Poem: Find Yourself

Poem: Shadow of Your Destiny

Running out of Mondays

Restarting my composting. That is one my 2019 New Year resolutions. Actually, I’ve been wanting to restart my composting of wet kitchen waste at home since a year, but time has just slipped through my fingers and I finally realized that there are certain things I need a partner to work with me on—otherwise it’s a non-starter. So I messaged Firdosh and he says he will come next week. Now, I’m confident I will close it very soon. Thinking I could do it myself basically led to this goal bouncing from list to list till it made it to the most clichéd NYR list. I am beginning to realize now that so many things on my list are partner dependent. Exercise and diet are the same. I need a yoga teacher or someone to make me work out beyond my occasional walks. Otherwise, I keep thinking I’ll do it next Monday but next Monday is so elusive. Just like my desire to experiment with veganism for 3 months—how do I keep forgetting? I wish I could afford a consultant to come in and remove all non-vegan products from my kitchen and plan out a robust menu. Or maybe I could just do it myself? Megan from the vegan meetup had mentioned Challenge 22. I’m still to look it up. Running out of Mondays, running out of excuses and either I cannot prioritize, or either I am trying too hard to be something I am not—to do something that is trendy, moralistic or necessary, but not in my karmic path. Or maybe I am just not willing to develop new skills or become more disciplined. Which could be the same attitude that is also affecting my work. Four years ago I finished my life coaching certification and am yet to fully launch my practice. I love the idea of it, I’m clear on my next steps, but I think I need to do a self-coaching session to understand the hold-up. What do I want to do with my music? First step is vocal training. I’ve found the schools, I’m postponing working out the logistics. Am I unable to choose because I know none of these are critical to my survival? Or am I just doing instead of being? I cannot recognize the difference between the tie to do and the time to be? Is that why I am unable to choose and move forward with any of these goals that have been decorating my lists? When I close my eyes what do I see? I see my body fabulously fit. I see myself eating light and right (could be veganism is for me). I see myself singing and dancing while creating social change with my campaigns: respecting all four forms of nature more. I see my son growing up fast and furious and empowered by his mother who is working her ass off to be all that she can be and to create a world in which her values are reflected. A world she wants to raise her son in. But it all starts with me choosing to do or to be, and maybe TO DO is TO BE for me right now.

The Learning Experience vs Earning Experience Gap

Keeping aside all sorts of statistics, I thought the Learning Experience vs Earning Experience gap was important to discuss and debate. If I start by putting myself in the shoes of the learner, then we obviously learn to feel powerful—and that power can be income power or knowledge power. For instance, meet my cats who are proactive knowledge seekers.

It is very essential, each day that they wander and sniff across my entire apartment complex to learn about every activity or every living creature that has occurred/existed in the last 24 hours. Only then can they come home and sleep soundly. The exercise of acquiring knowledge and the knowledge itself gives them tremendous satisfaction. Similarly, many of us, often, make an effort to acquire a similar ‘knowledge’ power. But Google has now taken over this space. If you seek knowledge, you can Google, yada yada yada boom badok bang…

Who remain are eager income seekers and this is the audience that educational institutes, training/eLearning are seeking to empower. And despite increased variety, increased access and an ever-increasing number of ‘proactive learners/participants’—the employee/student’s learning experience is questionable and the ‘earning’ experience for each learner is diverse, to say the least.

People continually train/learn to invest in themselves, and they expect to immediately monetize that learning. Each course might be bespoke, multi-device, socially-connected, localized, collaborative or mentor-led—yet it is becoming harder to earn from what has been learnt. I had recently joined a class to upgrade a certain skillset and met many mid-career executives who were in the same boat. One year later, most of us are yet to certify and start practicing what we learnt. This is how it often unfolds…

From the other perspective, as a trainer/instructional designer—I find myself creating the same courses over and over for different clients. And I find myself thinking, if so many people are learning this content, then how come this topic isn’t dead and over? Are we re-learning things because of our failure to monetize what we have learnt? Or is it that we are not unlearning first? Yes. There is a gap here.

I think this gap can be addressed by adding two essential elements to the learning-to-earning journey (L2EJ): design thinking and coaching. Design thinking goes beyond just learner audience understanding and bespoke content selection. It is about understanding your learner/participant’s L2EJ and using that data as input when creating course content. This means fierce involvement from HR, Marketing and a subgroup of the learners/participants themselves.

While adding design thinking will get you real world, practical, paradigmatic buy-in, there is the entire issue of learner motivation. What makes me change my behaviour? This impacts the L2EJ. It's not just about teaching soft skills, it is the general emotional maturity of your participant/learner that needs a boost. This is where coaching comes in: coaching is not mentoring. Breaking down internal resistance is important for anyone to absorb their learning. Coaching helps in ROI and closes the L2E gap.

Take these small steps today for your next learning design approach. They are not complicated if you are confident about, and committed to, including them. Tell me how it goes!

The VELD Technique: Step 1

The VELD Technique: Step 1


“I needed to tell a story with the data. I also, determined that it needed to be visually distinctive to for it to be memorable”, Randy Krum from his book Cool Infographics: Effective Communication with Data Visualization and Design. The VELD Technique recognizes that before there were words, there were pictures (take the example of Egyptian hieroglyphics). Check out The Best Data Visualizations of 2013.

 In fact, one of the earliest known visualizations is a map. The famous Lascaux caves in France contain paintings on their walls that date from the paleolithic period. One particular painting shows three bright stars (Vega, Deneb and Altair) known as the Summer Triangle. The images around them may suggest ideas of constellations, ways to help remember the star patterns and navigate.

The Lascaux caves example clearly shows a context that birthed the content, that was elaborated through a visual, and which ultimately enabled learning. This fits into the four layers of our Visualization Concentric. Now, when we look at context, as an instructional designer, you need to take a holistic view.


While simple maps and diagrams represent static visuals, in today’s age of multimedia, we learning designers are afforded the privilege of working with animated infographics, tables, graphs and charts. We can even create click and reveal screens, or customized animations for an immersive learning experience—which are high in visual content and low in text. Hmmm… but where do we draw the line so that the visual does not take away from the learning? Welcome to the VELD Process.


There are 4-steps, which form the backbone of the VELD Technique. They are non-negotiable and linear. To stay true to the learning experience (learner empathy is paramount), a good instructional designer always begins by repositioning the content. What do I mean by this?

It means that you must first, check the pulse of the content—what is the essence of what the text is talking about. Next, you must take ownership of the voiceover/content. To do this, you can shift sentences, re-read and rewrite until you are sure that the content flows with intensity and clarity. Think of this step as laying the bricks and concrete. If you do not position the bricks with maximum tightness, your entire house will develop cracks.

Often, project managers, will argue that “we should not touch the client’s content” or that “rewriting the content is not within the scope of the project”. However, this rookie oversight always shows up cracks during the alpha review. I have been through this cycle so many times that in the interest of the project, my reputation and in full empathy with my invisible learner—I always begin by editing out redundancies, illogical transitions and overly-descriptive text, making sure NOT to misinterpret the client’s original expression/vocabulary.


Let me give you a for instance here. I received content to do with a company’s mission and vision. The characteristics of the mission were listed and then the definition of a vision was shared, with examples. I immediately decided that, ‘vision’ comes before ‘mission’ (re-adjusting for logical flow of content), I added active voice for both screen titles (Creating an Effective Vision, Creating an Effective Mission) and edited the language for typos, errors and punctuation inconsistencies.

This article is the second part of a 4-part series detailing Shalini Gogia’s VELD Technique. Next Monday, we will explore the next 3 steps of the VELD process.