What I Learned From Instagram Storying My Life For One Week
Last Sunday, I decided to challenge myself to document my life on Instagram Stories for one week, kind of like a “day in the life” series. Until then, I was a faithful Snapchat user, but when I started to notice that my usual 150 views on each Snapchat story had quickly decreased to 50–60 views, I accepted that my friends were moving over to Instagram.
Cool. Sorry Snapchat.
As a creative entrepreneur with a hectic work schedule, a lot of my friends have been asking me about my work life since graduating from CU Boulder two months ago. I figured it’d be fun to show them what a typical workday is like in my world, while also having the opportunity to create content, which, ya know, is great for the personal brand and all…
So, for the past week, I posted 10–15 photos/videos/boomerangs each day. These posts showed everything that I do throughout my day, from writing emails and making sales calls, to cooking dinner, to working out, to attending a concert. I even came pretty close to sharing a selfie while taking a shower, but decided to hold back on that one. Probably a good call.
Surprisingly, I learned a couple of interesting things through this process.
Documenting my life on Instagram Stories was a great way to connect with old friends and engage with new ones.
I was blown away by the number of personal messages I received from old friends who wanted to talk about one of my posts. Today, I posted a photo of a new book I cracked open; The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson (great read by the way, so far.) Within 45 minutes, three friends reached out directly. One girl told me that she loved the book and flew through it in two days. We then caught up for a little bit and she recommended I check out a few other similar books. Awesome. One guy from high school chimed in and asked what I thought of the book so far. We talked for a good twenty minutes about the book and also caught up on life, business, and our current relationships. It was great to hear from him. Lastly, I received a message from a follower whom I’ve never met. We discussed the book, chatted a bit about how it relates to our entrepreneurial paths, and set a time for this week to connect over the phone and see how we can help each other’s companies. Awesome.
Documenting my life on Instagram Stories helps me celebrate life’s shitty moments as much as life’s awesome moments.
Posting a photo about my two hours spent answering emails or sitting impatiently in traffic on my way home from a meeting was more powerful than I expected. It forced me to take a bit of a step back and reflect on the journey as a whole. After all, without the shitty moments, the awesome moments would have nothing to compare to, and would thus feel empty and meaningless. Taking a moment to recognize the importance of these shitty activities and truly reflect on their value to my journey as a whole was quite powerful.
After a few days, the act of sharing every activity became less and less about showing others what I was up to and more and more about reflecting on every little item personally.
Documenting my life on Instagram Stories helped me realize that the “shareable” parts of my career are not only work-related.
“Work/life balance” is a hot topic these days. When I went back in the evenings and watched my stories from the day, I noticed that the things I was posting were quite balanced, between the work meetings/presentations and the evening mountain bike rides. It helped me realize that everything that I was doing was for a greater purpose. Time spent relaxing was productive. Time spent cooking was productive. Time spent reading was productive. Every activity served a larger purpose for my career, rather than just time wasted. Seeing this in the palm of my hand was quite invigorating. My original goal was to show the world how hard I work, how many brutal hours go into building a company, and how my crazy days are spent running from meeting to meeting all over town. I was surprised when I realized how important it is for my mental health to take the time to relax and reflect. This is something that it easily overlooked in the startup world.
Documenting my life on Instagram Stories made me realize that you should do it too.
First, it’s fun to chime in on people’s lives and have conversations about it. After all, when people posts things, they’re really looking for their network to give them feedback in order to validate their life. Why not be a part of the conversation? The biggest thing that I learned, though, is that you really have nothing to lose by putting out content. This is huge. Think about it…what is the absolute worst case scenario? Is someone going to share your post on their Facebook page and say “ha, this kid Jake is a fucking loser. Look at his silly Instagram story!” No, nobody is going to do that. And even if they do, you’re still getting someone to share your content ;) All press is good press, right? The absolute worst scenario is that somebody ignores it. Great — you’re exactly where you were before.
So, I bet at this point in the article you’re just DYING to follow my day-in-the-life stories. I’m going to keep it going for at least another week.
Feel free to follow me: @jakes_photographs
