My First Two Months in Praxis
As I get ready to enter the next phase of Praxis, I want to share my experience from Phase One: Career Foundations.
What I’ve Created
One of the first things I made was a video to introduce myself. I summed up my small business venture and my experience working in retail. I created this personal website so people could get to know me and become familiar with my work as well.
The next things I made were for organizational purposes, such as my to-do list in Notion and my Google calendar. I particularly enjoy using task manager tools now because I only have to look in two places to see everything I need to get done.
Not long after that, I began creating what you’ll see in the blog and work sections of my website. I researched the career of a pop-up shop owner and published my findings in the form of a newsletter. I also created an account on Substack so that I could publish my other personal newsletters every week and send them out to my subscribers via email.
I kept pushing myself to try out different forms of writing, for instance, my life lessons blog, my thought piece about doing the opposite, my mock blog post for Spotify, and my sales email for a jewelry company. During the finance week of Praxis, I even included a journal exercise about my long term financial goals in my Substack.
Before phase one of Praxis concluded, I tried out some tools that were entirely foreign to me. First, I used Canva templates to design advertisements for my Super Mini K-pop Shop. Then, I used those ads in my campaign once I learned how to use Meta Ads Manager. I enjoyed adjusting the settings to select the exact demographic that would receive my ads.
What I’ve Read
Alongside the projects I worked on, I also read two books and discussed them on a biweekly basis with my cohort. The first book, Mastery by Robert Greene, challenged me to think for myself, lest I end up pursuing a calling that is inauthentic and unfulfilling. In particular, I liked his advice to pursue something that appeals to my sense of unconventionatliy. For me, that was my desire to delay my entrance into college. He explained that having the sense of doubters can serve as a motivating device and can fill me with added creative energy and focus.
The second book, Atomic Habits by James Clear offered less existential wisdom and instead gave me more practical advice. That’s why if I had to pick which book inspired me more, it would be Atomic Habits. For instance, Mr. Clear stated that “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” Previously, I thought that procrastination was simply a bad habit of mine. But now, I can attribute a part of it to my weak system of time management. Since I identified this problem, coming up with solutions has become easier.
What I’ve Learned
Two ideas have stood out most to me from the content I’ve consumed over the last two months. One is the importance of showing up everyday. I fell behind during the weeks when I didn’t stick to the suggested minimum amount of two hours of work per day. Even if a long shift prevented me from getting two whole hours of work done, I discovered the immense impact of completing at least one assignment before going to my job. This simple thing put enough wind in my sails to carry my motivation into the next day so I could make up for the time I missed.
The other idea is the importance of sticking through the boring. It goes hand in hand with showing up everyday. I may not want to show up because certain tasks are unexciting, but that’s the only way I can see positive results. My room is only clean as long as I pick up everyday, my checks are only rewarding as long as I show up to work multiple times a week, and I only remember all my plans when I am constantly updating my calendar.
My Favorites
My case study on Monica Razak’s pop-up shop is by far my favorite thing I’ve created. I believe part of the reason is because her story was so applicable to my life and my own journey as I try to launch my own pop-up.
As far as newsletters, I enjoyed writing the “Update on My Small Business” and “Working On Habits” posts the most.
I’m also proud of my jewlrey adverstisement and my Spotify blog post. While both of these are diamonds in the rough in terms of the editing they could use, I felt the most creative because I tried writing with an upbeat, punchy vcice that I don’t usually use.
What Comes Next
In phase two of Praxis, I plan to participate in the content marketing module. It covers how to create high quality digital content that people will want to pay attention to. I will build a landing page, a copywriting project, a social media management strategy, and an email marketing campaign. I want to use all of these things to build interest in my Super Mini K-pop Shop and keep my audience consistently engaged.
