Hello all, welcome to the eighth Now Page update, which is 8 months in a row where I have followed this structure. Simply a professional and personal life update, and considering all the changes it makes sense!
The overall difficulty of getting things done has both become harder and easier. In order for me to get my professional PolyInnovator work done I needed to revamp my personal life. I.e. get my workout habit in order, organize my Notion dashboard, and try not to deplete all my energy from the winter.
It is funny I always try to quit caffeine in the winter because I rely on it so much, but the problem is that is my WORST time of year. Meaning I should try when it is nice out like in the Summer.
In recent months I've been striving to catch up with the PolyCast interviews. At the end of 2020 I sent out nearly 40 of them, and oh boy something went wrong!
What am I doing... NOW? March 2021
Let me start with what happened, so I used a tool called Repurpose to take my video/audio content and reformat it for other platforms. I.e. microcontent for instagram or vertical for IGTV, FB to YT, etc. It is a great tool, but I found out that the way of doing that last one, the FB Watch to YouTube, one I relied on heavily had a limitation. If the tool couldn't pick up a high quality video for any reason, then it would only take a 240p resolution quality from the API.
What that means then is that since I was doing videos so frequently it had the chance of overwhelming the servers, and so much of the 3rd season of the Polycast interivews had been sent over to YouTube as low quality unwatchable videos. 😱
I love the tool and the people behind it, so I still stand by it, although I stopped using it at that point (Meaning I also took it off of the affiliate links page, purely cause I'm not using it regularly anymore. I still would stand by the refferal links already shared however.).
I bring this up because it horrified me that some of my amazing guests who had to wait a while to get their episodes out, then would proceed to seeing a crappy result, despite the fact all my videos I make are 1080p. I thus deleted all 25 impacted videos, and reuploaded over 30 hours of HD content that following weekend. Taking me out of the workflow I was already in, and delayed the upcoming PolyCasts. However I got all of those done too, and now finishing some other projects.
This ^^ was a big event to me, even if it may not seem like much from an external point of view. I felt like my brand was tarnished, despite my standing for highest quality I can do. Quality is important to me, not only in the content substance, but in the technical aspects too. If I could do 4k for example I would.
What I've been doing beyond that however is revamping the Modegree system to be used by other people (public template will be out some point soon, hopefully Q2 2021), as well as finishing up the last bit of blog post revamping. I actually made a 7000 word beast of a post at the end of the month for Omnichannel marketing as a content creator. It literally came to me as an idea in bed right about when I was falling asleep, I then proceeded to get up write out a massive outline. Took two days to finish (day for half each), and I feel is a huge value for people. I wanted it to be an example of what PolyPRO posts would look like, and I wanted to share what I have learned over the past better half of a decade.
I also completely overhauled my Notion life operating system, a lot was influenced by August Bradley's great work, but I realized his system isn't perfect for me. It matches his mindset, and for me I think differently. Just as you do as well, and I think he awknowledges that in some of his videos.
The really cool thing about Notion, and templates like his, is that they are like lego sets. YOU CAN follow the instructions, but it is often more fun to create your own.
In a bigger view #MACRO, What's Coming up
I have little less than a dozen or so OmniBlog posts left to revamp, and then I'll be continuing more on the Fireside Codex as well as regular posts. I had wanted to do that daily writing habit, even if I was writing/revamping other posts. However some of these posts got so big that I didn't feel like I needed to.
The point of doing it daily was to keep up the writing habit, and I certainly was!! However the OmniContent is a major goal for me to work on here soon. I wanted to do it back in July 2020 or even January 2021, but various things kept me from it. I really hate that it almost seems like I'm giving excuses, if not to you, then to myself. However I do have a good feeling about it once I can incorporate it back into the groove/workflow.
The other major project focus is the PolyCast Interviews Blog Posts, so these would be takeaways from the interviews. I hope to include transcriptions as well, at least in time, even if I post the takeaways I'll edit them later for transcripts too if they aren't immediate.
Not only would this help me recover the thoughts shared with me, that I feel are super important. Each guest has brought something unique to the table, but then I can finally gather quotes from the episodes. This has been the biggest reason why I haven't made microcontent because I didn't know what clips to make. Not only can I read the transcripts as I am fixing them (Facebook is where I got most of them, if they were made which some weren't for some reason, and they were decent but had errors), but I can also find the quotes while I'm reading.
As well as, simply listening to them I'll hear lines that are noteworthy.
I currently haven't made a decision on what I'll call them. Could be bland and say "PolyCast Interview #– Takeaways", OR someone close mentioned that I could write them as "Polymath Mental Models", as the point of the show is to understand how these people live their lives. I feel like something in between is the key idea.
Regardless, they are going to be handwritten posts attached with the description pulled from the pod.co page or youtube description, as well as the transcription when it is ready.
Additionally, I had mentioned those remaining posts, and they happen to be some of the longest posts I had on the old site. Including a few that were never finished, so beyond just revamping I am also doing a ton of fresh writing. I have been for the past couple months with many of the posts. I really want to fill out the OmniBlog with a library of amazing content!!
