Lessons From the 365 Days of Public Speaking Project

It’s a wrap for the 365 Days of Public Speaking Project. 136 YouTube videos later, I can say that it has been a great experience. The original idea was to produce content daily on a subject I love, public speaking. When I started the year my ambition was to create one 2 to 5 minutes video and publish on YouTube.com under the channel I had created for the purpose. The channel is accessible here: http://www.youtube.com/user/365dps

The project was not successfully completed. I stopped recording after the 136th video. There are many reasons why I stopped, and reflecting about the experience allowed me to draw the following three lessons:

  • A Half Baked Cake is Better Than No Cake

When you are hungry enough, a half baked cake tastes as good as a fully baked cake. It would have been great to finish with the 365 videos, but I am happy I hit 136 videos. That is about 37% of the goal and it is much better than 25%. In other words, if you don’t hit a goal you had set for yourself but have been able to achieve it partially, you can be proud of yourself for taking a good swing at it.

  • Developed Daily Discipline is an Invaluable Skill

One of the reasons why I did not go through to the 365 envisioned videos is because I did not have enough discipline. I guess when I did not see traffic coming to the videos, my interest and zeal for the project declined. That should not have happened. I should have been disciplined to keep going. Discipline is doing what must be done even when one does not want or feel like doing it. I was not disciplined enough to carry the project through to completion. In other words, be disciplined enough to do what you have to do, even when you don’t want or feel like doing it.

  • No Effort is Ever Wasted

I have realized that effort I have put into creating each of the videos was beneficial to me. I was either reviewing concepts I already knew, or was learning new concepts for the purpose of explaining them to my online audience. If no one ever watches the videos, I can say that each one of them was an educational experience for me. In other words, there is a learning (or teaching) experience in every activity you undertake.

If you would like to see the list of all the videos, head on to the YouTube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/365dps.

If you have a YouTube channel, share the link in the comments section below and I will definitely check it out and subscribe.