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How to Manage Project Overload

Background

The busy season has started because of year-end. Unfortunately, we have had difficulty partially finding additional accounting staff because the position requires Japanese language skills. As the hiring manager, I do not think Japanese language skill is necessary. After all, we operate in the United States.

One of my biggest challenges was a global kaizen project presentation, which I could not be delegated to anyone. Unfortunately, this presentation is being held in the middle of my busiest season – we are in the middle of preparing three different audits, budgeting, and preparation for the third quarter consolidation report. Finally, I am still overseeing a few other continuous improvement projects.

According to my network, this is not uncommon for small or mid-size companies since it is getting harder to get qualified accountants in this area. Labor shortages in specific fields are getting worse. What I can say is this. I am confident that I am not the only busy person. This is my first time in this complicated situation, but it will not be the last. Today, I want to write about how I manage my tasks when under challenging situations.

My biggest suggestion is not to wait until the last minute. Instead, you need to start the process as soon as possible. 

List all the tasks you need to complete

First, I usually list all outstanding projects I need to complete. I do not write down little tasks required for each project, but I write down the project name. I organize all my projects and tasks digitally. Still, I write down the list on a blank letter-size paper in landscape orientation to visualize the bigger picture of the situation. I spend about one or two minutes writing down this list.

Interim Audit

Quarter Review Audit

Internal Audit

Consolidation reporting package

And so on.

Next, write down the due date to the right of each item

  1. 3rd Quarter External Audit – Nov 8
  2. Interim External Audit – Nov 8
  3. Annual Internal Audit – PBC due Nov 8, Audit Nov 16
  4. Budget – Oct 26
  5. Global Kaizen Project Presentation – Nov 3
  6. Third Quarter Consolidation Report due Nov 23

If you know how long each project will take you to complete, you can estimate the earliest and the latest start time. For example, I will not do any projects involving the 3rd quarter until the 3rd quarter is closed. That will be the earliest start date. The latest start day needs to be calculated from the due date.

I usually use a checklist – which contains all activities listed in a project. For example, I typically have approximately 50-150 items depending on the type of audit. Examples of tasks on this list are federal and state taxes estimates, inventory reserve calculations, slow-moving inventory analyses. I write down how many hours it takes to complete each task. The project time is the aggregation of times of each activity to complete the project.

Checklist

I learned this trick when I was working for an accounting firm a long time ago. A checklist is a list of all the things you need to do, and a checklist offers multiple benefits.

A checklist is an excellent tool to maintain consistency in the tasks. For example, quarter audit, an external auditor usually asks for the same type of information. If you have the list ahead of time, you can generally gather them ahead of time.

A checklist is helpful when you want to delegate certain tasks to other team members of the financially auditing team.

I use a checklist to gauge how many hours each project takes. Once you have the due date, you can estimate the earliest and the latest start date for each project.

If you do not have a checklist for repeating a project, I strongly recommend you create one.

Task Delegation

I know I cannot do all tasks by myself. I usually delegate out as many tasks as possible to junior positions. Delegation does not only help you to ease your workload, but it helps to develop your subordinates.

The critical thing to remember when you delegate your work is you still need to hold responsibility for the tasks.  If you need to train them, you should prepare and review their work. Make sure to give feedback immediately when the tasks are done. Immediate feedback enhances their task efficiency for the future.

I also have written instructions for individual tasks or activities, which I create whenever I have extra time. This instruction also helps train your subordinates.

Negotiate the Due Dates ahead of time

I often negotiate the due dates with our auditors when multiple projects need to be done spontaneously. In my case, I usually negotiate the timing of interim and quarter audits with our external auditors. Our interim audit was initially scheduled for Nov 4, but I dealt with our auditor no make it 8th. We had an internal audit starting on Nov 16.

I requested the consolidation report due date to Nov 23 instead of the 18th because we have an internal audit in the same week. Sometimes it is impossible to do two projects simultaneously because you do not have the time to do two things.

Tasks completion status

I made this list in mid-September, and I made my plan to complete all of them. I am still working on the tasks, but I managed to complete some of them.

  1. 3rd Quarter External Audit – Nov 8 – 85% completed (review delegated tasks left)
  2. Interim External Audit – Nov 8 – PBC submitted
  3. Annual Internal Audit – PBC due Nov 8, Audit Nov 16 – PBC expected to be completed Nov 4
  4. Budget – Oct 26 completed
  5. Global Kaizen Project Presentation – Nov 3 (Slide submitted, currently practicing presentation)
  6. Third Quarter Consolidation Report due Nov 23 (Starting Nov 16)

Conclusion

This was quite a challenging period since I also had to work on the global kaizen project presentation. I still think the key is to list all of the tasks and plan them well. The important thing is to start the planning process as soon as possible. I am 95% certain that I will complete all of them without any delay.

I acquired this process from my experience. The process can be applied to anything. You should try it. It is probably better than becoming stressed out.

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Career Anchors: Knowing What Matter to You Before Planning Your Career

Over the last several years, the environment has drastically changed. Technology has improved so much that the forms of our jobs are changing rapidly – it seems. For example, with the introduction of the Robotic Automation Process or Artificial Intelligence, many of our entry-level tasks are disappearing.

Change has constantly been happening.  I’ve seen technological changes in my career from the beginning. For example, I translated between Canadian Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAPs), US GAAPs, and German GAAPs. There were no harmonized accounting standards back then, so reports had to be translated into an accounting reporting standard depending on where stocks were traded. With the introduction of technology, these translations are now done by software.

What we need to pay attention to is not the change itself but the speed of the changes. Labor shortages in some areas are getting worse in the United States. Accounting was one of the fields. Both mid and small companies are struggling to retain qualified employees. There are many reasons that companies are motivated to make the change necessary to survive. Even small companies have started implementing simple robots to take over tasks. I have worked on several projects implementing RPA in large corporations. Now small or mid-size companies have begun implementing digital transformations.

As more RPA take over our daily tasks, more companies seek adaptable people who can do the jobs that robots cannot do, such as interpretation or generating new ideas. How the jobs are done for many of us will change rapidly in the next several years. If you are not adapting to these changes, you will be quickly be made obsolete and end up without a job. So, we need to prepare for any changes that can impose such threats and opportunities.

Another thing you will need to consider is that the work style has changed. To make matters worse, COVID hit the world. Covid forced us to work remotely, and many companies moved to a remote work style. The remote work environment would affect us sooner or later, but COVID catalyzed the change rather quickly. This change made job applications somewhat borderless—labor shortages for mid and small companies got worse last year.

It is essential to understand ourselves more because we need to adapt to environments quickly. Reactive and Impulsive decisions can often lead to an unwanted situation. For example, there will be more remote positions available in the future. Your organization may make your position remote even though a remote work environment is not for everyone. You must be sensitive to technological changes because otherwise, robots may replace your job.

