Word of the Week — Innovation
How can you begin to introduce innovation in your life?
Welcome to the very first ‘Word of the Week’ — it’s great to have you here! This is an article series by myself, Kieran Audsley, where I reflect on the week I’ve had and assign a word best fitted to it. A word to encompass the progress made across the entire week — this week’s word is innovation. Now who am I? I’m simply an aspiring entrepreneur trying to document my journey. Enjoy!
What is Innovation?
The Cambridge Dictionary defines innovation as ‘a new idea of method, or the use of new ideas and methods’. This perfectly describes the week I’ve had although I feel that definition does not do such an important word justice. Innovation is the epitome of entrepreneurship. Innovation is at the heart of all entrepreneurs. All great entrepreneurs came through innovation. Progress of any kind is completed through innovation. Everything you do in life, the fact that you have a life — all comes from innovation of some kind. Innovation is the essence of life, the root, cause and solution to life.
1. How’s the week gone?
Following that description of innovation, it sounds like I must have had an amazing week right? Well, not necessarily — innovation happens on the small-scale, innovation is full of ups and downs. Over a large sample size, 30 years, for example, the progress of innovation is clear to see. 1 week? Not so much. But you must keep going regardless...
The Good
In pursuit of success within the entrepreneurial field — lot’s of progress has been made; this is where the majority of the ‘innovation’ lies. My life plans prior to this week where to start and run businesses — that’s pretty much it. This week I’ve innovated and taken a new approach. At the beginning of this week, I became fascinated with Elon Musk and his achievements. I’ve watched everything I possibly could and read everything I possibly could. I realised that great success isn’t achieved by randomly starting businesses here and there.
On a whim, I bought a number of books on people and businesses that I want to emulate. I began to have a desire to build something bigger than myself, to do good for the world; to become massively successful. This prompted me to study the path of greats in order to establish my own plan for success. This led to my personal favourite article yet ‘Build an Empire.’ — this article details my entire life plan and blueprint I intend to use to gain success. To boil my revelation to its roots; I came to the understanding that building someone great only comes through radical innovation — through disrupting an industry and being the best at what you do.
I wanted to build something bigger than myself and help the world, so I spent a night and came up with a large array of problems that plague the world; I plan to dedicate my life to eradicating that problem; through innovation. After much contemplation, my industry of choice is renewable energy — with a specific focus on solar. Quite simply, I’m teaching myself about everything to do with energy, and I will work to improve it.
My initial thoughts in tackling the problem using Elon Musk’s first principle of reasoning and the tree of knowledge;
I’m very happy with this epiphany and I believe that I wouldn’t have got far without it. Through innovation we get evolution — through evolution we get better.
The Bad
While it sounds like a great week; I’m actually very behind on my objectives. I’ve hit 2 out of 7 of my objectives. The notable objectives I’m not happy missing are my articles, my reading target, garage renovation plans and my contact plans (podcast production). It’s not all bad as I’ve made good strides in these areas and I should be able to catch up next week but the fact remains that I set out to accomplish them in 1 week and I failed.
Nonetheless, I will not be letting that get me down — the show goes on.
The Ugly
This was the first week that I didn’t manage to keep up with my articles. For 3 weeks leading I’ve been writing at least 1 article per day but this week I only wrote 3; it was a crushing feeling missing a day. As all things go — when you fall off the bandwagon you struggle to catch up, once one day had been missed then the next day wasn’t so bad, and then the next missed day began to feel like the norm.
On most days, I successfully completed zero reading. In retrospect, I really don’t know what I did with a lot of my time. It’s possible that maybe not reading or writing articles freed up my mind to be able to achieve the good mentioned above. It’s equally possible that it was just wasted time.
Quite frustratingly I’m severely behind on my garage renovation plans. It needs to be finished for Christmas and the window I have for that is slowly decreasing — this means that in the following weeks I will need to spend less time on the things I’m constantly thinking about — business and content — I never like doing this as when I focus on unrelated things I feel as if I’m losing momentum. I suppose it could be likened to cramming before an exam? Never a good feeling — regardless, it must be done.
2. What can we take from this week and how will it change my actions in the future?
In the midst of failure, I’ve learnt some important things about myself regarding what times are best for me to do certain tasks. I’ve learned that I cannot write articles in the evening — it’s just not possible, it must be done first thing in the morning. On the other hand, I’ve learnt that I read at my best in the evening along with my creative development.
Thus, when scheduling my days I know how best to structure it to get the most effective work out of me. I write articles in the morning and do the ‘heavy-labour’ work in the morning, I leave my evenings for creative thinking and development.
Another thing I’ve learnt is that, like many others, I’m affected largely by momentum and the falling off the bandwagon effect. I know that if I miss a day writing an article, or reading, I’m extremely likely to miss the next as well. I know some can take full days off and jump straight back into the thick of it the next day — this is not me; I need constant movement each day.
Quite simply, this just gives me extra fear for those days that I don’t feel up to it to get moving and make sure that I have a productive day, every day.
All in all, I feel this was a good week — while on paper it doesn’t look great — I’ve made significant improvements in my overall life journey. In fact, this week will have been my biggest week to date in that regard. I’ve completely altered the trajectory of my life, in an extremely good way. I’m more excited about the future than ever before — I cannot wait to start making my way up my chosen industry. Retrospectively, this week is all about innovation — innovation in my future and the way I plan to achieve success, alongside innovation in how I will structure my days and work to get things done on a daily basis. Thank you so much for reading — have a wonderful next week!
2nd — 8th of October 2020.
