Starting is the hardest part but also the best part

There is no better truism than ‘better late than never’. The natural impulse is to specialize and excel at one thing. If 2020 has been a testament to anything, it is that things change, and we need to be able to evolve and adapt. While it is important to nurture and refine your core strengths, it is also important to pay attention to your burgeoning capabilities. They are as important and need to be cultivated to help you make more holistic progress in your career or way of life.

 

LinkedIn has a number of online courses that you can enrol into from Graphic Design to coding. Assess your working trajectory and take your pick. It helps to be strategic about your ambitions, and this does not translate to leaving behind your dreams. It simply implies that you need to be pragmatic about your decisions to achieve them. While I believe that is imperative to constantly upskill, I also strongly believe that it is important to enjoy the process. Mastering a new skill is a lot like a journey. You embark it with anticipation with no real certainty of how and if you will finish it. With the ever-changing landscape around us, the hustle has amplified and to stand out you need to be driven by passion and acknowledge the effort you put into it.

 

When you embrace the learning curve, it is complemented with the urge to experiment and innovate. Learning a skill only adds to your credentials, but it is your work that reflects the keen understanding you have of the spadework. For instance, a lot of the creative industry professionals like ad directors, movie makers and the likes have been at the brunt of redundancies or sudden project repeals due to multiple reasons owing to lack of revenue or the inability to actually assemble your crew and actors. Yes, this may mean that your day job has gone for a toss, but it does not take away from your skill set and ability to create content. Assess the resources you need to metamorphose. Enrol into that movie making course for beginners to edit your own videos or figure out the tools required to source material from home shoots. Youtube has added live streaming on their platform since 2019 with gamers being the predominant players in that area. Get your drawing board out and sketch out ways your content could transcend to this nascent goldmine of possibilities or better yet start that podcast you have been mulling over. 

 

The opportunities are plenty, and they may not be packages in the normative style that you are accustomed to. The fact remains that, this should not stop you from taking the plunge. Write down what you need to make it happen, and then all there is left to do is to set the wheels in motion to realise it. You are your biggest asset! So, get to working and remember to give yourself the due credit along the way.