2022 is the year where I will not just help others, but also help myself more – or so at least is the plan. While I will never become a selfish person, I’ll try to act a bit more in my own self-interest, while still doing what I truly love to do: to help others, and especially help others to help others.
The first part of this journey revolves around some substantial changes to my schedule to allocate time for such matters, including blogging, social media (esp. LinkedIn), and creating related content. I’ve barely done any of these for many years, and frankly, it’s been nice to not worry about social media at all and the benefits that bring. But now is the time to get back to these matters. It is especially time to get back to it so that I can better and more profoundly share all the cool things we’re working on and the great people we work with – which ought to get as much recognition and exposure as possible.
2022 is also the year that I’ll start vlogging. Why vlogging? Well, the reason for this is essentially 3-fold: 1) My girlfriend (Polly) and I want to start this fun adventure together of vlogging and doing more videos, and basically capturing more moments and memories of our time together. Neither of us are very active in terms of social media sharing, and we’ve hardly shared anything publicly over the last two years – but we’ve taken quite a lot of photos for ourselves. However, we both feel that video adds another interesting dimension to our experiences that photos or writeups just simply can’t. And, as we aspire to grow old together, who knows – they might help us remember things when our old brains start to deteriorate. So, we’ve put up a vlog channel on YouTube to make ourselves accountable and have fun. Primarily it’s just made for ourselves, but we’ll see over time whether it can be a vehicle of inspiration to others. If so, that’s cool. If that doesn’t end up happening, that’s not a big deal.
The second reason for wanting to start to vlog is because I want to get better at creating videos and stories. All the various social impact organizations that I support could greatly benefit from additional videos and enhanced story-telling to communicate the issues they’re addressing and how they’re solving it. So, if I can play a part in that, then that would be fabulous.
My third reason for wanting to start to vlog is because I feel that I have a lot of useful information to share, be it productivity tips, living a life with purpose, or anything in between. However, I haven’t spent nearly enough time positioning myself and my expertise in these areas, and creating such content for the public. So, I aspire to do a lot more of this in the year ahead, especially starting with a focus on certain software such as Weava and Notion but also smaller impactful productivity hacks.
So, going forward I’ll allocate about 1-2 hours at a minimum for this every day until it truly becomes a new habit in my life. Once I’ve expressed my initial thoughts here, then I will write a more specific plan of what this will exactly entail and how (Gotta make the goals SMART goals! Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
Overall, the overarching theme of my increased presence-to-be revolves around positioning myself more as an expert in relevant areas. I mean, most people, except for my close colleagues, got hardly any idea of the work I am currently doing. In terms of a further breakdown of this, I can think of three branches within it that need to be better nurtured: namely network, content creation and exposure.
Network: For too long I’ve largely neglected the aspects of networking, and usually relied on my colleagues whenever network and networking-related needs arise. This needs to stop, and for one, I actually gotta start thinking about networking as part of the job. Too often I’m just too task-focused and push relation-building to the side (as a day only has 24 hours!). But I do realize, that in truly achieving greater impact, more networking and collaboration needs to occur on a personal level – and one person (me) can also do so much in silo….
Content creation: In terms of content creation I will focus on a few different elements that tie together aspects I enjoy. There will be posts about software (or subset/aspect of it), there will be posts with personal reflection, learning and takeaways, and there will be clear “tips” type of articles. One of the immediate things I gotta figure out is what to do with my old bucket list website vs this personal blog. Can they co-exist? If so, how? Or just jonandrepedersen.com? The sensible step may be to split BLF to just the experiences and share how such could be done, whereas anything else lives on JAP page.
What is the point of content creation? Well, one obvious aspect is in regards to personal growth and personal branding. But this will also help force me to stay on top of being a motivational, competent individual who stays on top of my game.
What could I “sell” as part of my content creation journey? Assuming I acquire relevant traffic, I will use Google AdSense to earn some extra pocket money – but that is quite small and not sufficient. Therefore, a second aspect should focus on growing a mailing list and think about the additional aspects that could be upsold, including e-books, affiliation sales to relevant software, personal coaching. This is probably the area in my life that is the weakest for me. I’m so little motivated by money and rarely do anything to pursue it. Probably over the last 4-5 years, one of my main new years’ resolutions have been to start to care – but so far nothing has really changed. I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but I also got enough to go by – and I live a fairly simple lifestyle. But, I’ve always struggled with actually charging for my time and my support. I don’t like it and simply want to help as many as possible, but I realize this is a super important area that I need to improve in regards to. Anyways, I think in order to be a better provider to Polly as we continue our relationship, this really has to change.
Exposure: Beyond self-content creation, I’ll need to do much better at utilizing the things I already have at my fingertips, such as sharing FSI and Weava content, engaging in relevant discussions, attending relevant seminars, and so forth. More specifically, I will do this at least 3 times per week, but ideally once per day.
Another key challenge that needs to happen for this to occur properly is better time management. With this I mean especially to have clearer timeslot separation between my various work roles, which is probably confusing to everybody in the world except for myself (and maybe also myself?). Anyways, it largely revolves around work with HKU, FSI, and Weava, plus some smaller other personal aspirations. My main challenge in this regard right now is that there is always something that can be done in regards to these 3, so I always feel behind and never get time for anything else. In order to solve this I’ll need to set clearer X amount of hours devoted to each, and if I’m unable to finish those within the timeframe, then so be it, it shouldn’t matter and affect the spare time beyond those dedicated hours.
However, this change will also mean that more of the chill time with Polly needs to be devoted towards this journey (and likely the same for Polly in terms of her dreams and pursuits). Say, for example, less chill and fun time together and more time spent working together. Sometimes however this can be done in a smart way, e.g., we can still watch a movie together while simultaneously doing some work towards our personal goals, listen to relevant podcasts when cleaning, etc. but generally, it will just require a greater shift to doing “work” together/next to each other.
Peace out – and onto more specific and clear articles in the future.
Whatever you’re doing, and wherever you may be. I hope that 2022 becomes an amazing year for you and yours. Keep doing your best. Life is short enough as it is. Better not leave it with any regrets!