Thursday, October 23, 2014

Stay connected outside of your work :-)

I forgot on this post to mention a great podcast and daily e-mail newsletter that I have found to be awesome.

The podcast is the TED Radio Hour.  It's actually an NPR weekly program that they also release in the podcast format.  Each week they bring together parts of TED talks, and interviews with the talkers, around a theme.  This week's episode was about millennials, and if you supervise or work with anyone (or you are) between 18-30 this is a great one to listen to.  Recent episodes on Creativity, Unstoppable Learning and Disruptive Leadership (which includes a talk/interview with Stanley McChrystal) are really great.

The daily newsletter I highly recommend is The Skimm. They "do the reading for you - across subject lines and party lines - and break it down with fresh editorial content." Those are their words, but I agree.  They cover 1-3 big topics of the day (Ebola, Syria, etc) then a couple quick takes on other topics and was great to read during the mooring Metro ride.  As far as I can tell there is no bias towards one end or the other of the political spectrum, and the ever-so-slightly snarky tone I find enjoyable. The Skimm gets high marks also because I haven't gotten any kind of spam or unwanted ads by subscribing.

One of the big reasons I recommend both is that neither have anything to do with the Air Force or the DoD.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in the day to day issues of the Air Force, which may or may not be a blip on the radar of the general public.  But there is SO MUCH OUT THERE labeled as news, and time is always short.  That's why I recommend these two ways to help keep your perspective in good shape :-)

1 comment:

  1. Great ideas, thank you, didn't know about either venue! I also use Google Alerts - put in a keyword of interest and it will send you an email with related news articles for the day (or week). Helps if you're doing research or just interested in something and don't have time for deep diving.

    ReplyDelete