A good method to understand your strategic position in the existing environment is a SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis matrix contains Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Before starting with a SWOT analysis, I think one should identify one’s career anchor because it reveals one’s underlying values. Career anchors are underlying talents, motives, values, and attitudes – people often use these as the drivers to pick their jobs or career. It was developed by Edgar Schein, who is credited for various research and books mainly under organizational psychology (MIT Sloan, n.d.). He is primarily known for his book, Career Anchors.

According to Schein, there are eight career anchors. The eight anchors are:

Technical / Functional Competence: Someone in this anchor wants to be good at what they do. They will put a lot of effort into improving their skills in their career. They also do not care about money or promotions unless the opportunity helps them excel in a chosen line of work.

General Managerial Competence: Someone in this anchor is more likely to pursue the traditional career path of the corporation. They like to supervise a large number of groups or employees. They want to learn how to manage many functions and use the information or skills from multiple sources within an organization. 

Autonomy / Independence: someone in this anchor prefers to be left alone. They love the freedom to set rules, procedures, and their own schedule.

Security / Stability: Someone in this anchor values the security and stability in their job. They dislike unpredictable environments; therefore, they want to have their tasks and policies clearly defined. They tend to have a strong identity in their organization.

Entrepreneurial creativity: Someone in this anchor loves to create their own business. They can get obsessed with the idea they need to create, and they will get bored if the process is prevented.  

Sense of service: People in this anchor want to work within a specific set of values. For example, an elementary school teacher wants to develop youth because they believe that education is essential for anyone. A medical researcher tries to seek a cure for cancer. Money is not the primary driver for these types of people since they are focused on the cause.

Pure Challenge: people in this anchor are constantly seeking more formidable challenges to conquer.

Lifestyle: People in this anchor value a work-life balance. They value the freedom to organize their balance between work and their personal life.

I have taken Schein’s Career Anchors test in the past. I scored high in Pure Challenge, Entrepreneurial Creativity, and Autonomy. I was not as surprised with the results because I feel the most energy when working with challenging projects. If something does not work, I instead create a new way to make it work. That is why I mainly do continuous improvement types of projects for the organization.

Analysis on Strength and Weakness

I quickly analyzed the strengths and weaknesses I obtained from the Career Anchors test. If you want to do the proper analysis, you must include your skills, knowledge, and experience in this analysis.

Strength 

I enjoy the rapid changes in the environments since there are many things I can learn and create to overcome challenges. The more complex the Challenge, the more excited I become. Money and social status are not my main priority if there are challenges in it. I also value autonomy, creating rules and processes instead of following existing rules and processes.

Weakness

I have many things that I want to improve. I see some weaknesses that can lead me to chaos if I fail to control them. If I am not careful, I will endlessly spend my time chasing after the wrong thing. I get bored of things quickly, so I must keep the project short. Finally, I prefer to work independently rather than working for someone. (This is something I need to focus on).

My career anchors led to great opportunities in times like this as long as I navigate how I utilize them. For this blog, I omitted how to conduct environment scanning to find out opportunities and threats, which is very important to complete your SWOT analysis.

I strongly recommend analyzing and identifying one’s career anchors since our environments are shifting quickly. You will need to adjust and reposition yourself in such an environment. 

Without understanding your underlying value or needs, you cannot position yourself wisely. Once you know your career anchor, you can create your career and skill development plan that is matched to your career anchor. People generally feel more engaged when they know what they want, can, and need to do. Understanding your career anchor helps you to identify them easier; thus, you can be adaptable.

Reference

MIT Sloan. (n.d.) Edgar H. Schein.https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/edgar-h-schein

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Learning To Be A Good Leader From Ieyasu Tokugawa’s Letters

He had a lot of trouble when he spent his childhood as a hostage of the Imagawa Clan instead of his father. After the death of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, he seized power after the battle of Sekigawara in 1600. After Tokugawa unified Japan, The Warring States period ended, and there was peace until 1868.

Later, a nanny called Kasugano Tsubone raised his first grandson; however, the second son was raised by his mother, the daughter-in-law. Eventually, this raised the concern of a succession struggle. To mitigate the succession problems and sustain the long Tokugawa Clan line, he wrote letters to his daughter-in-law because he wanted her to raise the son to be a proper leader. Ieyasu wrote these letters to his daughter-in-law because he wanted her to raise her son to be an appropriate leader. This letter was copied and taught to many daimyos.

Of course, the letters were written in the past, and some concepts cannot be applied very well. Although, there are some insights we can gain from them. I want to introduce a few parts of the letters we can still use for our leadership in this blog.

A leader cannot understand anything by only practicing Confucianism, Benevolence, righteousness, gratitude, wisdom, and faith until seeing the mirror reflecting ourselves.

It is not a physical mirror that can be polished by hand to make it shiny. It’s a mirror exists in our heart. Thus, it can be polished only by one’s heart.

If you don’t do what is right, the mirror of your heart remains cloudy and does not permit reflection.

To keep it from becoming cloudy, we have no choice but to learn from others about the impact of our actions.

The letter is a rough translation by me. ~ I did not add my interpretation here.

おこうの家康の手紙に書かれた信長・秀吉の人物像 真のリーダー像とは「早わかり歴史授業94 徳川家康シリーズ61」日本史方. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRMzbjupi8&t=1058s&ab_channel=%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8B%E3%81%BB%E3%81%A9%21%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2%E3%83%9F%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC

Confucianism heavily influences Japan. To become a good leader, you must practice the five basic Confucian ethical concepts: Benevolence (仁), rightness (義), gratitude (礼), wisdom (智) and faith (信) Ieyasu said that practicing Confucian ethical ideas is not good enough to become a good leader.

For example, Ieyasu wrote about why a leader must practice benevolence. Subordinates and vassals might follow orders even if the orders were not a good decision. Thus, a leader is not ethical or compassionate, and your subordinates also act unethically. 

Ieyasu preaches how to practice the five basic Confucian ethical concepts by controlling oneself in the following ways.

You should be kind to everyone. It would be best if you were fair. For example, you should not create an exception for those people who are close to you.
You should be loyal to those whom you work for. Don’t break your promises.
Think about others first. Never forget your gratitude. Maintain yourself and behave well at all times.
Control yourself using wisdom in order not to be arrogant or treat others lightly.
To obey the rules that exist at all times.

Same YouTube as the above. I directly translated the letter without adding my interpretation.

Exercising these controls is not solely good enough to be a good leader, Ieyasu stated.
A good leader must polish the mirror of his heart so it is not cloudy. To shine the mirror of the heart, you must listen to the viewpoints and excellent advice.
Then, Ieyasu gives examples to explain why it is essential to listen to others.

If a leader likes to hear only opinions convenient to him, people around him will only give the statements he wants to hear. The people who could give you the proper guidance will be distant from you. You will be only left with sycophants who only speak what you want to hear. Therefore, a leader should listen to others from time to time.

