“I failed 8-times for my driving license before I finally passed,” shared Ryan.
“Ok, wait! How many times did you fail to get your promotion?,” asked Zein.
There was no such thing as failing to get a promotion. The promotion was like a default system. It was called due for the promotion. The personnel only needed to fulfill the necessary criteria.
“Oh! I failed 0 times for the job promotion,” said Ryan.
Everyone laughed. Zein was the life wire of the workplace. He loved to say something that made others laughed.
I read how Michael Jordon rose among the top performers in the basketball league. What did he say about failure?
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. — Michael Jordon
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had many downtimes in their life trying to build their businesses. Oprah Winfrey was not well-known anywhere in her career during her early years of age.
It came to my mind. How many articles do writers write before they usually find their breakthrough of good surprises? Perhaps you and I will know what works for us anytime as we reach our 1,000th post?
These thoughts came after an interview I had recently. I was amazed that the vacancy I applied for seemed like the works on Fiverr or Upwork.
“You will be submitting at least 2 to 3 articles per day which includes research…” — Interviewer A
Did you read that? 2 to 3 articles per day with research.
“If I were to ask you to write a 500 words article, how long will you take together with the research?” — Interviewer B
Now, another good question I think most of us need to take note of would be as the following:
“Is writing what you want to do? Because we have many people going for a career switch. So, a content strategist must be interested in writing.”
From the interview, there were takeaways good for writers to know if you wanted to change your course of career into writing.
- Time yourself how long you take to write 500 words article which requires you to research, analyze, edit, and proofread. I am not talking about a personal journal but something that requires research. The 30-days challenge, 100-days writing, and so on are ways to start a practice.
- Show up for daily writing and try to submit 3-articles per day on Medium if you are keen to be a writer in the industry. Try reading on some topics, do the research for all 3-articles, and see how that goes.
- A writer has to be a reader too. What we write often needs research support if we are content creators, blog writers for companies, writing for a press releases, and others. It is easy to write opinions and feelings down. But, when you need to analyze and collect data, that would be different.
- You need to interested about writing. You will know if you try to keep writing without giving up. Is it our emotion that makes us feel we should stop writing?
I saw writing in a different light after the interview. And yes, there would be nothing much we could derive from what worked out and what did not merely by 100, 200, or a few hundreds of articles.
Michael Jordan tried more than hundreds to say he was successful one day. That would be something to reflect on. My mentor wrote since 2017 in Twitter before he was offered to have a book published. I think, we all do not know when our luck comes.
And I wish all of you happy writing.
