50 year old’s are helping everyone but themselves: their aging parents, and their kids don’t earn enough to move out of the basement.

They live in fear of being pushed out. Then, that very day comes - before they’re ready for it. This is an epidemic. Ok, it’s not a disease. But, can we all agree that its troubling? Half of the people who retired in 2012 left the workforce sooner than they expected to.

This is a sad story. And, it gets worse.

20 or 30 years of industry knowledge leave with them. 25 year olds, who are less expensive to employers , and who value opportunities to learn and grow more than pay, seek mentors who have the time to groom them. But, we’re all doing more with less, leaving little time to take a coffee with a junior employee.

People are frustrated. And somewhere along the line, more experienced workers may stop planning their roadmap for career progression. “We have more to give, but where to give it?” says one boomer who works for a Fortune 500 company. “Nobody wants to help someone who’s been on the job for 26 years map a career plan.”

This isn’t the case at every company, of course. But it is the case in many.

We can make life better for people — millennials, Generation X’ers and Boomers. We can make business better for companies without disenchanting their workers. But, we have to think differently about how we develop people — and why we develop people.

The CFO asked the CEO: What happens if we invest in developing people & they leave us?

CEO : What happens if we don’t & they stay?

Why we develop people

Allow me to make the strictly dollars and cents case first: Workers who’ve been on the job for years inherently learn insights about the industry that aren’t written in books or taught in classrooms. They’ve seen the cycles of the market. This industry knowledge is valuable because it not only helps your company be proactive with business planning, but it also helps you onboard new employees faster as these experienced professionals become mentors and champions to the lesser experienced workers.

Harder to quantify, but equally impacting business success is developing people because the better they’re informed, educated, and skilled, the better their lives become as a whole person. And, when people bring their whole selves to work, their engagement as an employee improves. They deliver a higher quality work product. They have more and better ideas. They help others on their team improve.

How we develop people

How we develop people has to then come from a sincere place that considers the employee’s personal identity and interests, along with their work function. This is the whole person. We can no longer separate developing someone to being a better executive from training them to deliver better public talks. We must be better at our jobs and better at connecting with others — building relationships.

When we create collaborative environments, where employees are encouraged (and processes are implemented) to build genuine relationships among associates, boomers become teachers and continue to learn themselves while still contributing to the bottom line — only now with more vigor and excitement. Fresh talent also gets what it wants, the opportunity to learn the necessary skills and get the required experiences to one day run the place. They get an advocate who’s seen it all. When this happens, we naturally create genuine continuous learning communities in our organizations.

Future business success is put at risk when, simply because a work force ages, they no longer have a place in the learning cycle and have access to mentorship programs. Aging and high levels of contribution aren’t divergent concepts. One can age and still be developing new skills and innovate. One can age and still have aspirations to win new levels of responsibility and leadership positions.

In developing your talent, all of your talent, you ensure your people can deliver their best work. And their best work helps your business thrive.

Don’t run off your boomers was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Now on Classana.com, all of the resources associated with any of your interests are categorized into subjects. So, if you want to see the latest stuff in Entrepreneurship, Ruby on Rails, or Bundled Payments, everything is categorized into nifty groups that are a lot easier to navigate.

One of the most useful features of Classana is Collections, which allows you to create a group of resources that relate to a particular subject. Think of them as a curriculum, of sorts. For example, check out this snapshot of the Choose Yourself by James Altucher Collection built by Classana CEO, Will Lucas.

Lastly, with so many great Collections cropping up, we’re featuring a few notable ones! Featured Collections are now prominently displayed at the top of your dashboard.

We’re working hard everyday to make Classana better for you, and hope you enjoy this update!

A New Look was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I typically don’t write out talks that I give as I’m more comfortable in ‘feel the energy of the audience’ and ‘read my crowd’ types of presentations.

But there are some specific things that I wanted to share with you today , because the prevailing wisdom we teach about how to achieve your goals can’t keep up with our changing world. The way we communicate, our technology, and our tastes are changing much faster than our lectures.

For instance, building a paper resume and sending it out to potential employers might not be as effective as building a personal website that showcases your work. And building a website that showcases your work might not tomorrow be as effective as finding a problem your future potential employer might have, pitching them a solution to the problem they have, and convincing them that there are more ideas where that came from, and that you’re capable (based on the skills you’ve acquired) to do the work well.

So my aim in writing this out was to be very deliberate — providing you as much value as I can in the least amount of time I possibly could.

Here’s my philosophy: In the early days of anything, you should say “yes” a lot. As you get older, or deeper into, you should start saying “no” more.