The rapid change of environment forces the organization to be adaptable to sustain a competitive edge while dealing with the increasing complexity in the workplace due to the rapid changes. It is pretty challenging to make sound decisions only among top leaders. Thus, recent leadership theories started emphasizing the bottom-up aspect of leadership and the importance of humility to organization effectiveness (OWENS & HEKMAN 2012).

To secure the position, many leaders tend to protect themselves with people with similar ideas or followers. The group may have more bindings or loyalty; although, it can be dangerous. No single man makes the right decision all the time. If a leader surrounds himself with only those types of followers, an organization can make serious mistakes without realizing it until it is too late. He observed the errors fallen leaders such as Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi made. Ieyasu lived through the Sengoku Period, the period of the warring states, a very turbulent era. One single mistake can lead to the clan falling. He understood that humility was a crucial element for leaders in a turbulent world. He learned from their mistakes.

According to the oxford dictionary, humility is defined as the quality of not thinking that you are better than other people. Having humility does not necessarily mean that you let other people walk all over you. It means that you should gain the ability to regard others as no more or less than you. Such capability allows a leader to listen to important advice or information, which helps them make the soundest decision for their organization. Rapid changes in environments require leaders to gain the most accurate information from the organization quickly. It is more effective to practice the bottom-up aspect of leadership to accomplish organizational effectiveness in some cases.

Humility is important in my personal life. It is unlikely that I can make the soundest decision all the time; therefore, I must learn to listen to others who could give the correct opinion. I understand the importance of humility theoretically; however, I found practicing it isn’t easy. The more social status and experiences I gain, and the more complex the practice has become. I often found myself that I struggled to listen to others because of my arrogance.

We live in quite a different world from that of Ieyasu. Therefore, I cannot apply all of what he said in the letter. Some concepts still can apply to my leadership style at work and my personal life. I found practicing humility is challenging despite its importance – that often prevents me from overlooking the critical advice from others. Thus, I need to think about how to gain the trait from now on.

References

Owens, B. P., &Hekman, D. R. (2012). Modeling HowTo Grow: An Inductive Examination Of Humble Leader Behavior, Contingencies, And Outcomes. The Academy of Management Journal, 55(4), 787–818.

Oxford Dictionary. (n.d.). Humility noun. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/english/humility

こうの家康の手紙に書かれた信長・秀吉の人物像 真のリーダー像とは「早わかり歴史授業94 徳川家康シリーズ61」日本史方. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRMzbjupi8&t=1058s&ab_channel=%E3%81%AA%E3%82%8B%E3%81%BB%E3%81%A9%21%E6%AD%B4%E5%8F%B2%E3%83%9F%E3%82%B9%E3%83%86%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC

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If You Feel Uneasy, Read This Book: Hojoki

With recent Tornado and COVID outbreaks, I have felt constant uneasiness for the last year or so. I picked up a book, the Hojoki. The Hojoki is a collection of literary essays from Kamo no Chomei (鴨長明). The Hojoki is regarded as one of the three great Zuihitsu (essays). The Hojoki was written around 1212.

In the Hojoki, Chomei wrote about Mujokan (無常観), the awareness of impermanence, a fundamental Buddhist philosophy principle. Things never stay permanent. Everything changes even if they don’t seem to change in appearance.

The last time I read this book was when I was in my teens. I still remember the first part because we had to learn the first part of my school’s curriculum. It was so poetic that I memorized the opening of this book.

I translated the opening of the book.

Look at the river carefully. The flow of the water never ceased.
You realize the river exists all the time, but the water in the river never stays the same.
The bubbles floating in the river constantly bursting and reform, and they are never lingering.
Just like the water and the bubbles in the river, people and their dwellings in the world keeps changing.
There is nothing in the world that stays permanent.

In the opening sentence, Chomei wrote about the awareness of the transience of things by giving the exact things he experienced. This opening poem reminds me of Pantha Rhei, the ever-present change expressed by The Greek Philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 – 475BC).

Before I explain further about this book, I would like to introduce Chomei’s life quickly. He was born in 1155 as the 2nd son of Negi at Shimogamo temple. Negi is the title of a person who leads Shinto rituals at a Shinto Temple. Many wealthy people made donations to Shinto temples to avoid disaster. Therefore, some temples, such as Shimogamo Temple, became wealthy. Chomei had a luxurious childhood.

Although, it did not last long. When Chomei was 18 years old, his father passed away. Since Chomei’s mother was already passed away, he had no allies during inheritance conflicts among his relatives. As a result, Chomei was left with nothing. He decided to abandon his relatives and duties at the Shinto temple and mastered playing the Biwa (a Biwa is a plucked string instrument resembling a lute) and creating waka. Waka is a classic Japanese poem that contains 31 morae.

At the age of 47, he had another opportunity to regain his social status. At this time, Chomei mastered playing Biwa, and he was a well-regarded poet. He was appointed as one of the editors of Chyokusen Waka Shyu. Because he worked so hard on the new role as an editor, he was given a chance to be a Negi at a Tadasunoyashiro temple by Gotoba Tenno, the 87th Japanese Tenno. Although, Chomei lost this opportunity because his relatives objected. Chomei’s relatives believed that he was not entitled to the position because Chomei abandoned his duties at another Shinto temple. The Tenno agreed with their objection, so Chomei did not get the role. Chomei became a Buddhist monk at forty-nine and lived in a 10- square foot house in a mountain until his death with great disappointment.

All essays in the Hojoki were Chomei’s historical statements about his own experiences and five disasters he experienced: fires, Whirlwind, relocation of the nation’s capital, flood, and earthquake. He mainly experienced them in his 20’s.

The disasters Written in the Hojoki:

The Great Fire at Angen (23 years old) – 1177

The Whirlwind at Chishyo (26 years old)

Fukuhara Sento – Moving of Capital city (26 years old) 1180

Famine at Yowa (27 years) – 1181

Earthquake in Genryaku (31 years old) – 1185

The Genpei War 1180-1185

He lived in a Chaotic World. In 1180, the Genpei War started. It was a national civil war between the Taira and The Minamoto clans. The battle lasted five years, and the Taira clan lost. In 1192, Yoritomo Minamoto was finally granted the title of the imperial commission, Sei-I Tai Shogun, and a feudal state in Japan arose. I will not get into the Genpei War in this article; however, I found many videos about it. I will share links to the videos below. You are free to check the videos that explain the war very well.

Chomei wrote what he observed and felt from the disasters he experienced. Then, he stated that history keeps repeating because we seem to forget the lessons learned from the horrible disasters.

People talked about the disasters when they occurred.
However, we forget as time passes.
Thus, we never learned from them.

After the war of Genpei, Japan turned into a feudal state which lasted until the Edo period started. We experienced multiple wars as if we did not learn a thing from each war.
As of 2021, we still live in the middle of the COVID pandemic, which has claimed many lives. Will we still remember this pandemic a few decades later? Can we react better when the next pandemic strikes? In order not to repeat the disaster, we should not forget what happened.

