Okey, lets start again.
The program crashed and I lost all what I had written.
So, on Monday we had a guest lecture from Digipeople. Digipeople is add agency and they make mostly videos and infographics. Pekka Tuominen, was there to tell more about video making, marketing and infographics. He showed us a Ted Talk by Simon Sinek. Basically talk was about how people make decisions and how some ways to market are better than others. Subject that we had already covered couple weeks back when Anna told us how people make decisions. According to Simon Sinek it is coded deep in our DNA that we make decisions on the emotion side of your brain and then justify them on the logic side of our brain. So first why, then how and only then what.
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”
Pekka talked us through how video production works and how the planning is the key. So nothing new for me here, I wrote post about video making couple weeks back, you can check it here. Assignment we got after the lecture was to make a synopsis and then mood board for commercial. We didn’t have any guidelines or subjects which slowed down our teams’ process quite a bit. It is easier to make ideas when you have subject nor than when you can do anything. Anyways our team came up with a brilliant idea in my opinion. It was about the rumoured launch of “new” Nokia 3310 model which is assumed to happen soon. And which actually launched today.
I have actually heard about Digipeople before, because I have their E-book about how to create better infographics. I like making Infographics, even thought there is not many I have done “officially”. It is working with the data and making it easier to see. Downside to making them is that it takes lots of time, like Pekka said, usually two working days depending the amount of data and how much you have already made elements you can use. Of cource you can use pre made templates and that sort of stuff but anyway here are a 10 tools to make infographics with.
On Thursday we had the lovely Ronja Salmi as a lecturer. Her lecture didn’t have anything to do with digital marketing but she was very inspiring. She is an entrepreneur and a professional hostess. Her story was inspiring to me for many reasons; first to be that she didn’t have any education after high school, but still se has succeeded in life and had published three books. Three books! I have been always thought that by working hard you will accomplish great things. The secret of her which she shared was to work hard and not to wait around for inspiration. And by just writing and writing and pushing herself towards the goal and the deadline of her next book.
I am not sure if I agree or disagree with not waiting around for inspiration part. I mostly agree because things have deadlines and needs to be done and you can find an inspiration once you working. And of course, more you write easier it becomes to you.
But I also Disagree because, most of the creative work is artistic. It cannot be forced out because he quality is not the same without the inspiration. The you just do the work, driven by other goals than the joy of the work itself. Simon Sinek also talks about this in the video above. As a graphic designer I can do this work easily without inspiration, I just do. But I know before hand what I need to do and then I do it. I know what I need to include to the poster and I include all of them. But that’s it. There is no passion in that art work then. There is no inspiration. Same comes to writing. When I talk about the things that I am passionate about, I can write very quickly and lots, but if I just have to write, the quality of the writing doesn’t stay the same.
And still I agree with Ronja, with her other point about writing. Planning. Plan, then write and when you are done writing, edit. If you follow this guideline, I am sure the writing can be done without inspiration, but the planning is the part I would not do with out it.
The plan, write, edit strategy is the one I realised I use too. When I was required to write lots of essays, I developed this one pattern about how I write and nowadays I apply that into these blogposts. With essays, I started by writing down everything I know about the subject and then organising them and then writing them out. With the blogposts I also first write random things down about what I want to write about, then maybe search more information and then just write for a 25 mins and stop, take a break.
Like right after my current 25 mins is over, I am going to open the ice cream I just bought other day. I have found that when I am sick and in fever there is really only two thing I can eat. Rye bread (without any toppings) and ice cream. Don’t know if I am the only one and just weird. Probably, tho.
After the break there comes the editing. I go over the text, correct the typos, which I don’t usually do right away because that disturbs my thought flow. There was a long time since I have written a blog or anything that involves long texts so this blog writing has been very freshening for me.
Why 25 mins? I once heard that it it the optimised focus time for one subject and keeps the brain from distracting itself. Okey, ice cream time now.
Ronja Salmi also talked us about braveness as her main point. She told us how she used to struggle with socialising and other stuff but then developed a method how to be a brave and get the job done.
Power hour, she called it. One hour is only 4% of your day. If you focus your energy in that one our and be brave.
Being brave doesn’t mean that you are not afraid. Being brave means that you were afraid but did it anyways. Basically you decide before hand which hour you are going to be brave or productive and that lets you stress less when you already know that hour is actually a short time and you can focus all the energy to that one hour. And you don’t feel the pressure of handling the whole thing when you are satisfied when you completed your goal.
I personally find this theory interesting, since I am more introverted person and I am only extroverted when I feel safe and self-confident and with people I trust. I am not shy or antisocial, I just have a super low tolerance for bullshit and fake people. Networking and other that kind of stuff in especially hard for me, because if I am not feeling it, - if I am not feeling social, I seriously don’t give a damn about other people or what they think.
The power hour method also applies to working life, I am definitely going to use it to be more productive, since as a freelancer I work from home and some times find that pretty un-motivating and cannot get into the the workflow.
After Ronja’s lecture our coaches had a workshop for us. We had task to explore ourselves and write down your dreams, mentors, values and what you give to other and how you develop your mind, body and spirit and your skills. I do have multiple dreams in life, and very many goals to this year. Mostly work related, like learning more and more about marketing, finding out things about graphic design that I didn’t already know and that sort of stuff. Basically what I did, was to write down as many as possible of these dreams and goals, then choose 5-6 most important ones and track every week what I have done to archive my goals. Has worked so far, as the goals are there every week and nowadays they already affect my decisions. Take a stars instead of a elevator, read a article about marketing rather than spend 30 min on Instagram.
For everybody out there, I just want to leave this here.
When you write a dream down, it becomes a goal. When you write down the steps to it, it becomes a plan.
