3 Powerful Lessons I Have Learned in 2021

Every year is an opportunity for you to learn something. These 365 days is a long time that may completely change you from who you were initially (increased following on Instagram won’t count). Sometimes things work out; sometimes it doesn’t. But you always learn something, which adds to your experience.

This is December 21^st, and the year is about to end (yes, I am a genius). In this post, I have shared the three best lessons I have learned this year. If these are powerful enough, you may learn from my experience and save yourself from committing the same mistakes. So, let’s begin with the first one.

1. Dots do connect

I was an intern in an ed-tech startup at the beginning of this year. I was on the marketing team, and my role was simple- find mentors for the platform. I was doing this to gain experience of working at a startup, and I wanted to learn marketing.

Then one day, the founder asked me to learn graphic designing in Adobe Illustrator and design some marketing templates. There were no graphic designers, it was a budding startup, and we were the only team of 6 people (including the two founders).

Now graphic designing was new for me; I didn’t know anything about it. But I was willing to learn because I knew it would help me somewhere in my future. So, I worked day and night, watched tutorials, practiced on Illustrator, designed ugly banners, and did it for around 25 days.

Now, I am not saying I became a graphic designing expert in 25 days on my own. I just learned the basics and became confident enough to design a poster that seemed okay. My internship ended, but my skill remained (a somewhat rare skill for an engineer).

Three months later, I launched my blog Expords and its social media pages. And, now you know how valuable graphic designing skills proved to me. I had to design logos, social media posts, images for blogs, and whatnot. Since I knew the basics and was confident, I could design them according to my requirement. And, it was one of the reasons why I felt confident to start my blog in the first place.

The lesson here is nothing goes to waste. Each and everything you learn and experience will become useful sometime in your future. It may not be soon, you may not understand the importance of what you are doing now or how your present experiences will help you in the future, but they will eventually.

So, have patience, and give your best at what you are doing in the present, because it is preparing you for the future, because dots will ultimately connect.

2. Just do it

It was May 2021; the scorching sun had made the weather as hot as an oven. But I was heated more because of my confusion. I was thinking of starting my YouTube channel but was unsure whether I should do that. First of all, it was a big step for me (an introvert), who rarely showed up because of the fear of being judged and criticized.

Second, I didn’t know that opening a booktube channel would be a good idea (books are underrated, and very few people are interested in booktubers).  Third, I was confused about the language- Hindi or English. Both have their own advantages, and that boosted my confusion. Fourth, I planned to make summary videos of self-help books, but the idea seemed awful. I didn’t want to preach and become a philosopher without having any success of my own.

There were more similar confusions. But I knew I had to start because I had (still have) an interest in books and a desire to do something interesting. So, I was torn apart in two parts; one believed that I should get started with my YouTube channel, and the other was against it. I literally spent two and half months overthinking. I was uncertain and hopeless.

But in around mid-July, I somehow firmly decided I would do it. So, I wrote the script for my first video, shot the clips, edited them, and after seven days of hard work, the video was ready. I uploaded it, and felt incredibly satisfied and victorious, as if I had won a war.