18 is my favourite number.
And I very much hoped that the one year I’d get to live with the number 18 in would be one to remember.
And it was… but not for the reasons I’d hoped for.
I find these final few weeks of December always offer a chance to pause and reflect on the past 12 months and looking back with complete honesty I’m really not a lot further along than where I was at the end of 2017.
I do take pride however in being able to say with absolute certainty that it’s not down to a lack of effort.
I’ve always wanted these blogs to be of help to you and your content creation, whether that be building your personal brand/business or whether you’re aspiring to move up the ladder in the professional content creation industry. I’m the first to admit I don’t have all the answers, but this blog has been a place for me to share a decade’s worth of experience in the hope there’s someone out there reading it that can use my thoughts and intuitions to benefit their own lives.
With this year having been one I’ve personally learned so much in, it only seemed right to summarise the lessons from my experience this year in the hope that you can read it and fast-forward through them and get to where you want to be faster.
I’ll start with the most recent one…
1. Everyday is filled with good and bad, successes and failures
Absolutely every single day and it’s not just big things in your career, it’s all the little things that make up life…
Sometimes you’ll get a really good night’s sleep, sometimes you won’t.
Sometimes you’ll make the perfect cup of tea in the morning, sometimes you’ll use way too much milk.
Sometimes you’re going to win that big pitch you’ve been working on, sometimes you’ll lose it.
My intuition of late has said to wake up expecting your day to be filled with highs and lows and not to get down if a few bad things happen each day.
Enjoy the good moments and shrug your shoulders at the bad and keep working towards your goal with your mood and attitude unaffected.
2. Nothing’s going to happen unless you make it happen
We’re moving a little in to the realms of cliched platitudes here, but we’ve all got things we want to do and whether that’s in our working or personal lives, nothing is going to happen if you sit back and wait for it.
If you want something to happen make the first move and get it in progress, don’t stop working on it until you’ve succeeded.
Don’t expect anyone else to do it for you. Not even fate.
If you want to change your lifestyle, your career, or your situation, you are entirely responsible for making that change.
3. Have no expectations of anyone
Both the people you’re closest to and mere acquaintances will sometimes act in ways you least expect. Whether that be professionally or personally, often in life people will disregard you entirely and act in their complete self interest. You should be fully prepared for this and always expect them not to act as you anticipate.
When they do be grateful, but when they don’t you won’t be surprised as you’ll be expecting it.
4. Everything takes longer than you think
So much longer, be prepared and always plan double the time you’ll think you’ll need for something, maybe triple it.
5. You don’t have the time to achieve absolute perfection
My intuition says that very rarely someone watches a piece of content twice these days, in fact there’s so much to choose from that very rarely will someone even decide to watch it once.
Yes, it would be amazing to put out piece after piece of perfect content but if you truly spend the time it takes to make perfection, most likely by the time it’s ready to post your audience will have moved on and their interest will be elsewhere.
Decide how much time you have to spend on a piece of content and do all you can to make it the best it can possibly be in that window.
6. Invest
In yourself, in your finances, in everything.
To everyone that’s taken a few minutes of their day to read my blog posts this year, I want to say a sincere thank you to you.
I fully acknowledge that right now I’m just a 28 year old content creator and that there’s a multitude of hugely successful business people in the world putting out great content which arguably would be of much more help to you. So the fact you’ve chosen to read mine mean’s the world, thank you.
In 2019 I’ll keep trying to put out more useful and more valuable content every week learning from all my experiences in 2018.
In this new year I wish you health, happiness and every success.
Jack
About Jack
I help people, brands and business communicate more effectively with their customers through visual, audio and written content.
I do this through Southpaw Sport, the sports content marketing company I’m currently building as well as on a freelance basis working for agencies and production companies.
Visit www.jacktompkins.co
You can follow me on YouTube where I post videos and vlogs sharing my experience and opinion on content production.
YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/user/jackt18
And my social media for behind the scenes look at what I’m up to
Instagram — @jackwrtompkins
Twitter — @jackwrtompkins