Looking back at the past few months.

What I’ve Created

I have never written this much in my life. That includes homeschooling, college and primary school, all of which were pretty writing-heavy in my case.

I have also never enjoyed writing this much before, which definitely makes it a more pleasant experience.

I think the post that I put the most time into (and was happiest with when I finished it) was my life lessons piece. I enjoyed the reflection on positive change, as well as how much it made me think about the value of taking risks and doing hard things. I feel like the assessment of my past made me feel more capable and prepared for my future. It was a great exercise.

Another one of the more substantial projects I did was a case study on Siete Foods. I chose to research this company because of how highly I value nutrition and health.

Researching, learning, and gaining understanding of how rapidly this company grew was extremely interesting. I love investigating a subject and developing new knowledge about a specific topics, and I enjoyed this case study project because it showed me that my love of research can be turned into productive, viable end results.

I also think it’s worth highlighting that I built my website at the beginning of the program, which I have now updated to include my blog, art and photography portfolios, and a projects page that shows some of my work from Praxis so far.

What I’ve Read

The Concise Mastery by Robert Greene was the first book of the program.

I found it to be very interesting; the book essentially broke down the ideas of committing to a goal, and the stages of how to become an expert in your interests. I actually found the most interesting part of the book to be the biographical stories of various masters throughout history that broke up each section. Da Vinci, Darwin, and Benjamin Franklin were all covered in these stories, and it helped put the content of the book into context.

The second book of the program was Atomic Habits by James Clear.

I really enjoyed this book! I found it a little easier to read than Mastery despite the longer length. Atomic Habits was more or less of an analysis of why we do the things we do, and how to train ourselves to make sure what we do is productive an beneficial to us. By the end of the book it felt a little repetitive, but overall it was still an enjoyable read.

What I’ve Learned

I feel a lot more confident about where I am going in life than when I started this program. I have more of a sense of direction about my career, my interests, and my skills.

I have learned I can accomplish more than I expected in a short amount of time, learn new things comprehensively with some dedication, and that consistency is key to a lot of things. I have learned to use habits productively, as well as gained a deeper understanding of my strengths and weaknesses with writing, reading and learning.

I feel more prepared to take on positive change and embrace valuable opportunities and risks. I also have gained a lot of insight about what matters most to me in my career and life, why I have the goals I do, and what they mean to me.

What Comes Next

Looking into the next few months, I have chosen to focus primarily on marketing, sales, and copywriting. I picked these modules of the program for a few reasons. I know I like marketing, so I want to make sure that I know how it works in depth, and feel confident and well-versed in the different aspects of the topic.

I picked sales because I don’t know as much about it, but I feel like it has the potential to be interesting and useful to me. I want to see if it is something I could enjoy as a career, and at the least, know enough about it to make that call. I also want to establish it as a skill of mine regardless of whether or not it is something I could picture myself doing, because I imagine sales is a tool I could apply to a lot of things.

Copywriting is a bit of an oddity to me, because previous to this program I never would’ve pictured myself considering writing a lot in my career. I understood that writing was a valuable skill, but I always prided myself more on my comprehension of visual things; art and design tended to be where I gave myself the most credit.

After the last couple months, I want to make sure that writing is a skill I continue to develop, and I want to make sure I have a good grasp on how to use writing as an asset for marketing or any other job.

I can’t wait to get started.

Links from this post (Program Highlights):

Case Study: https://judithjpeters.com/2023/09/02/siete-foods-healthy-food-that-still-tastes-good/

Life Lessons Piece: https://judithjpeters.com/2023/09/09/how-moving-changed-my-perspective/