I’m pursuing an Independent PhD. This is a post about how that’s going. For more details on what an Independent PhD is and why you should start one, check out this post over here.
What a crazy busy quarter. on 12MAY I got an email from Seth Godin’s Akimbo program saying that the Story Skills Workshop was opening on 18MAY. My entire life got squeezed into 8-hour writing/workshopping/critiquing/responding. It was crazy. But. That workshop was one of the most important I’ve taken. It transformed my ability to communicate. As of 01JUL, I am shiny and new and better.
I didn’t do a great job recording my progress, but here’s what I remember:
2020 Q2
April:
BizDev:
— Cultivating community on Slack workspace.
— Website design.
Books:
— ??? I forgot to write them down!
Contemplative Practice:
— Daily 1–1.5 hour Metta practice (TWIM-esque).
— Twice weekly Insight Dialogue practice. Online.
Courses
— Facilitator Training for Dr Judson Brewer’s mindfulness-based habit change program.
— “The Practice of Inquiry in Teaching Mindfulness-Based Programs”. Brown University (Instructor: Florence Meleo-Meyer). Online.
— “Thinking Out Loud: Conversations on Early Buddhism”. Bodhi College. Online.
Teaching:
— 8-Week MBSR course. Online.
— MBSR-esque 1-hour meditation sessions for staff and faculty at Johns Hopkins University. Online.
Writing:
— Blog cultivation.
May
BizDev:
— Cultivating community on Slack workspace.
— Community building research.
— Website design.
— Coaching call with Sam.
Books:
— The Art of Solitude, Batchelor.
— Newsletter Ninja, Labrecque
— The Fortune Cookie Principle, Jiwa
— Marketing, a Love Story, Jiwa
— Storydriven, Jiwa
—The Right Story, Jiwa
— Meaningful, Jiwa
Contemplative Practice:
— Daily 1–1.5 hour Metta practice (TWIM-esque).
— Twice weekly Insight Dialogue practice. Online.
Courses
— Facilitator Training for Dr Judson Brewer’s mindfulness-based habit change program.
— “The Practice of Inquiry in Teaching Mindfulness-Based Programs”. Brown University (Instructor: Florence Meleo-Meyer). Online.
— Seth Godin and Bernadette Jiwa’s Akimbo “Story Skills Workshop”
— Weekly 1-hour training sessions for habit change facilitation.
— “Thinking Out Loud: Conversations on Early Buddhism”. Bodhi College. Online.
Teaching:
— MBSR-esque 1-hour meditation sessions for staff and faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
— Private habit change coaching.
Writing:
— Began daily writing practice.
— Much, much writing in Story Skills Workshop.
June
BizDev:
— Community building research.
— Storytelling training.
— Personal branding (moved my personal website over to are.na: ShannonMWhitaker.com).
— Professional website development (cultivate.gg).
Books:
— Get Together, Richardson, Huynh, Sotto.
— This is Marketing, Godin.
— The Art of the Interview, Grobel.
— Marketing Made Simpler, Miller.
—Path to Nibbana, Johnson.
Contemplative Practice:
— Daily 1–1.5 hour Metta practice (TWIM-esque).
— 19JUN-29JUN, 10-day “online” Metta retreat with [Dhamma Sukha](dhammasukha.org/).
Courses
— Akimbo Story Skills Workshop. (18MAY-06JUL)
— Akimbo Podcasting Workshop. (29JUN-SEP?)
Teaching:
— MBSR-esque 1-hour meditation sessions for staff and faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
Writing:
— With the help of the Story Skills Workshop, I wrote up a storm. Made one blog post in particular that I’m rather pleased with.
— And with the help of Marketing Made Simpler (and the inspiration from Story Skills), I put a ton of new copy up on Cultivate.gg. Also pleased. It’s super white-bread, but I am not embarrassed by it anymore. :)
I learned in Q2 that I am less interested in traditional BizDev and more interested in community/tribe building, à la Seth Godin. We’ll see how that pans out, but I’m very excited, in Q3, to begin broadcasting via a podcast and to re-vamp the onboarding/engagement of the Slack community (mostly, I think, with the help of the Get Together book and community).
Dharma PhD 