In the last part of this book, Chomei wrote about how to live from his point of view. His life experiences influenced him greatly. He suggests living freely without depending on others. He means not being too obsessed with people, materials, or social status as all things in the world are ephemeral.


Yet, in the final part of this book, he wrote.

I left material life.
I live and act like a monk
I preach not to be obsessed with things.
I questioned myself.
Yet, why do I still write about my life?
All I could say was “Amitabha.”

His book captured my heart because they were written from his personal experience. Throughout his writing, I still sense his deep sorrow. This book contains the conclusions he reached after his affairs. At the same time, I feel somehow lifted because he retained his humanity. It is ok if we lose time to time. I am encouraged by the book because it made me realize that things I worry over are also not permanent.


I recommend that anyone read this book, especially if you feel uneasy that there is no certainty in life; If you do not know what to do or have difficulties from relationships. The book shows you a different way of living life.

The book shows a different way of living life – a life without obsession. Of course, it is good to work hard on something. Don’t invest too much of your energy or emotion in them because nothing lasts forever.

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Let’s Play Habitica #1 – Using a Role Playing Game (RPG) App to Track Habits

I have been looking into a method to maintain and build good habits more fun for a while because it can be tedious. I made more time available than usual over the last couple of weeks, and I used my free time mainly looking at apps on my mobile phone to track my habits. I found Habitica, a phone app to track habits in the form of a role-playing game (RPG). It is an online task management tool while playing an RPG game, which can be a fun way to gain good habits for people like me who like RPG games.

Anyone who tries to develop new habits will find that acquiring a completely new habit is quite challenging. Getting a new habit involves stepping out of one’s comfort zone; therefore, it is natural to feel discomfort. For example, I found acquiring meditation practice to be challenging despite understanding how beneficial meditation will be. It is natural for people to stay in their comfort zone as part of their survival instinct. So, it is vital to develop new habits slowly. Taking little steps outside of your comfort zone will eventually convince your brain to see the new zone as a part of your comfort zone.

Determine which habits you want to keep requires careful evaluation since not all habits are good for you. In some way, habits are like a double-edged sword- they can be good, bad, or both. It is because a habit works for others. It does not necessarily have the same positive effect on you. Therefore, you should customize your habits to your needs and for yourself.

It is critical to evaluate, so you acquire and keep only habits that are good for you. In many cases, you may not even know whether a habit is good for you until you try it out. For example, it is difficult for a night owl to create a task to run at 5 a.m. So, it is essential to develop our habits slowly. It is a slow and tedious process, which makes the process challenging for many people. Therefore, many end up giving up on acquiring the habits.  

It is possible to make the tedious process more enjoyable by applying gamification theory, game design elements in non-game contexts. My elementary teacher used to give us a sticker for attending school. Periodically, students who accumulated the most stickers got a small reward. The competition and the rewards motivate students to attend school. So, I was looking for a way to make this process more fun by using gamification.

Gamification is a robust process to encourage people to engage in certain activities. The method is so powerful that some scholars even claim it is used as a tool to manipulate people to engage in radicalization – although both the theoretical and empirical basis of the theory does not support it well (Schlegel, 2021). Gamification is still an effective way to motivate people for a higher likelihood of prolonged engagement.

Gamification has been getting a lot of attention as it is powerfully manipulative by nature. By observing games on social media platforms, gaming platforms, and private chats, Marczewski developed a framework to analyze the user types in the gamification setting. According to Maczewski (cited in Schlegel, 2021), there are six categories of users:

  • Socializer, motivated by connecting to others
  • Free spirits, inspired by expressing themselves or creativities
  • Achiever, motivated by acquiring new skills or knowledge
  • Philanthropists, motivated by a feeling of purpose or meaning by helping others 
  • disruptor, motivated by trolling and upsetting others in the game
  • Players, motivating by getting extrinsic rewards

Schlegel investigated the user types identified by Maczewski and summarized them into five user types.

User TypeDriver of RadicalizationMotivational DriverGame Elements
SocializerIdentify SeekerRelatednessGilds, team,
CompetitorStatus SeekerExtrinsic rewardspoints, leaderboard, achievements
AchieverNeed for certainty about the worldExploration, masteryquests, certification, progress bar
Meaning SeekerNeed of meaning or purposePurpose, meaningEpic story, sharing items
DisruptorThrill SeekerChallenging OthersRewards for disruption

Maczewski’s Five User Framework

Of course, it is nearly impossible to tailor all game features to appeal to all people. Many people will enjoy the components of the same game to some extent; although, we must keep in mind that the effect of the gamified results will differ for everyone. Therefore, a good game contains all of those elements to appeal to many users.

Habitica seems to contain game elements that provide some fun components such as positive reinforcement and opportunities for collaboration or competition, which will lead to a higher likelihood of prolonged engagement. I think it may spice up my reasonable habit-building efforts in a good way. So, I decided to download the app to try it out.

First, I listed the critical daily tasks I wanted to track. Then, I allocated points according to the difficulty of completing the tasks. 

  1. Sleep by 10:00 p.m. This will be a challenging task since I often pass my bedtime by preventing sleep. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. This task will be moderately challenging. 
  2. Wake up by 5:30 a.m. Waking up by 5:30 a.m. gets more challenging if I go to sleep later than 10:00 p.m. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. This task will be moderately strenuous. 
  3. Drink more than 80 oz water. Most days, I drink more than 80oz of water. It is a critical task to be acquired, just like sleeping. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign.
  4. Enter a food Journal on Fitbits. This task will be easy, but it is essential. Thus, this task should have both a plus and a minus sign. 
  5. Do A 2-minute meditation before going to bed. This task will be a challenging task. 
  6. Weigh first thing in the morning. Challenging. This task should have both a plus and a minus sign. I put this task as difficult because I often forget weight in the morning since I changed my phone. This task is critical for my goals. So, I decided to assign a more considerable negative consequence for not doing.
Daily HabitsRate” + “” – “
Sleep by 10:00 p.m.Moderate2-2
Wake up by 5:30 a.m.Moderate2-2
Drink more than 80 ozEasy1-1
Enter food JournalEasy11
Do a 2-minute meditation before going to bedDifficult3-3
Weigh first thing in the morningModerate2-3
My Six Tasks in Habitica

I am considering the above six tasks that I cared about the most for two weeks starting this Monday.  After two weeks, I plan to add challenges. Challenge is a series of tasks set up by another player or officials. You will be doing the challenge with another player. If you achieve higher points in the challenge, you may end up with germs by completing the tasks assigned by a challenge. Once you have some gems, you can spend them on getting some quests and equipment. Some challenges are created monthly, so I may need to wait until the start of next month.

I am starting this little sprint for pure curiosity. Gamification is an effective way to motivate people, and this is a fun approach to deal with my habit building. If this works well, I will use the app for future kaizen projects.