The idea is that in the early stages of life, or the early days in a new job, and other similar beginnings, having a dynamic and a wide ranging set of experiences that you couldn’t have scripted, simply by saying “yes” to the interesting, helps you determine where your passions truly are. And these adventures expose you to possibilities that you haven’t considered, and they open the door to opportunities you couldn’t have thought to ask for.

When you’re saying “yes”, it’s knowing that you want to ultimately be a journalist, but while you’re in college, you’re helping your roommate start a company in your dorm room. It’s knowing you want to practice law, but while you’re young, wild, and free, you’re taking a glass-blowing course at the museum. It’s doing things that take you outside of your normal routine. It’s going where you never know what’s going to be next.

The adventurous life takes you to new places. It introduces you to new people. It reveals truth. It gives you clarity of vision, and purpose.

You can’t always make sense of why you’re helping your friend start that company other than it sounded like a cool idea, or why you’re in a glass-blowing course, other than it looked like a fun way to spend a few Thursday nights. But, these are unique experiences that give you advantages and perspectives that not only make you more valuable to where you decide to focus your energy in your career, but they also make your life rich.

It’s true that you won’t always end up where you thought you might. This is a surprise for a great deal of students. If the research is true, and in my experience, it is; 70% of the people in this room will switch their majors while in college. And a large number of that 70% will switch 3 times or more.

And, 6 out of every 10 of you won’t even work in the field you study in college. While these are sad statistics for much of our society — it doesn’t have to be for you. Because the wonderful experiences you step out on, the exciting and exhilarating places where you find yourself when you say “yes” only increase your chances of ending up somewhere far better than you originally imagined. Your world broadens. Your opportunities soar.

The conventional wisdom says the earlier you find out what you want to do, the better off you might be in pursuit of that thing. Its true that if I knew I wanted to be a computer engineer at 3 years old and spent my life in front of a computer, I might be a highly respected programmer. But if I want to change the world, getting out into the world better helps me identify pervasive problems that my skill can solve in a unique and interesting way.

As you get older or more experienced, you should start to say “no” more. This happens not at a certain age specifically, but as you begin to formulate where you’d like to focus your efforts.

Saying “no”, is at this stage, the new way of saying “yes”. It’s saying yes to your dream. Its saying yes to your calling, or your purpose. Its saying no to the things that you find don’t matter as much as you they once did.

But, without saying “yes” first, your ideas on what you want are limited. You simply haven’t tasted enough.

Saying “no” keeps you from getting stuck in jobs that don’t feed your spirit. Saying “no” gives your mind a break from decision fatigue. You know what you want, so you go get it. You go get it with more vigor. And, with more intensity. You go get what you want, and you aren’t distracted by the things that want you.

Three keys to living an adventurous life. A life worth living.

• Do something. Get involved. Take a chance. = Steve Jobs rendered one of my favorite quotes “You can’t always connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards.” You won’t always know why you’re doing something, but in the end — it will make sense. So, don’t just talk about new experiences. Intentionally make them.
• It doesn’t work without people. — The people you’ll work with are the only things that make your dreams a reality. As bright as you might think you are, you can only go so far alone. There is a scripture that reads “…one will put one thousand to flight, but two will put ten thousand to flight.” You would think if one put 1,000, two would put 2,000. But having the partnership multiplies their impact. You get exponential growth. You can do more with your friends than you can alone. So find people who complement your skills, and join them on a worthy battle.
• It’s about service. If you create value for others, you will live a valuable life. Peter Diamandis once said, if you want to be a billionaire, help a billion people. The world has a lot of great problems yet to be solved. The ideas to solve those problems are in this room.

So, do something that makes your knees shake. Try something that makes your hands sweat. Do something you think you’re unqualified to do. Who is the gatekeeper? Who have you given permission to be authority over your potential? You’ll learn more being in the game than you’ll learn in any other way.

Many might say “you can’t” — but nobody can stop you.

An Adventurous Life was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Our first |Method Fireside Chat was held at Black Cloister Brewery in downtown Toledo. Classana CEO Will Lucas penned an intro to our Fireside Chats that you can find here.

Below is the video recorded live at the event. Enjoy!

Fireside Chat with Sam Melden was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Crawling on the floor can change your life.

It’s easy to watch a four-minute YouTube video of Ido Portal and dismiss his “movement culture” as another crazy fad. Seriously — what’s with all the writhing around on the floor? But behind his practice is a carefully crafted method over 20 years in the making.

From all around the world, Ido’s been gathering best practices from dancers, martial artists, yogis, and more. He’s trying to figure out how all these different disciplines fit together by looking for connections between different schools of thought, to find valuable ideas and practices.

