- Happy Friday.
It is a workday today,
but guess what my job is today.
Today my job is to create, be a creator.
I'm really excited about it.
This is a new initiative
that ConvertKit started doing this year
is having a creative Friday every now and then
where everyone on the team gets the day off work
to spend on creative projects.
So it's gonna be fun.
I'm gonna get to like pretend essentially
to be a full-time content creator for the day
and I'm gonna bring you along with me
and show you how I spend a full day working
on my own business.
(upbeat music)
I have a long list here
of projects that I would like to work on today.
We've got a bit of editing, a bit of filming,
some content admin work, some design stuff too
which I think I'm gonna live stream.
But the number one most important thing
that I wanna do today is to spend some time writing my book.
Specifically I've written down
that I wanna spend an hour of today writing.
If you haven't heard me talk about this before,
I am writing a book about marketing design.
I want to package all of the knowledge
that I've built up over the past decade
working in-house as a branded marketing designer
into a book to help other people
pursuing this line of work and this career,
help them really succeed in it,
have a lot of impact on the company, build their skills,
have a lot of impact on their own career too.
Writing a book as I have discovered is pretty difficult.
It's not easy.
It's much, much different from writing a newsletter
or writing a blog post.
And I know that part of that is probably
like a mindset shift that I need to make in it.
Like it just feels like a big scary thing.
But anyway, all that is an excuse to say
that I have not written one single word for my book all year
and it is, you know,
we're in the second half of April right now,
as I'm filming this and that sucks.
I am disappointed in myself for that,
and so I want to get back into it and ease in
with spending an hour of today writing.
When you're trying to rebuild a habit again
because I did get in a really good habit last year
of writing that I've just like, you know, lost.
As you rebuild, you can't expect to just leap back in
with the same enthusiasm and ability to focus, I guess,
as you had previously.
I know I'm gonna have to work to rebuild this writing habit,
build up the muscle again.
So what I'm gonna do is set a handy handy timer
using my favorite Forest app.
When are they gonna sponsor me?
I'm gonna set 25 minutes where I'm gonna write
and I'm not putting pressure on myself
for a number of word count or anything like that.
I'm just going to write and see what happens.
If it'll focus.
So, let's go.
(upbeat music)
Okay, we're back from lunch now.
That was delicious and, of course, good bubble tea
on the way home.
In case you're curious,
'cause I know this is really what you tuned in
to this video for, my bubble tea order
is a roasted milk tea with pearls, ice, and no sugar.
(gentle music)
I'm feeling like before I move on to other things
on my to-do list, I wanna keep up the momentum
that I gained on starting to write this morning,
'cause I know that even if I do literally nothing else today
if I've spent some time on my book
then it has been a day well spent.
So, I'm actually gonna set,
let's try and overshoot our goal, huh?
I'm gonna set a 45 minute timer now
and we'll see what we get written.
(upbeat music)
That was a really great writing session.
I don't actually know how many words I wrote that time
'cause I was a bit all over the place
in some different sections.
But it felt really good to read some of my previous writing,
and actually be reminded
that this is gonna be a really good book.
Like it's not bigheaded to me to say that,
I truly think it's gonna help people
and I think this has definitely given me,
(horn honking)
well, all right.
This has definitely given me the encouragement
I needed to get back into it, so that's great.
What do I want to tackle next
on this very long list that I have here?
I think that the thing I need to do
is gather together some assets for a few videos.
I always do the fun part of like recording it
and then I have to like go in and do the screen recordings,
make the slides or whatever afterwards.
I'm gonna get that done
so that I can like stop being a blocker
in the video editing process.
And then, I've decided that in two hours
I'm gonna do a live stream.
I haven't been able to do a lot of these recently
just 'cause of the nature of the work I've been doing,
hasn't really lent itself to it.
But today, I am doing my own work
and I'm going to work on designing
some social media graphics.
So, I've got two hours to lend
to work on some asset stuff
and maybe do a bit of admin too
before I get the fun of the live stream.
This guys having a great day, aren't you, Seb?
(upbeat music)
Okay, in the last hour and a half, what have I done?
I have spent the whole time preparing assets for videos.
It's really eye-opening, honestly,
to see how long this stuff takes.
I'm making a video about Figma Pro Tips,
so I've just recorded 10 little screencasts
for each of those 10 tips.
Got together all of the assets
for the inside marketing design episode about ConvertKit.
So that's a few things checked off the list.
There is just half an hour now before my live stream
so I'm actually gonna get set up right now
and make sure that all my equipment is working
'cause it has been so long.
I'm like not 100% sure
that all the setup is still correct.
Can do that and then I think I can send some emails,
send some videos off to be edited,
and then maybe I would've gotten half
of this very long to-do list
that I made for myself done today.
(upbeat music)
Okay, let's see.
Do I still have everything set up correctly?
This here is OBS, which is what I use for streaming.
So we've got playing my intro.
Ooh, that's right.
I think the thing I struggled with last time was music,
getting that to play.
Ooh, I can't remember how I solved that,
or if I even solved it.
One thing I am realizing now, as I go into the camera feed,
this camera I'm vlogging on
is the one that I use as my webcam with this.
What lens is this?
22 millimeter lens with a nice low f stop.
So I need to switch back to my old vlogging camera now
so that this one can go hang out up on top of my screen.
Here we are back on the G7 X.
I don't even know if you can tell any quality difference.
I just like the wider angle of the previous camera.
Okay, we've got the camera set up up there now.
I have some music playing through Epidemic Sound
which is what I use as my streaming playlist.
It'll be linked in the description if you want.
I have an affiliate link to it.
It's a pretty great service if you're a YouTuber.
But I think down here, I see this moving
and I think all I have to do is unmute that
and that that's the music.
But I'm just gonna record briefly to check.
Okay, moment of truth.
I would love to get back into the habit
of doing like a weekly livestream
like I was doing at some points last year,
but it's just not the reality right now, you know?
Okay, let's see.
It's working.
Okay, livestream is a go.
(upbeat music)
That was such a good live stream,
really good group of folks in the chat
and I got a lot done on my social media graphics,
which was pretty fun, very productive.
If I revisit my to-do list,
I definitely was over ambitious,
but I'm happy with the things I got done
and what I spent time on.
In particular, the book writing,
that was really important for me personally,
just to get that motivation started again.
If there is a project that you have been wanting to work on
and you've been procrastinating about it
and not actually doing any like doing,
then let this be your sign to go make it happen for yourself
because you owe it to yourself.
Thanks for hanging out with me on this Creative Friday.
Because I'm in Europe,
most of the ConvertKit team is in the US
and I haven't gotten to see what everyone else
has spent their day creating yet.
But yeah, I'll look forward to checking in on that
on Monday and seeing what the team got up to.
Super cool that we have this benefit.
Very fun.
If you happen to wanna know more
about the work that I do at ConvertKit
then you can go watch this video here,
it talk through the process
of creating an illustration system,
something I worked on recently
and you get a bunch of, yeah,
just behind the scenes insights into how we operate,
how I operate as creative director there.
So go watch that and I'll see you over there.
(upbeat music)