Reference

Schlegel, L. (2021). Connecting, Competing, and Trolling: “User Types” in Digital Gamified Radicalization Processes. Perspectives on Terrorism, 15(4), 54–64.

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How I Faught With Endometriosis Problem.

For the past week or so, I have been dealing with an endometriosis pain attack. The last time I had a severe pain attack was last November. So, I do not get a bad one like this every month.

I suspect the cause is my stress. Recently, I was extremely busy at work. I am also preparing for PMP (Project management professional exam) exam. As I tried to maintain a healthy lifestyle with adequate exercise, I thought I would not get endometriosis pain again. Although, I was aware that I was under a lot of stress. Despite exercise and meditation, I experienced some difficulty falling asleep the last few weeks.

The only thing I can do now is to ease the pain. I can take pain killers such as Naproxen Sodium or Ibuprofen since they suppress inflammation. I try not to use them as much as I can. The best treatment is to relax as much as possible.

It will not be a good idea to continue stressing myself since this pain can last two weeks. Besides, it is not productive. So, I decided to take it easy and take a break from studying. I requested to take two days off this week. Then, I spent my free time enjoying things I read and played the piano. I even managed to watch a movie. I drink herbal tea made from turmeric. Turmeric is a natural anti-inflammatory agent for pain relief since it helps fight inflammatory effects (Maroon, J. & Maroon, A, 2015).  

Many females have endometriosis. My doctor once told me that females in modern eras suffer because few females have children at a younger age. Despite research efforts, the cause is yet unknown. What I understand is there is no cure for this problem. Although, there are many ways to manage inflammation to mitigate the pain. Today, I decided to share how I deal with endometriosis pain.

Background

I have suffered from endometriosis since my teenage years. It was not uncommon for me to have bad menstrual cramps. When I was 19 years old, I could not get out of bed due to massive pain. After I went to the emergency room, I was diagnosed with ovarian endometriosis. So, I had an operation to remove cysts at Montreal Jewish Hospital year.

None of my doctors could tell me the root cause of endometriosis is. I read books and journals about them without any luck – all I found out was no one yet identified the causes due to its complexity. There are multiple stages in endometriosis – mine is in stage 3. Inflammation can, therefore, impact some of my pelvic organs. I have tried many medical treatments to get rid of endometriosis. I have had surgeries to remove cysts. I took pills to prevent growing more cysts.

Every month, I fear getting an endometriosis pain attack. In many months the pain is so mild that I do not mind it at all. Sometimes, I do not even feel it. Since I do not get it every month, I never knew when I would be getting it next. It seemed a very random event at first. Over the years, I started to notice patterns that triggered the pain.

The Pattern of The Occurrence of Endometriosis

After my first operation, I became more conscious of endometriosis. I noticed a pattern of triggers of the pain. In my case, I manage the pain with certain foods or by reducing stress.

Some foods such as pork, mushrooms, and onion can trigger endometriosis pain if I eat them during my period. Since I did not care for pork, I stopped eating pork altogether. I could not stop eating mushrooms or onions, so I tried not overeating them. I do not eat them at all during my period. I noticed that my endometriosis pains resemble irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) now.

My stress level has a strong correlation with my endometriosis pain. A high level of stress can make inflammation worse. Researchers found that stress makes inflammation severe due to cortisol, a stress hormone (Rosenkranz et al., 2016). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that stress is somewhat correlated to inflammation, thus, endometriosis.

Fifteen years ago, I stopped medical treatments. There are not many things doctors can do. So, I decided to treat my endometriosis differently. The critical thing is actively managing my stress. Yoga or Aerobics exercise can reduce inflammation. So, I try to manage my stress level by exercising, managing my time better, and breathing exercises. I even started logging my stress level so that I could monitor my stress. I noticed that actively reducing stress dropped the frequency of getting severe endometriosis attacks.

I also recognize the limitation to an alternative method. Stress management is to ease the pain or to reduce the frequency of endometriosis. Also, it is impossible to eliminate all my stress. A herbal option has limitations due to its minimal potency. I avoided severe endometriosis pain until 2015, when my husband became ill. The last severe endometriosis attack was in November 2020, when I was leading a big project at work. I got the pain again. Sometimes the pain is so intense that I need to take ibuprofen.

I noticed that my stress level increased last few weeks. My resting heart rate seems higher. Despite exercise and breathing exercises, I experience difficulties falling asleep some days. During the past five days, I thought about the possible causes. All I can do is find out the way to eliminate the root causes. I need to rearrange my other schedule items since it is impossible to delegate my work projects to others due to a lack of resources. We are getting another headcount for our department, so this busy schedule will not be permanent.

There is no point rushing and stressing out myself. I can relieve my stress level, so I do not repeat this cycle next month. During the past five days, I adjusted my studying schedule. I took two days off from my work this week. With the extra time, I did something I enjoyed doing. It has been almost a week, and my pain is mostly manageable.

Unfortunately, we cannot do anything to cure endometriosis; however, its symptoms are manageable. I am considering getting medical advice since I started to have symptoms of having bowel endometriosis. If I have bowel endometriosis, I must change my diet altogether to avoid IBS-like symptoms. I decided to share my experience with endometriosis – hoping it can help other females who suffer.

References

Maroon, J. C., Bost, J. W., & Maroon, A. (2010). Natural anti-inflammatory agents for pain relief. Surgical Neurology International, 1. https://doi.org/10.4103/2152-7806.73804

Rosenkranz, M. A., Lutz, A., Perlman, D. M., Bachhuber, D. R. W., Schuyler, B. S., MacCoon, D. G., & Davidson, R. J. (2016). Reduced stress and inflammatory responsiveness in experienced meditators compared to a matched healthy control group. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 68, 117–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2016.02.013

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Is Speed Matter for Reading

For a long time, I had thought that it was always better to read ever faster. Curiosity was the biggest drive to read for me. I have read a lot of books, articles, and journals. When I understand a concept, my heart rates rise. Then, I feel immense joy from understanding a concept. I become satisfied, but I will repeat this cycle.

One day, I began to suspect that my reading method may not be good enough. I often have trouble remembering the source of the supporting ideas, so it takes me a long time to find the actual research. I started to feel this more strongly when I began to write seriously.

The most disturbing thing was that I should have a tremendous amount of knowledge from cumulative research because I read many books or journals in the past. The reality is that I do not recall most of the things I learned from these books. It is because our memory is short-lived unless we put them into long-term memory.

I thought reviewing some pointers after reading the books helped me to remember them long-term. During my first reading, I highlight the critical points of the book in my kindle, and I review them in a few days. 

Unfortunately, this system did not work well. There were so many books in my kindle that I could not maintain the reviewing system. So, I created a system, which forces me to reexamine the highlighted items from books I read. These highlighting notes help me find the source of a concept as long as I remember which books held the highlighted items.