His learning style has generated him thousands of followers.

We want to learn new skills too. While Ido and his people want to perform better cartwheels and lizard crawls, we want to code websites, build startups, and become photographers. Our goals are different, but the paths to achieving them have a lot in common.

This is one of Ido’s models: Isolate. Integrate. Improvise. Use it to be better.

ISOLATE

Any complex skill can be broken down into simpler pieces. This is called “chunking”.

For example, if you want to learn how to use Ruby on Rails, you don’t have to try and build a whole website all at once. You can chunk the skill into different parts. Learn easier things first, then gradually learn harder techniques as you get experience. Trying to digest too much at once would be confusing and overwhelming for most of us.

Isolating weak points allows you to better focus your energy, so you can turn weaknesses into strengths. Weak points are often bottlenecks in overall performance.

INTEGRATE

Integration has two meanings in this model. First, it means sequencing — combining all of your chunks. For example, once you understand all the moving pieces in a Ruby on Rails app, you begin to see how they all fit together and make a website. With a strong understanding of all the pieces, you’re better equipped to see the whole that they produce.

Once you’ve successfully integrated in the first sense, then you combine different skills. This kind of integration is the most powerful and underutilized idea in learning. Looking for the connections between different disciplines allows us to create powerful, new ideas.

Maybe you sang in a choir in high school or church — the way that your choir teacher/director organized and ran rehearsal, teaching first the independent parts for the bass, tenor, alto, and soprano, then showing how they harmonize might offer some insight into managing a project team.

Finding the unexpected and incredibly potent connections between ideas/skills is what turns good learners into great learners. What turns great learners into industry-changing learners? Read on . . .

IMPROVISE

This is the pinnacle of the model. Ido Portal refers to improvisation as “the highest form of practice”. Improvisation is making it up as you go.

Finance legend Charlie Munger is a master of improvisation. His partner Warren Buffet claims that he has one of the best “30 second minds” in the business world because if you ask Munger to solve a complex problem, he’ll come up with a good solution within 30 seconds.

The 30 second mind is an amazing tool for any professional. Imagine how many fewer meetings we would have if it took us only half a minute to come up with good solutions! It takes work to build your successful improvisation muscle. Munger spent much of his career reading hundreds of pages a day. Good improv is built on practice, practice, and more practice. It might take years for some of us to reach the peak of improv, but isolation and integration offer us the chance to take our learning to the next level.

Originally published at classanamethod.com on February 28, 2016.

Ido Portal & How to Learn was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The advice of an Austrian psychologist and Holocaust survivor can help you have a successful career.

Viktor Frankl wrote one of my favorite books, Man’s Search for Meaning. It’s mainly about helping people find meaning and purpose in life. Some of my other favorite thinkers and doers, likeApple founder Steve Jobs, famously urge us to find that passion and distinct purpose. Once we’ve found it, everything else will fall into place. At least, that’s the takeaway.

People like Jobs are gifted with a fiery sense of purpose that might shape their entire lives. The rest of us, however, aren’t so lucky. Many of us won’t find a singular drive hidden somewhere within ourselves.

Have you ever stopped to question if “What is my purpose in life?” is the wrong one in the first place?

Frankl teaches that we shouldn’t ask, “What is the meaning of life?”. Rather we should ask “What is the meaning of my life at this moment?”. He compared our search for meaning to asking the question, “What is the best move in chess?” The fact is, there is no best move in chess. A move is good or bad depending on your opponent, the specific context of the game, and other factors.

There is no “best move,” only “the best move in this situation.”

The workplace is changing quickly. In 20 years, we’ll be living in a radically different world. Locking yourself into a single career path now be disastrous. That job might be completely irrelevant 20 years from now; at least, it might look radically different.

The idea of a career is itself going extinct. More and more people are having “careers” — that is, they change direction two or three times over the course of their lives.

Keep a flexible mindset. Read new books. Continue to learn new skills. Five or ten years from now, having a diverse skillset will allow you to transition from one path to another. Even if you stay in the same road, you’ll still benefit as you’ll be more innovative — you’ll keep a fresher perspective on the world and your industry.

Remaining flexible, you open yourself to opportunity. By being versatile and learning new skills, you create opportunity. In today’s world where many skilled jobs are increasingly being replaced by automation, the ability to integrate skills in a creative way is a surefire way to have a thriving career — or careers.

Originally published at classanamethod.com on March 9, 2016.

The Best Move was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Who has time to make mistakes? Trial and error is a power learning tool, but many of us are too busy to use it. Fortunately, we can save time by learning from others. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we can master the best of what other people have already figured out.

