remember that war movies’ refrain? ‘Leave no one behind’. Drucker is right, only if we ‘contribute first, achieve later’, will we be able to collectively move forward.

As a society, as an organisation (commercial or otherwise), as a generation. And what’s a great way to contribute? Sharing. Believe and do it often enough, it becomes natural (just like on Facebook).

The good news: the tools of contribution and sharing are already in place and in our hands.

Here’s a little of my story.

How I Caught Up With the World

I had dropped out of film school at 19, spent the next 8 years on concert stages and in theatre halls, ran a pioneering music label startup for a while and finally landed my first corporate job at Oracle at 28. I was off the starting line but it felt like I was really late to the corporate game. I needed to grow fast!

To make things even more interesting, I started school again. I believed I needed a formal education in corporate business and marketing. Again, I felt late to the game (although running a startup did impart some key learning, for instance, listening to customers is really important.)  I needed knowledge fast!

No surprises here. I looked around the internet (circa 2007) and instantly felt ‘a new social movement’ brewing. The music label business I had ran with the wife was built on the back of the internet and Myspace (I have been online since mIRC (1996)), but this was different. Blogs were really coming into prominence, social networks were coming into life and suddenly, opinionated content are being shared everywhere! It felt like everyone decided to come onto the internet and ‘do something’ (*my theory on this digital tsunami? Generation Y’s coming of age + Generation X’s late adopters finally discovered the lure of social networks)

So with all these contributing of knowledge and sharing of content, there can only be one obvious outcome:

Learning on The Social Internet

If I needed an honest and reliable opinion on a marketing topic, I didn’t need to look further than the blogs of industry experts, even the self-proclaimed ones. The thinkers among them usually have links to academic research I could follow through and the active ones are typically discussing relevant and current issues of the day. Beats learning about business and marketing from an academic textbook (typically a year behind reality).

Need to get a grasp of the news-worthy developments every morning? I discovered my own Twitter community and has since been served with news and fresh knowledge daily by others who share the same passion or industrial affiliation.

Want to know what others are reading and find useful for learning? Try social bookmark service, Delicious.

Need answers to difficult questions on business, technology or any knowledge area you fancy? Ask on LinkedIn Answers. Someone somewhere will be happy to help you out.

Want ‘free’ carefully-researched academic papers or presentations? Try Slideshare or Scribd.

As long as we keep sharing openly and meaningfully on the social internet as I have discussed, I am certain we are all contributing to others around us, enriching their lives and collectively move forward.

Social Sharing is Your Contribution to The Lives of Others

Let’s get personal. Recently, I completed and earned my first degree, a First Class Hons in Marketing Management, at the ripe old age of 31. For a teenage dropout, I suppose that’s a big accomplishment. I am sharing this with you because, apart from my family and my circle of friends, you have contributed immensely to my learning experience and my achievements.

I can only thank the many people (some are friends, most are strangers) who blogged on topics that enriched my learning, posted academic papers on Slideshare or Scribd, shared links to rich content on Twitter, engaged in tweet conversations with me, and gave encouragement and support on Facebook and through this blog.

Since this is my professional and personal blog, I hope you will allow me to archive some highlights of my academic adventure. I hope this will also be a showcase of that experience, to show that my methodology in learning and knowledge gathering through social means can be easily replicated and, hopefully, will contribute to someone else’s achievements.

Berita Harian, Tuesday, 29 June 2010 : National Malay-language daily newspaper, front page header and page 3 article (click to enlarge) MyPaper, Tuesday, May 18, 2010 : Nationally-distributed daily newspaper Click to download and view quote A central theme in my convocation speech (pg. 5) touched on the virtues of open social sharing, especially in knowledge and collaborative work. Convocation Speech, Northumbria University, 22 May 2010

So how about sharing your experience on social sharing? I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.

#BarCampSG4

Last Saturday (21 Nov), I attended BarCamp Singapore 4, organised by Preetam Rai and Kelvin Quee. Sponsored and held at IDA Singapore (also co-sponsored by Yahoo! SG and Hackerspace.SG), BarCamp was open to all. This being my first attendance at a BarCamp, I was not too sure what to expect although I had some ideas, having read some accounts on previous BarCamps.

What is BarCamp? Read on Wikipedia.

BarCamp is Crowdsourcing

Just like the concept of crowdsourcing in social media, most of the topics of the day were suggested by the attendees (pasted on IDA’s wall as shown on photo to the right), then voted by attendees and eventually presented by the attendees. Anyone was free to present on any topic they fancied (technology, social media, creative arts, culture and social sciences) and there were really off-the-wall submissions including ‘How to Present Difficult Concepts to Lesser Beings’ by Coleman Yee (which I thoroughly enjoyed) and one that I rued I missed: Adrianna Tan’s ‘How to Hack Your Own Travel Channel Life’ (thank God for Slideshare). All in all, I enjoyed the sessions I attended, the learning and the impromptu discussions.

Freedom to Choose and Listen

The magic of BarCamp. As the presentations are run simultaneously in a number of rooms over different timeslots (typically 1/2 hour each), you are free to choose which room to attend, what to listen to and whose ideas to ponder upon. You are also free to leave any room at any time (to join another if you wish) and the floor is always open for discussion or opinions.

And if you’re bored, there are always folks outside, milling about or deep in discussions with others and happy to let you chip in your own thoughts and views. The open atmosphere was indeed infectious.

