Over the last few days, I’ve shared some of my most popular content from 2019 (top posts, top Instagram posts, top tweets, top retweets & top podcast episodes). However, it’s important to own the things that weren’t popular or successful. It’s also important to learn from those things!
Here are my top 5 Lessons Learned in 2019!
- Practice like you Play – In October, I was a featured speaker at the Quincy Conference in Illinois. I practiced my presentations on the flight there and a little more at the Airbnb that I stayed at. I thought it would all go great. And it did, except for one detail: my AmazonBasics wireless presentation remote was a hot mess. There were at least a dozen times during the day that it didn’t click when it should have or clicked multiple times when it should have clicked once. I looked so unprofessional. I have since purchased a better clicker (I’m looking at you, Logitech Spotlight 😍) and now I always practice with my remote. This lesson could also be, sometimes you’ve gotta pay more to get good quality.
- Prufreed – Er, Proofread. My Google Translate in Google Sheets #EduGIF has traveled the world (literally). It had more than 85,000 retweets in Indonesia and nearly 90,000 upvotes on Reddit. But I didn’t proofread it before I published it and now it’s too late. There is 1 error in there (the code for German is de, not ge), 1 silly choice (why translate taco from English to Spanish!?) and 1 not-so-great example (it translates bienvenido to you are welcome, rather than welcome).
- Back up your backups! – I recorded a mini-episode of the Educational Duct Tape podcast with my friend Missy Paden at the Educational Duct Tape Workshop in December. I edited it and had it almost ready to publish. It was a great interview. When I went back to publish it, the audio file had disappeared. Poof. I should’ve backed it up. Instead, I ended up publishing an episode where I reflected on the disaster. Multiple people reached out to tell me that they found my reflections to be valuable!
- Check – In May, I interviewed John Sowash for an episode of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast. When I went back a few days later to edit the interview, I discovered that I hadn’t plugged in my microphone and, instead, my audio was recorded via my computer’s built-in mic. Oops! It sounded horrible. I should’ve checked before recording!
- Double-Check! – In August, I interviewed Mike Mohammad for an episode of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast. When I went back a weeks later to edit the interview, Mike’s audio wasn’t there. We must have disconnected before it finished uploading the audio, or maybe there was an error message that I ignored. Fortunately, Mike was willing to re-do the interview a few weeks later. And it’s a good thing, too, because it became the 5th most listened-to episode of 2019.
Here’s to more successes and more lessons learned in 2020! Happy New Year!
