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The photo above represents a light-bulb that went off in my head tonight.

I have been working off and on with forty people in my class for the past few months. I am amazed at myself at how accepting I am of the various personalities. Not only have I been accepting of traits that would have driven me insane in a working environment, but I have actually learned to enjoy them.

I was trying to think about what might be so different about the Kevin in Karlskrona, and the Kevin in Tokyo, and I guess it has to do with two things.

1. I am "in school" which, by context, puts me in a "learning context" rather than a "getting things done" context. As such, I am more accepting of strategies that seem to contradict what feels most efficient to me. Even though the artificial goal is to complete a group project, I honestly don't care much about that (sorry group members). To me, the end goal is learning, which happens through the process, and is in no way reflected by grades. This includes learning how to work with others. Once learning how to work with others becomes part of the goal, the annoying differences between style suddenly have value.

   Of course, once I get back into the working world, where we are measured only by our output efficiency, I will, again, probably care more about completing the project, than I do about what I learn in the process. This will again cause me to become frustrated at work styles that seem (to me) to be slower and inefficient. Or just plain annoying.

   How can I keep this sense that the goal is to learn (including how to work with others) in a real life working situation where the real goal is just to get finished an move on to the next project?

2. I think that to some extent I am more accepting of people here because I know that we are working toward a somewhat shared goal. I know the intentions are good, and I want them to succeed, so I am willing to allow deviation from my preferred work style if I see it moving toward a goal I care about. In my old job however, even I didn't care about the end result, so there is no reason to tolerate any other work style. I simply wanted to get it done and get done with it as soon as possible, in the way that is most convenient to me. Sounds selfish, I know, but there were certainly no other reasons that I would want to do it.

I guess I have nothing to add. This is just an observation I made tonight. If I must have a takeaway, I guess it is that one more reason working toward a goal I truly believe in might make me happier is that I will be more accepting of the other people's work-styles, that in another situation would really tick me off, causing undo stress.

* * *

I suddenly feel a huge sense of responsibility to make my sustainability site better. I took a look at the server logs, and see that many people are coming to my site from search engines, searching for phrases like:

• snowball theory
• cultural sustainability
• definition sustainable development
• definition of leadership
• definition photosynthesis
• for sustainability ecosystems use sunlight as their source of energy
• what is made from fossile fules
• paul hermann muller- contributions to science
• definition systems thinking sustainability
• systems thinking sustainability
• sustainable mining
• positive & negative effects of technology on environmental sustainability
• sustainability failure
• eco footprint image earth s
• negative effects of not being a sustainable organisation
• how does ddt effect our ecosystem
• five principles of ecosystem sustainability
• natural step backcasting environmental sustainability
• facts about general principles of sustainability - in detail - taking one aspect

I regret that I had little to offer them in their search. I feel that I have to somehow fill my site with more value, more resources, more... something.

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