The primary benefit of reading fast is I can surface-read books quickly. I can read a lot of books or other materials for research purposes. If your objective of reading is to enjoy casual reading, there is no problem reading fast. I can finish multiple books in a day if I want to do so. However, the effects stop at the extent of surface reading. I may not remember stories or things I learned a few days later.

If I want to make my reading more meaningful and effective, I must exercise a more active reading strategy. For example, to perform literary analysis, I must put conscious effort into recognizing the pattern while reading. Unless I am actively seeking and reevaluating the reading materials for relevance to what I need, no amount of reading is good for me. I would rather sleep more or exercise. No matter how fast you can read the materials, it is not as helpful as you think.

To exercise active reading, I started to take notes directly onto kindle. Rephrasing is a powerful method to understand the texts you are reading. It helps me to retain certain concepts for the long term. Then, I faced another challenge. My notes were still all over my kindle books. Unless I start reviewing all of them periodically, the knowledge will fade away from my memory. I still need to remember which book each note belongs to use as a source.

Smart Note Taking Techniques You Can Use While You Are Reading

One day, I found an excellent book, “How to Take Smart Notes,” written by Sonke Ahrens. The book taught me to effectively read books and retain the knowledge to use them later. According to Ahrens, you will need to do the following steps:

Take temporary notes as you read. Taking quick notes helps you to retain the information you just obtained. Ahrens suggests that handwriting is better since it takes a longer time to write than typing. It takes a long time to type in kindle unless I use a PC to read a digital. So, you will become selective of which information you keep as a note. So, I use the kindle note function.

Summarize the temporary notes in your own words within a day after the quick notes are created. Brief notes are temporary. You must elaborate the note in your own words, which reinforces the ideas. I HAD TO REREAD THE SECTION when I did these steps a few days after my initial notetaking. So, I found it is faster to do this process within a day.

Classify the summarized notes. Sonke explained that students seem to retain what they learn better when the professor teaches unorganized materials. I do a similar step for organizing my 10-page notes every day. Organizing unclassified information helps you to retain the information better not only digitally but also in your brain.

Tag the notes to other notes you have created. Using software such as Zotero, you can easily tag other notes while making a permanent note. Ahrens explains that making cross-references requires serious thinking, and it helps us develop our thought about the idea (p. 112).

Think about what is not in the text and add them to your note. This process requires additional effort to process the information. You dive further into the text since you are now challenging and creating your idea against the new data you are learning. Unfortunately, I rarely do this process.

I use Zotero to make my permanent notes. I can create my categories and sort all my permanent notes. The use of the software made my life much easier. It can add the info of the reading material for future bibliographies. You can also organize and tag the note to link it to another note. Finally, the use of the software is free.

The new process takes a lot more time to read a single book. In some cases, I may read the section multiple times to create a decent permanent note. These extra steps made me more selective of the information I intended to retain. The important thing is I start synthesizing the new information more thoroughly than before.

Conclusion

There is one thing I am still working on is thinking about what is not in the text. This process is challenging and time-consuming so that I tend to get lazy. Maybe I may create a habit of adding one idea of my own to a note per day.

If someone asks me whether they need to learn speed reading, I would say no. Instead, I recommend that they find a way to retain the information gained from the book just like I did. No increase in the number of books one can read is helpful if you forget what you read.

Reference

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking—For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book writers.[kindle edition].

Zotero’s Link

https://www.zotero.org/

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How to Improve Your English Writing Skills even English is not Your Mother Tongue

English is not my first language, and English writing was among my communication fears. Unlike face-to-face communication methods, a reader cannot see my body language, accommodating my broken English. Despite the challenge, I wanted to write in English. I wrote a lot when I was younger in Japanese, my mother tongue. Soon after I migrated to North America, I tried to write in English. It was tough because I did not have enough knowledge of vocabulary or idioms. When you do not know which word to use, you end up using more words to explain. My sentences were wordy and hard to understand.

It was utterly inconvenient to be unable to communicate fluently. All of your communication is not as effective. Furthermore, some people treated me as an unintelligent person. I think many immigrants have a similar experience. When I was young, I even cried from the frustration caused by my broken English. Although, I was hesitant to improve my English writing skills because it was hard for me to write in English. Then, I finally started work on my writing seriously a little over a year ago.

First, I listed the item that I needed to improve to develop some strategies to work on them.

Spelling: Like most Japanese, I still have difficulty distinguishing between “R” and “L,” which negatively affects my spelling. I also mixed spelling conventions from multiple languages, such as German and French.

Preposition: My knowledge of idioms is still limited, and I have many preposition errors.

Syntax:  I have trouble finding the appropriate word to express something.

English Grammar: I still make many grammatical errors: such as missing articles and comma splices.

Fear of writing: My biggest block was my fear of writing.

I must be conscious of learning words, idioms, and spelling when I read. In terms of grammar, I need to be aware of making mistakes. So, I bought the Grammarly app subscription – this is the best purchase I ever made. My last obstacle, fear of writing, was a little tricky to overcome. I thought I had to write a lot in English to overcome the fear.

After activating the Grammarly subscription, I started to write a few paragraphs every day. The average word count of a piece was between 150 to 300. I knew my speed of writing was extremely slow when I was in a graduate program. Just as I suspected, it took me at least 3 hours to write 150-300 words.

One of the most significant pieces of help using Grammarly gave me immediate feedback on my grammatical errors. I already knew that I was terrible at using proper articles. I often misuse prepositions. Some prepositions don’t make sense to me at all. Grammarly gives me weekly feedback on how I am doing with my writing. I started to see improvements.

Despite these efforts, I faced another obstacle – I was too conscious of my grammatical errors to write a paragraph. As a result, I experienced something close to writer’s block. On some days, I might spend 4 hours writing merely one hundred words. Even I managed to produce a single paragraph in English, and my sentences are monotone – soulless sentences. As soon as I tried to write, my brain started rebelling– this was how I felt. With frustration, I stopped writing for a while.

Then, I read a book, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. After reading the book, I started writing 2-3 pages on an A4 size notebook, anything that came to my mind every morning. According to the author, I am not supposed to be showing the notes to anyone. Since I was handwriting, I did not have to stop to correct errors. Then, I stopped caring about my English errors. Who cares? No one sees the book anyway. And this is the time I began to be able to write again. It took me about three months or so to get rid of the writer’s block. I assume that I was writing in my logical brain, which killed my creative brain, just like Julia Cameron pointed out in the book.

After few months, I began to share my writing with my husband. My husband is a native English speaker with good writing skills. He started giving me some advice by editing my essays. He also advised me on word choice. He majored in Rhetoric at University, so he gave me Rhetoric advice on my writing. Getting help from my husband was a big help.

I also started to highlight my kindle vocabulary, idioms, and expressions. I was not about to plagiarism them, but I wanted to use them in my writing. I tried to steal like a good artist, just like Austin Kleon wrote in his book, Steal Like an Artist.

