Perhaps the biggest difficulty of working at Hopkins is managing all of the different priorities that make demands on our time, attention, and emotional energy. We are stressed because it often seems as if we can’t give attention to all the things that have to be done. Deadlines have to be met; accounts need to be reconciled; we need to meet with the teams we manage; proposals have to be submitted – the list goes on. Of course, these things don’t even begin to include the demands in our personal lives: bills, day care, parent-teacher conferences, birthdays and special occasions, and all the important obligations that are both crucial and urgent.
That’s when we begin to make priorities. Just as we throw out that old sweater at the beginning of spring, we begin to discard items on our to-do lists. Sadly, often the first thing to go is learning. We simply don’t have time for that one-day class. We know that it’s going to be interesting, engaging, and possibly fun, but there are simply so many pressures, we can’t fit it all in.
When we talked about this problem among the Learning Solutions team, we had an idea. Supposing, in addition to the full-day and half-day courses, we create very short learning experiences for people who find that 24 hours in a day isn’t enough? Perhaps people could learn a tip, a trick, or a perspective in just five minutes.
That was why we started this blog. We’ve drawn from the curriculum that we offer, and we’ve created very short lessons that are designed to take you no more than five minutes to complete. We won’t test you or stress you. We simply try to provide you with useful information that might make the rest of your day more productive and engaging. We hope to enlighten you and occasionally make you smile!
We cover all the topics in our curriculum. One day, you might get a tip on how to use Microsoft Word more effectively. On another day, we might explain the difference between two commonly confused words. We sometimes give tips to help leaders become even more effective in getting work done and engaging their teams. The topics are varied, relevant, and usually actionable.
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