Getting 1% better…or more!
How I used this week's projects to become 1% better.
Quite The Week
This week had been all rush and go, go, go! When I looked ahead to this week I was a little nervous. I knew that I had a lot to do and that my time would be limited because my sister is getting married (!) this week. This, though, was a lesson in and of itself. I knew I would have to manage my time particularly well, something that has been a challenge for me in the past.
“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.” - Ryan Holiday
Projects Completed, Lessons Learned
This week, in addition to improving my time management, I had opportunities to improve my public speaking, video editing, writing and research skills.
About me video
This week one of my Praxis deliverables was to reshoot my “about me” video. While shooting my video I had the opportunity to practice clear verbal communication, videography, and video editing. One of the biggest lessons that I learned while shooting this video was the importance of planning ahead. One issue I ran into was that while I was shooting my video the sun began to set, and it became too dark out for my camera to focus. If I had planned ahead I could have avoided this.
“Failure is success if we learn from it.” - Malcolm S. Forbes
Case Study - VanMan
When I saw that we were going to be writing a case study this week, I felt a little intimidated because of my time constraint. I originally was going to do my case study on the Babylon Bee, but with some guidance from my mentor and self reflection, I realized that I was treating this deliverable as a task to get through, and not something to be learned from. After taking a closer look at my intentions, I decided to do my case study on the VanMan, a company that sells products very similar to my own business, Arete Tallow. It was very useful to do my case study on VanMan because I got to take closer look at a competitor and the tallow industry in general. You can read the full case study below.
Getting One Percent Better
In the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear, he talks about how making tiny changes to your everyday life can, overtime, reap monumental benefits. He talks about how the British bicycling team, who hadn’t won anything of note in decades, made minute changes (like acquiring new bike seats and cycling suits), which reaped amazing results.
I was able to apply this at the Hamilton Cross Country race. Instead of focusing on the other runners and how I was doing in relation to them, I focused on improving myself just 1%. This mindset helped me avoid starting out to fast and wasting all of my energy. By using this strategy I was able to decrease my time by 2.4%!
Your Turn
Whatever you may be doing in the up coming weeks, I hope you make the effort to become just 1% better. Good luck!
