Blended learning: Five lessons about entrepreneurship from quaranteaching
On the last day of February this year, I pushed “publish” on my very first, very simple website. I didn’t plan to go live on a leap day, but life happened. In the end, it was fitting since I was jumping into entrepreneurship.
After years of doing entrepreneurial things and thinking about the type of business I should own, followed by months of thinking and planning to turn my free writing services into a business, I was excited to be officially in business. My calendar was filling up with prospects, pitches, and workshop opportunities. And now I had a website!
You know what happened next. Two or three weeks after the site went public, New York City went “on pause.” So did my plans for a big launch in 2020.
Quaranteaching
In their place came quaranteaching. With New York City schools closed, I spent maybe a fifth of the time I’d budgeted into growing my business. The majority of my time went into teaching my boys, 7 and 2.
As quarantine prolonged, I had to build a structure and be flexible to make it easier for them to focus and get things done. About two months in, I started seeing the parallels between me as a budding business owner and my kids going through a terrible time.
When I started encouraging them and figuring out different approaches, it dawned on me that some of the advice applies to me and my business.
Lessons Learned
Here are the key lessons that have stuck out during the past eight months and keep me going hour after hour to grow myself and my business.
#1: Start already instead of wondering about how long something will take
My oldest son often asked how long completing an assignment would take. He’d do this for 15, 20 minutes sometimes than it took to do the work.
After telling him, ‘Just start already. You’re spending more time asking about it. That’s time you could spending getting it done!’
I took that cue and got moving on my plans. Case in point, I’m posting what I can here when I can. That’s a significant change from my communications training — which is to create all the content first, then carefully choreograph its release.
#2: To feel accomplished, do your “musts” for the day
This one takes me back to a time management class at JP Morgan Chase, where I interned 23 years ago!!! They taught us all about Franklin Covey and even gave us the planners to live by.
My kids have a whiteboard list of to-dos. It would get so long, they’d groan when they saw the board every morning. But once I added big, red stars to the pieces that had to get done and they understood that the rest were bonuses, they perked up!
I’ve gone back to this approach for my day-to-day. And trust, no productivity app can beat it when it comes to feeling accomplished.
#3: Trust your process, it’ll lead you to the right place
Sometimes, my now second-grader gets frustrated after doing a math problem and watching the virtual instructor do it. “Oh, man! I did it all wrong,” he’d say. They’d both have the same answer. When he showed me how he got his answer, I’d explain his process isn’t wrong. It’s just different, and that’s ok.
At my end, I’ve been comparing how kick-ass pros I admire do their thing. I thought I saw the way, but when I’d hear them say something completely different, it’d make me think how wrong I was. I had to get a handle on that, give myself a pep talk.
So yes, you might think you’ve failed or are failing because your process doesn’t mirror the experts’ recommendations. But you’re doing fine, even well, considering you’re an original with innovative ideas or just a different mindset. Good for you for knowing multiple paths!:)
#4: Put fun on the list to motivate you
Yes, I said it. Write down when you’ll have fun. Some days, that’s just what you have to do to get through the work. Listing times for free play, screen time, and park time makes it easier to get through the work.
For me, fun varies. It could be sharing experiences with journalism students, a writing workshop, or a virtual cocktail hour catch-up with a friend on the other side of the globe. Whatever the fun thing is, it motivates me to finish my interviews, research, and drafts.
#5: Take your own advice
Every other lesson comes down to this: take your own advice. It seems pretty obvious, but we do forget it once in a while. Sometimes, it takes a refresher like teaching small humans for the light to dawn.
What’s important is to listen to yourself and start acting on your own advice. You’re wise enough to know it’ll work.
Go forth and practice
I share these lessons because we don’t know when, or even if, our kids will ever go back to in-person school full-time. With infection rates rising and anxiety creeping up again, it help to take stock of how we do stand up and deliver in the face of adversity. And that’s a lesson worth remembering as the fight against Covid-19 rages through 2021 and quaranteaching continues.