Then, I started writing a blog in English last March. I committed to writing one English blog per week. I am aware that my English is nowhere near perfect. I cannot tell whether my English is truly improving; however, Grammarly’s weekly reports show I create much fewer errors than I used to make a year ago. Most importantly, I don’t hesitate to write in English. I sometimes even feel joy from writing.

1st week

1st week

1 year later

Grammarly after 1 year later

The last week (1 year & 4 months)

Grammarly Weekly Report

Of course, writing a lot is not the only solution to improving your writing. I am not going to say how many words you should be writing to improve your English. Great writers often write a lot. My husband loves to read Brandon Sanderson. According to Ang (Aug 2020), Sanderson writes 2,000-2,500 words per day. Faulkner wrote 3,000 – 10,000 words per day. So, I just wrote a lot. I wrote more English than when I was in a graduate program. There is no shortcut to improve writing skills. It is daunting to even think about investing a lot of time on something we cannot tell ourselves whether we improve or not.

An app like Grammarly helps get some qualitative measurement. There were weeks that my accuracy declined. There were weeks I could not write a lot because I was busy doing something else. Rather than focusing on the week’s result, I focused on how many words I had written since April 20th. I still make many grammatical errors, but I started to see substantial improvement in my grammar.

Most importantly, I have more confidence in my writing. I started submitting more business cases since I could write them in a shorter time. Any task that involves writing became easier to complete. There is no age limit to start improving your writing skill. If I can improve my language at my age, then so you can.

Creativity is a critical part of writing. Writing a lot may not help me much. Although, the morning page technique seems to work. So, I am still doing 2-3 morning pages of writing every morning because it helps me be more creative.

It is more important to understand how to use words, idioms, or expressions rather than knowing them. I try to use the word in any of my writing, idioms, and expressions I highlight from any reading I do. Then, I show it to my husband. He will tell me something if I misuse the word.

There is no shortcut to improving English writing skills – it seems. Although, I have great news. There is no age limit to start working on improving your writing skill. If I can improve my writing skill at my age, and so can you. It never is “too late” to start a project like this.

References

Ang, Alvin. (Aug 17, 2020). 10 Legendary Writers & Their Daily Word Counts.https://writingcooperative.com/10-legendary-writers-their-daily-word-counts-692c56cb97a5

Cameron, Julia (2016). The Artist’s Way. [Kindle Edition]. Penguin Random House

Kleon, Austin (2012). Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. [Kindle Edition]. Workman Publishing Company.

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Revisiting Spirit Away

I recently watched “Sprit Away – English version.” I had previously watched Spirit Away almost two decades ago. I recalled it as an exciting adventure film with few messages such as environmental stewardship and greed.  My niece recently started watching Miyazaki’s movies, my neighbor Totoro and Ponyo, which made me want to watch Miyazaki’s films again.

It is interesting to discover how our cumulative experience and knowledge influence our perspective toward books or movies. This time, I had a different view of this film from the last time I watched it. The characters were carefully developed throughout the story. Miyazaki intentionally leaves some essential elements blank so that anyone can fill them in. Now everyone has different interpretations of the movie. After I re-watched this movie, I decided to do a literary analysis on this film from a Japanese perspective. For this blog, I focused on the following two points of the film.

–       Who is Haku?

–       What is the hidden motivation of the main character?

It is critical to understand the relationship of Chihiro to her parents before talking about Haku. Chihiro seems to have affection toward both of her parents just like a child, while her mother is distant to Chihiro. The mother did not show concern for Chihiru’s safety. For example, the mother did not check whether Chihiro passed the creek safely or not. In the scary place, Chihiro was disturbed. Just as a typical child would do, Chihiro held onto the arms of her mother. Instead of holding the daughter’s hand, the mother complained not to cling to her arm, which was an un-motherly-like behavior.

The next important character in this movie is Haku, the river god who helps her. Haku appeared in front of Chihiro early in the film, right after her parents turned into pigs. Miyazaki left Haku’s appearance in front of Chihiro ambiguous, so we must fill the detail ourselves.

When Chihiro returned the golden seal to Zeniba, Zeniba told Chihiro the spell on it was gone. Then, Zeniba exclaimed that only love could break her spell. What kind of love was that? Why was Haku so willing to help Chihiro from the beginning of her adventure? When we think about these questions, was there “a biological love” between them. Haku was Chihiro’s brother? Sometimes these spirits (Kami) can be created from people’s wishes. Sometimes spirits are created when one sacrifices one’s life for another.

When I was young, my grandmother told me a story about a girl who lost her way in the woods. She ended up among many flowers where she met an older woman there who said to the girl,

Do you see teardrops on the flower?

A girl somewhere just gave her food to her younger sisters, even though she was also starving.

Do you see the tear, that is the tear from the girl?

Do you see the mountain?

A man sacrificed his life to save the villagers. So, he became a mountain.

When people sacrifice something, they make a flower to grow.

When people sacrifice their lives, they turn into Mountains.

Now, go home.

There are reasons why I think Haku was Chihiro’s biological brother. Haku seems willing to risk his life to save Chihiro from the beginning, yet Haku remembers nothing except Chihiro’s name. Zeniba told Chihiro that the spell was removed because of love. Zeniba repeated “Love” twice, and this is important.

When Chihiro was riding on Haku, the dragon, fragments of memories flashed through her head – her pink shoes were carried away by the river’s current.  Then, there is a hand with a white T-shirt that pulled her from the river. Chihiro wondered why she could not recall the memory earlier. Chihiro almost died from drowning in the past, and he could not remember it. It is documented that some traumatic events can create memory loss associated with the traumatic events. Health professionals address the symptom as Trauma-related dissociation, a survival mechanism of forgetting the event that is so overwhelming that one can no longer cope (International Society for Study of Trauma and Dissociation, n.d.). With few seconds of information, I could formulate the following hypothesis.

When Chihiro was younger, she nearly drowned in a river. Her brother, Haku, drowned in the river when he was trying to save Chihiro. With the overwhelming traumatic event of near-death experience and the loss of her brother, Chihiro could not remember the event at all. Chihiro’s mother is distant subconsciously because she somehow felt that Chihiro was responsible for her son’s death. According to Foster (2003), there are some common personality traits – they tend to be responsible for the death of someone close. This trait is not clearly stated in the text, so we need to fill in this blank to make sense of the character. Unfortunately, the characters, such as Haku, are rarely the protagonist. Instead, their death is often used to move the plot forward.

After sacrificing his life for his sister, Haku turned into the Kohaku River. Haku is the river’s name. Spirits don’t remember their name, why they died or what they were doing before they turned into a spirit. After sacrificing his life for his sister, Haku turned into the Kohaku River. Haku is the river’s name. Spirits don’t remember their name, why they died or what they were doing before becoming a spirit. Chihiro says that the Kohaku River no longer exists because of the new apartment complexes where the river used to be. It must be at least a few years that have passed since the traumatic event. Her parents are moving away from the old town to start a new life to rebuild the family relationship because some family problems are incurred from their son’s death. They may be moving because the river no longer exists.

