About flour in the meal swallow and flying shit

Curlew

Today I have brought you an article from the category: Knowledge we don’t actually need in everyday life and that is precisely why we keep it in mind.

Those who know me well know that ornithology has long been close to my heart and that in this context I make a tiny contribution to improving the climate, at least in my garden. Recently, when I was looking for a gift for a friend with whom I share a passion for observing wild birds, I came across the German book “The Names of European Birds” by Viktor Wember. It is scientifically structured, with a lot of diverse information and an attempt to derive or explain both the German and scientific names of the birds.

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The Crazy PMPprep – A Novel

Let me say this right away: I don’t really know anything about project management – what I do know is just enough for the usual small projects of my professional and private everyday life. And I don’t need to know much more about it.

My motivation for reading “The Crazy PMPprep” (A novel to prepare for PMP and CAPM certification) was therefore not to further qualify myself in the field of project management (or even to get certified), but simply curiosity. I witnessed various discussions between the authors during the writing process and wanted to know what exactly it was all about.  So I asked the authors, my Harlequin colleagues BCO and RGE, for the manuscript and after only 30 pages fell for the charm of the tragic hero Henri, music therapist in a psychiatric institution.

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Empathy and dead aunts

A few days ago I had a look at a training video on LinkedIn. The course was about “Empathy for Customer Service Professionals” and while I was actually looking for something completely different I was hooked. (That’s what often happens on these platforms – the algorithms send you merrily through the inventory and at some point you’ve completely forgotten what you were originally looking for).

The course was relatively short and an American trainer explained clearly what empathy is all about. Some practical examples were role-played.

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Did I get this error wrong?

I am currently engaged in lifelong learning. And while learning to learn, I came across the terms “mistake“ and “error”. Very familiar vocabulary in everyday life. But as a learner, I asked myself the typical systemic question: What exactly is the difference here? Although the terms denote something different, there are also similarities. Do we always consciously deal with the different meanings of these terms in everyday life? According to my observations, not really, and I include myself in that. So, since different terms also mean different things, I set out to find the difference. What, at best, could I learn from this difference, I asked myself curiously. Well, let’s see…

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On the art of thinking together (Part 1)

For us, the tree symbolises the essence of dialogue: We come together, connect with ourselves, the others and open a common thinking space in which new things can emerge. 

Are you one of those people who think meetings are a waste of time? You could work so well if it weren’t for those constant discussions. And then the behaviour of the “fellow-meeters”: you start to relate something and are impatiently interrupted. “Why don’t you get to the point? We don’t have all day.” Or they pick out one aspect of your contribution and react exclusively to it, perhaps even with suspicion. Or a participant explains to you for the umpteenth time what you already know and have known for a long time. Or you are told: “That won’t work”, coupled with body-language reactions of devaluation, and your ideas are brushed aside. And so on, and so on…

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