Once upon a time, I set myself a deadline. On Wednesday the 15th, I wanted to have my first webinar live and running.
On Saturday the 11th, when I planned to record the audio, I made a horrible discovery: the only headset in my household that doesn’t sound staticky was on the road with another member of my family, and wouldn’t be back until Monday night!
11-12-hour work days ensued.
On Tuesday, more frantic creation of slides ensued, as well as the recording of most of my 1.3 hours of audio. And then I had to transfer it all into Windows Movie Maker and start syncing the slides.
Whose idea was it to time the slides by their duration, as opposed to their start and end points, anyway?
In the end, I had to delay the webinar’s release by 1 day; I plan to have it live by the end of today. It was certainly a learning experience, both in terms of software, logistics and technology, and in the way I’ve been running my life.
What I learned from these very frantic few days was:
When you have an important project, set boundaries. Part of my problem was, I’d made too many commitments to too many people, and put those commitments ahead of what I needed to do. Because of this, I hadn’t prioritized my webinar until my deadline was far too close, so I ended up scrambling in vain to get it done in time.
In the future, I need to put my important projects first, get them done far ahead of time, and not make any promises to anyone that would prevent me from achieving that goal.
If you can relate, or have a similar story to share, I’d love it if you’d share your experience in the comments section. I look forward to hearing from you.