Back in March 2020, I was a person who did not understand the importance of learning new skills. Very content with what I knew (or i thought I did 🙂 ), I forgot that we are in a very competitive market. To survive and prosper, one needs to always keep learning something new. I used to come up with excuses like- “I do not have time to learn anything new.” This in fact was true but just partly. I was occupied with a lot of work which I did not want to delegate as I thought no one else will do justice to the work and I will lose my existing client or risk my reputation.
When the Covid pandemic started in March 2020 I started getting more and more projects as many businesses started leveraging social platforms and realized that if they want to survive then they have to go online.
This was the first time I decided to put together a team and delegate some work. The first two months were really difficult for me. I needed to train the team and since I had never really led a team like this it was a steep learning curve for me. Managing and leading was time taking job and sometimes it was very frustrating too. Somehow, I and my team prevailed.
Soon I started getting some me time and then thought about learning something new. Being a graphic designer, I had started taking social media marketing projects for my existing clients on their request. It was a need for them and hence it became a need for me. That is when I thought of learning more about social media marketing and took an online course. It was fun and I started enjoying that. Then I took two more projects for social media marketing and kept learning new things everyday about social media as well as marketing.
Learning new skills was so exciting! I started working on a WordPress website for the 1st time for an NGO who also happens to be my client. It was totally free of cost and I considered that website as my contribution to their noble cause. It was a learning project for me and when I completed that project successfully, I felt great sense of pride.
After that I did not look back. I learned about character designing, accounting software, social media marketing, English grammar(Yes, I am really bad at it 😉 ), brand strategy and much more . There’s so much to explore and learn. Now its a habit. Every month I try to learn at least one thing new.
Therefore, if you are the one who runs away from learning a new skill just like me, should give it a try, I am sure you will love it. It gives you confidence and a direction to move forward. The benefits you reap out of learning will soon seem like a by-product. The process itself will excite you more than the outcome.
Happy Learning… 🙂