Week 4: Disappointed But Not Discouraged
Just learning the lessons as they come
Alright, week 4. A full month in now.
Better than last week, which I wasn’t expecting given how it started.
That proposal I sent out from last week came back rejected. But funnily enough it didn’t really affect my confidence. I mean I was disappointed but the rejection didn’t mean my work was bad.
It was just that what I could build for them didn’t fit what they needed.
I was also proud that I asked for feedback. I wanted to understand if I could have done any better or maybe there were some confusing parts.
The lesson I took away is that I have to get better at alignment from the beginning. Instead of me sinking a few days into coming up with a proposal, I should have asked more questions instead of assuming things. It’s to be courageous and ask for more information instead of assuming I am disturbing them.
What it did do though was make me wonder whether there’s a clearer more cohesive way to tell people what I do. So, I spent a couple of days on strategy.
When I first started CodedShapes and posting on LinkedIn , the goal was just to see if I could be consistent. Not only have I proven to myself that I can, I also enjoy it. But, I did it in a pretty unstructured way. I posted or wrote whatever was on my mind. Which I think is great but it meant my ideas and thoughts were all over the place sometimes.
Now that I completely control the narrative and don’t have to worry about office politics and all that, I can make it more cohesive. So I am trying a content pillar approach. Simply put, it’s about defining some pretty wide buckets, and then every idea I come up with needs to be reframed into a bucket.
It’s something I sort of do already but this just formalizes it and helps me focus on what I am actually trying to say.
Hopefully it makes things clearer and less like rambling. But I do like writing whatever comes to mind though, so don’t expect that to change anytime soon. I am just trying to be more focused with my messaging is all.
Other than that, the time blocking method is helping me properly triage my tasks now, which is good.
Alright, that’s it.
Thanks for reading,
Onward to week five.
Thanks for reading
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