Hey, everybody. Happy end of 2023. It is a great time to stop and reflect as the days are getting darker and darker as we approach the darkest night of the year, it's a time to bring a little light into our lives and, and reflect on what could be. And I've been thinking about a couple things. First of all, there's something that's been on my mind. At the end of every podcast, I say something like, take some time to level up every single day. So there's that piece. Hold on to
that. I'll be back to it. The other piece I've been thinking of a lot about and spending a lot of time in, not just for my work, but for myself and for some other charitable responsibilities I have, is think about scheduling. I'm not a big scheduler. I don't really love having detailed plans. But what I'm finding is that it is a thing that helps me move forward. It helps me know what
I should be focusing on, where I should be going. And I don't always love it, but I'm finding the great power in ability to look ahead and say, like, yes, that is the destination. That's where I need to get to, where I need to be, when I need to be. So when I started putting these two thoughts together, something occurred to me that I think could be really helpful in 2024 for me and maybe for you. So I'm bringing it to you. We don't often
schedule and give ourselves time to level up. We don't give ourselves time to improve. We say in earnest, like, oh, yeah, take some time to learn. But I think what we do is we like, take some time to learn, but get everything else done. Don't bother to actually dedicate time to it. And what I'm feeling like and what I think could be very powerful in 2024 if we change that and actually say, let's build in space to get better, let's build in space. Time to play, time to experiment, time to try
things. Now, here's the thing that I've learned over my years in working in video. The truth is, the time that I've learned best things like using video or really doing anything, is when I had something I needed to do or wanted to do. When I've just gotten to explore and try to make something, not because I'm going to use it, not because it's being driven by a deadline, but because I needed to do something. I
wanted to do something. One example of this is about six years ago, we were building the Techsmith Academy and the first kind of videos that we were making for the Techsmith Academy are more scenario kind of based. There's a story that goes along with it, which meant scripting meant heavy. Storyboarding meant a lot of things, things that
I had kind of done but never had really done. But when I gave myself time to really script and do that and then bring it into video production in a way that I'd never done before, I got to learn so much. My learning curve was like, yeah, this is really hard, but I learned so much faster. And I think the reality is that if you want to get better at anything in 2024, you need to schedule time
for it. You need to give yourself time to play, to explore, to make stuff, and not necessarily, again, with the end purpose of, you're going to publish it, but take the time and give yourself the time to make something. Now, I don't know what the frequency is going to look like for that. That could be once a week, that could be once a month, that could be once a quarter. It might be more frequent than that. But I
think find time to play, especially in video. I think video is a lot about watching things and saying, hey, can I make something that looks like that? It's about exploring structure and style and saying, like, what if I move these things around? And I'm not worried about ruining the project because it's got to get done by saying, like, let's change it around a little bit. Give yourself a chance to look at something and say, can I make that same look and feel for something for
me, just because I want to see if I can do it? And I bet as you do, that you will learn so much faster. You will learn so much more, because that exploratory learning opportunity is going to give you the skills and tools that you need that are going to not only allow you to do those cool things, but allow you to do the other things, maybe better. You're going to find new ways to approach a problem or an issue or thinking through, like, oh, you know what? I did that
before. Now let's apply it to this, and then you understand it better. So as we go into the year of 2024, as we shut off the darkness, as the winter solstice is upon us, and we go on to the newest, brightest days ahead, because hopefully 2024 is going to be amazing for you. I hope that you take that time to give yourself some time to actually explore the things that you're trying to do. And it could be
video. It could be anything that you're working on. If you're doing content for your team, you're making instructional content, you're making the best widget ever out there. Explore to see what you can do. See how you can get better. But dedicate time to it. Don't just let it be a thing that happens to you. Be intentional. Be proactive. Be thoughtful in how you're going to do that. Give yourself the challenge. Because otherwise you'll never learn as quickly as you
do if you give yourself that time. So thanks everybody. I really am looking forward to 2024. More great episodes of the podcast, more great comments, and here conversations on LinkedIn. Love to hear what you're thinking about. What are you going into 2024 thinking about? Are you thinking about something? How you're going to get better? Are you thinking about something that you're like, man, I want to stop doing whatever it is. Put it in the doobie doo down below. I'd love to hear it. And like we
always say, I hope you take some time to level up every single day. Thanks everybody. Bye.