There are many ways to learn from others, but this post will focus on modeling.

Modeling:

• Finding someone you admire
• Spending time with them
• Actively mimicking them

In a complex world, it’s not easy to identify straightforward cause-effect relationships. Why do some companies thrive and others wither and die? Why do some people get better grades? These questions have many answers, but none of them are simple.

Modeling allows us to cut through the mess. By mimicking successful people, we can hopefully also mimic their success. If you want to be a better tennis player, then you should play people who are better than you and try to copy what they do. This advice seems obvious, but we so rarely apply it to our lives.

Writers try to learn from better writers, but how many students try to learn from better students? How many programmers spend time with better coders, learning their secrets? Modeling is a secret that’s hidden in plain sight — we all know it, but it seems so obvious that we forget to do it.

Once we bring modeling out of the darkness and into the light, it can change our lives. “Monkey see, monkey do” might sound simplistic, but it’s one of the fastest, most effective ways to learn.

We can learn what traits make someone better than us, then make those traits our own.

Be careful, though. Specific traits are often only a small part of a larger context. If your model spends an hour reading every day, you might not see the same results if you copy only that habit. You must go deeper. What habits make them a successful reader? Do they write in the margins? Highlight text? Stop every few paragraphs and try to integrate what they’ve just read with other ideas?

We can’t get away with being shallow copies. There’s a reason why disciples live with their religious teachers, why monks seclude themselves in monasteries: in order to mimic somebody well, you have to spend serious time with them. It matters who we spend our time with. If you want to be a better learner, you should hang out with great learners.

Classana gives you the opportunity to rub elbows with potential models. You can see what paths others have taken to become successful. More importantly, you can meet these innovative trailblazers. Our Fireside Chats let you peek into the minds of the successful and master the best of what they’ve already figured out.

Our first Fireside Chat with Sam Melden is coming up this very Thursday! Don’t miss this rare opportunity to learn from a local leader in innovation, learning, and service.

Originally published at classanamethod.com on March 22, 2016.

Monkey see, monkey do was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

New to Classana is Collection editing.

Quick reminder about Collections, these are unique learning paths built by users. Think of them as curriculum sets.

They can contain an unlimited number and mix of books, classes, articles and more.

I built this Collection with a few articles written by James Altucher. Now, I want to change the name of the collection, and add a description.

Here’s how to do that.

First, I just need to be on the Collection page.

Now, I added this title when I created the collection, but now I want to change it.

To change the title of the Collection, I click on it.

Choosing Yourself — James Altucher

Now, I want to add a brief description so people visiting this public Collection know what its all about.

That’s it!

Originally published at classanamethod.com on March 24, 2016.

NEW: Collection Editing was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In our latest update, with any new or existing resource you’ve added — a book, class, article, or anything else, you can now add a custom image to it.

And, it’s really simple to do.

So, you’ll first just need to be on the resource page, and click the camera icon.

Find the image you want to use for this, and select it. Thats it!

Originally published at classanamethod.com on March 24, 2016.

NEW: Custom Resource Images was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

People kill their dreams every single day. And, that’s not even the sad part. The part that ails me is many of them don’t know their dreams have long since kicked the bucket.

Look around. How many people do you know have actually achieve the things they dreamed about? Likely, a small percentage. Of course, your friends have ideas, some of them really good ideas. Many of those dreams even align with their abilities and skills. This never got anybody anywhere though. What gets you what you want is the decision to stop asking for permission and ending all forms of waiting.

Permission-seeking has stalled an innumerable amount of possibilities. Waiting has killed more dreams then any failed attempt at achievement. This is death.

When you’ve identified what it is you want, you must act. In a small way, or in a large way. But action must happen. There is no decision without acting.

Act. Act relentlessly. Act without reservation. Act with audacity.

I meet a lot of people who want to start businesses. I met a lady recently who wanted to represent artists and help them manage their careers. Its an idea she’s been thinking about for some time. Surely there are creators who want more exposure. She’s waiting though. She has a full-time day job so she has time to first ‘gets all her ducks in a row’. This won’t work. It never does.

I’ve met no less than 11 would-be authors recently. I should see regular blog posts from these people with excerpts and ideas that their books will ultimately contain. Many of them are missing opportunities every day to sell me their yet-to-be-written books. Your audience should be built a full 18–24 months before you even think of publishing. If nobody reads your blog, nobody will buy your book.

All dreams can be resurrected. But first, the way you think has to be. That’s harder.

Originally published at classanamethod.com on February 26, 2016.

But, you must act now was originally published in Classana Method on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.