Praxis Reflection Phase 1
For the last two months, I have been growing hard skills to lay the foundation of any entrepreneurial endeavor. I challenged myself, I learned more about myself, and I was able to gain more understanding of the basics of business. Throughout the Praxis program, I desire to achieve three goals. The goals I set for myself are, to have a written and published book selling on amazing (1st stream of passive income), become a master of a system at Journey Academy (the school I work at as an Administrative Assistant), and grow my bookstagram @aswirlofwords. The Praxis program is helping me challenge myself to grow in entrepreneurship business skills and create practical steps to achieve my goals by the end of May.
Within these first eight weeks of the program, I have started to build my portfolio. Some ideas we have worked on are content creation, professional performance, personal habits, writing, rapidly learning and showcasing a skill, and personal finance. The projects I have created through these prompts are creating a weekly newsletter, setting up personal calendars and to-do lists, creating a good system for habits, writing for other companies, myself, and others, and finally, understanding my budget. My favorite deliverables are creating my weekly newsletter, examining my budget, and the writing pieces I did for my past experiences. During this time of exponential growth, I also read three books which we discussed on our weekly Zoom calls. The books were, The Concise Mastery by Robert Greene, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Share Your Work by Austin Kleon. All of these books were about creating positive habits and increasing your growth through mastery of one subject. I enjoyed all of these books, but I think Atomic Habits was my favorite!
The biggest takeaways from the program were time management and setting boundaries, balancing work, school, and life, and learning how to be diligent and disciplined in my work. I have always been pretty good at managing my time, but this fall I started working part-time as an Administrative Assistant at Journey Academy. I found it super difficult for me to turn off my work brain and turn on my Praxis school brain. I struggled to set firm boundaries for my hours per day, so I would work overtime and end up being upset at myself for doing so. The solution to this is to leave the school when my hours are up and come back for my little brothers who I take home at the end of the day. Changing my scenery has helped me a ton to reset my brain and focus only on Praxis. Alongside, struggling to set boundaries, if I don’t set firm boundaries or change my scenery I have zero motivation other than sit down and get my work done instead of staying in flow with my work. So, I worked very hard to be disciplined by using grit and working when I didn’t feel like it. Finally, learning to balance work, Praxis, and life was a challenge. This also follows setting boundaries and only working my allotted hours each week. But my job and Praxis are both consuming things. I could spend 30+ hours a week on both, but that is not possible for me. I had to really work on making a schedule and being okay with saying no to other financial opportunities so I could have time with my family, and friends, or doing my hobbies.
Now, I will be doing four modules that each last four weeks. I am looking forward to taking a deep dive into some of these topics to help me understand and learn new systems that will help me on my entrepreneurial journey.