I've started my Maven Course Accelerator program this week alongside a bunch of talented and very interesting people. From startup founders to singing coaches.

3 things I learned (or in some cases, I'd forgotten and re-learned) you might find useful:

• Having an external drumbeat to push you to make progress is really helpful – always more so than you realise
  
  Of course, I know this to be true from experience and from running my own programs. But yet again I was surprised by it :)
  
  There were steps I took this week to progress my cohort course, exercises I did and things I thought about that I could easily have done myself weeks ago – but didn't.
  
  The drumbeat of a program with a fixed schedule where we're expected to complete tasks on time made it happen.
  
• No matter how different people seem on a course there's always a lot to learn from them
  
  I had a brilliant idea in one of the working sessions that only I could possibly have thought of. 3 other people had the same idea :)
  
  More importantly, I got 2 other good ideas I wouldn't have thought of myself just by listening and paying attention to what others were doing.
  
• Restrictions set you free
  
  I'm the kind of person who takes pride in having the absolute best version of everything: landing pages, email formats, the right font size for readability, everything…
  
  As a result, I'll spend way too much time researching and tweaking things that make very little difference in the grand scheme of things.
  
  Maven is very templated. You just don't get those options. In this early beta version you can't even change the font.
  
  And while in some ways that drives me crazy, it also saves me a ton of time. Time I can focus on more important things that have a bigger impact.

Trying something new and pushing yourself a little bit (in my case with the pace of doing this while I have so much other stuff on) always results in learning.

I don't do it often enough, but just reflecting on that learning every week helps to consolidate it and make sure you take action on it.

What have you learned this week?