Chihiro starts her adventure to save her parents, then to save Haku. These are the stated motivation of the heroes in the movie. There is a common trait among parents, Chihiro, and Haku in the spirit world. All of them seek an establishment place. Chihiro and her parents are moving away from the home they lived. Haku lost the river he used to haunt. I think the hidden motivation of the hero was to find the next place to inhabit. Since Chihiro could not remember her brother’s death, she moves forward (grown) by placing how someone sacrificed his life for her in the past.

Neither parents nor Chihiro will have a clear memory of their disappearance. They will continue with their life after they moved into a new home.

In Japan, many folklores spoke about Kamikakushi, spirited away. The Japanese title of this movie is “Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakishi.” Kamikakushi means “hidden by the gods,” and people often use the word to explain the disappearance of people and their reappearance. Many returned with either fuzzy memories or no memories of their disappearance. The folktales were made so that the parents or people close to the missing people could deal with the tragic disappearance of someone they love (Matsuura, 2019).

There is personal development in Chihiro her adventures in the spirit world. When Chihiro’s father said to Chihiro,” A new home and a new school? It is a bit Scary”, Chihiro replied. “I think I can handle it.” We will never know whether she remembers her past after she is out from the spirit world. She may remember her traumatic events. Even she remembers her traumatic event, and I feel that Chihiro could make peace in her mind to move on with her life. I think Haku left the spirit world where he was trapped and came back to Chihiro’s world to protect her as her protective spirit (Shyugorei) just as promised to Zeniba – This is an ending I imagined after revisiting the film.

This is the second time I did a literary analysis. Literature is just like art. The key to understanding the literature is the motivation behind the techniques the creator intentionally used. Miyazaki left out what happened to them or Haku for the movie. So, this will be up to the audience to fill in the blank – that is the exciting part of literary analysis. And, it is interesting to find out how I come up with a different perspective from what I remembered from 20 years ago.

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How to Learn in a Digital Environment

There are multiple ways to learn. The introduction of Internet technology enables us to gather knowledge online. When I was young, accessing the internet was expensive since we were charged by the minute. I still remember it took us almost 6 hours to download low-grade pictures. Although the internet was more accessible when I was in the university, the students used a hybrid way (library in person or online) to do their academic research. I still can’t forget how excited I was to access academic journals from the online library. By the time I was doing my MBA, most people exclusively used the internet for their research. 

We can gain many types of information from the internet. I do not have to physically go to a library to access journal or newspaper articles. You can quickly learn the name of a capital city of a country. I admit my life changed because of the internet; however, I sometimes fear I skipped a fundamental step of the learning process, such as creating my hypothesis or acquiring foundational knowledge of a subject. I admit that the internet enhanced our lives in many ways, yet I sometimes fear losing something due to acquiring convenience. 

When I was a child, we once had a big argument about why frogs lay eggs over the water surface. Most of us were eight-year-olds. Since we lived in a tiny city in Japan, we knew we could always find frog eggs over a still creek near our school. The argument started with a simple question from one of the children. We used to catch Tadpoles in the water; we all agreed that eggs must be over the water’s surface. But how do all frogs know where to lay eggs? We had an excellent, elementally teacher who encouraged us to discuss a child’s questions. Instead of answering the question, she told all of us to find out the reason. I checked the school library and my father’s library. I pulled out the encyclopedia and looked for the answer. I do not remember whether I found out the answer by myself this time. I do remember how hungry I was to find out the answers. I think the experience impacted me immensely later in my academic life. 

I found out later in my life that my school teacher guided us to understand why a frog lays eggs above the water surface by using Bloom’s Taxonomy. Bloom’s Taxonomy elaborates the framework of the six levels of learning stages. According to Bloom’s Taxonomy (as cited in Armstrong, n.d.), we go through six cognitive levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis, and Evaluation. 

Figure 1. Bloom’s Taxonomy Vanderbilt Center for Teaching

Knowledge: Recognize or Remember facts, terms, or basic concepts without understanding why.

Comprehension: Demonstrate or Understand the reasons behind the facts, terms, or fundamental concepts.

Application: You can apply acquired knowledge to solve problems in a new situation.

Analysis: You can analyze and connect or differentiate the facts, terms, or basic concepts in a single dimension.

Synthesis: You can connect the facts, terms, or basic concepts with multiple dimensions.

Evaluation: You can evaluate ideas or create or plan a new idea or a product from facts, terms, or basic concepts.

It would be easier if the teacher just answered the children’s questions; however, we would have stopped at the first cognitive level, knowledge. A year before, we came up with an identical question with a different teacher. The teacher scolded us for discussing something irrelevant to the subject. I was fortunate to have a teacher who motivated us to think and research. Remembering my early school year learning experience prompted me to question whether current children get this learning experience since they can obtain answers very conveniently from the internet.

Finding quick answers from the internet can easily prevent us from progressing in our cognitive level of information if we are not careful. The use of the internet can make completing our assignments efficient; however, I am not sure of the effectiveness of the learning. I have no desire to quit using the internet since it is convenient; however, we must be mindful of how we integrate technology into our learning process. 

I understand the theory behind Bloom’s Taxonomy, yet, I caught myself getting easy answers from the internet. A YouTube channel shows dropping an ant from 10m, 20m, and 30m. The show was demonstrating terminal velocity, and nothing happened to the ant. I should have known the theory since I learned it in my undergrad. Instead of putting my effort into understanding the idea, I was satisfied finding the terminology. 

My husband, who teaches at a university, told me that finding out “what” from the internet would help us think about the idea or information ourselves. It would be ideal to think about the idea before finding out the “why”. Processing the information with the concept first helps us identify what we need to find out from further research. Now, you have more purposes or objectives, and you can progress into the 2nd cognitive level of comprehension. Of course, we still need to be careful about biases caused by doing so; but it still enables us to progress to a higher cognitive level. 

There is nothing wrong with using the internet, but we must be mindful of how we use it to acquire our knowledge. There are steps I use to prevent my experience of acquiring information from limiting my knowledge. Once I obtain the information, I rephrase the concept within one day. Then, I categorize the idea; then, I link it to other information I acquired previously. I used to do this process on paper with great difficulty. Now I use Zotero, a computer application, to do this process. It is a free app until you become a heavy user. I discovered this software from a book, How to Take Smart Notes from Sonke Ahrens. This made me re-think how I learn. If you get a chance, it is a good book to read.

References

Ahrens, S. (2017). How to take smart notes: one simple technique to boost writing, learning and thinking – for students, academics and nonfiction book writers. [Kindle Edition]. North Charleston

Armstrong, P. (n.d.). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/