BarCamp and Relevancy: Deconstructed

I love the relevancy of the occasion, the infusion and exchange of ideas, the challenging of ideas, the worldly learning and the congregation of thinking minds. I met and spoke to technologists of every kind (web, soft/hardware hackers, iPhone fanatics, etc), a Web Shaman, a Second Life machinima producer from Perth, two admirable blokes who flew in from Bangkok specifically for BarCamp, an inspiring and relevant educator and her shy students, two very kind souls running gladlyCast, a free(!) SG SMS-to-Twitter service, a recent Harvard grad passionately doing social good through the web (GIVE.sg), budding entrepreneurs, a managing director of a UK-based tailoring business with a factory in Johore Bahru (talk about a global operation!) and many more thinking personalities. This mish-mashed environment of inspiring people and of current and relevant learning made BarCampSG4 a truly memorable event for me.

Oh I forgot, and there’s Preetam, the dude with boundless energy and a noble heart. The heart of BarCampSG. (PS. May the iPhone find its deserving nemesis :)

#NCT

To be frank, this post is inspired by Alec Goh’s own post ‘The Point of It All’. Alec is a student of Singapore Polytechnic’s Media and Communication course. One of its lecturers, Ping, is the aforementioned ‘inspiring and relevant educator’. But why? Read this other post from Alec: ‘Twitter became my School Curriculum’. To me, that is the most relevant education in new media you can get these days. I doubt any school textbook in the market today has anything on Twitter and for any media educators to wait for a textbook revision a few quarters down the road, the opportunity to be ‘currently relevant’ to their students’ learning will be lost. Honestly, Ping, you gave your students a terrific headstart and a definite edge in their learning. It is true that Twitter has been derided by many folks as ‘frivolous’ but it does have beneficial real life applications that I believe in, such as real time learning.

But Alec said it best: ‘Twitter is knowledge’. Real time knowledge.

What is #NCT?

This is what I had gathered. NCT is ‘New Communication Technologies’, a module taught by Ping. I chanced upon the #nct Twitter hashtag one day and it has been on permanent search in my Seesmic Twitter app. I have learnt a hell lot from following #nct. I have enjoyed the conversations that had gone in there and learning from the NCT students. Young students have a great way of sharing knowledge with each other, they break it down to easily consumed bite-sized morsels. Coupled with their eagerness to share their newfound knowledge, this can get pretty enlightening. (Trust me, I went through a few years of adult learning. Working adults like to hog information and knowledge to themselves, in a misguided belief that this is ‘competitive advantage’. Bollocks, I say.)

Did I tell you I know what Continuous Partial Attention is? I learnt that from an #nct blog post: Maisara’s ‘Pay Attention to Attention’. Point proven.

For all jaded media professionals out there, don’t worry if you have missed the boat of relevant learning, it is never too late. #nct will help you understand what is relevant today.

Meeting the #nct

BarCamp was a great opportunity to meet with the young folks from NCT. Although I did not have the opportunity to chat with all of them, I was fortunate to get acquainted in the first person with the likes of Hairunizam, Eve, Khan and one other guy whose name I’ve missed (enlighten me please?) Funnily, these folks do not know who Victor Khoo and Charlee are. That made me feel a little ancient. But what they lack in nostalgia, they sure made it up with youthful enthusiasm. I am glad they enjoyed BarCamp, everyone quipped that the learning through the presentations made it all so worthwhile. I love the open-mindedness.

By the way, I would like to congratulate the Year 3s on having completed their course. I wish you guys fun and relevant learning in your internships, it will be a blast!

The Point of It All

Let’s bring it back a little. I would like to ask you again to read Alec’s ‘The Point of It All’. Alec, for someone so young, captured it concisely. The world is changing around us. Media is changing, the way we communicate in person and online is changing. When the generation that includes Alec, Hairunizam, Eve and Khan comes through and rules the world, are we old fogeys ready to embrace and be sufficiently equipped to partake in the new world order?

At BarCamp, I told the group that is Hairunizam, Even, Khan and the unknown guy, that they are in a very promising generation. Social media and openess is changing business and society and they are right smack in the middle of this revolution, learning about it and pondering about it. They will be the pioneering youths that their future employers look to to change how business is done and how messages get told. And seriously, I want them to succeed.

Because the old fogeys need to wake up. The new kids are coming.

End Words

Staying relevant has never been this important in the history of the world, undoubtedly.

I leave you now with words from Alec that inspired me and I hope others around me.

‘(Following Ms Kwa’s words) I hope and want to be brave enough to be the first batch to venture the new frontiers despite all the threats and uncertainties. The world changes every second and so would I adapt. Speed, courage, awareness, creativity,  openness and social-networking are the notes taken.

The point of it all?

Anticipate change and adapt new relevancy constantly.

- Alec Goh ‘The Point of It All’

Photo Credits

• BarCampSG4 photos courtesy of Meng Wong
• NCT photo courtesy of Alec Goh

• I am exceedingly multi-modal, which means I use a complete combination of  visual, aural, kinesthetic and read/write to learn.
• My dominant personality functions are: Extraverted Intuitive and Introverted Feeling. Not bad for this geezer.
• In Belbin’s Team Role Test: I’m a Plant, Specialist and Evaluator Monitor.

Of course, there are dark sides to all of this. You can find out below. Bottomline, with all these tests, I am much better able to judge myself and certainly capitalise on all my strengths and work on those niggling deficiencies. It will help in the long run.

You may also wish to experience the slide set below in its ‘glory’ via .pps.