How I Made The Most Out Of Quarantine

For the last eight weeks, I have had the privilege of developing and participating in an accountability group that is focused on educating and motivating group members to tell their stories on LinkedIn. I dedicated time and put in effort as a way to use the days locked inside my home during the COVID quarantine. I did so to improve myself and hopefully help others along the way.

The experiment of developing a course with learning lessons and homework assignments has been extremely educational; so much so that my teammate, Glenn Boothe, and I intend on using our learnings to refine our process and invite a second class to participate in this challenge.

This week’s final writing assignment is to write a letter to your future self in 2030. And with everything going on in the world it doesn’t feel right to predict a utopian future. I feel that we are lightyears away from that at the current moment.

Instead, I want to take this opportunity to share with you some of the highlights from the past eight weeks and what makes me grateful to be able to continue this program in the future.

  • Our writing assignments were intentionally vague. We did this to encourage creative freedom, and my fellow teammates took each challenge in vastly different directions. I continued to be impressed each week as teammates posted their content. In all, there were over 50 articles created by our group.
  • One of our assignments was to be vulnerable and tell your truth without placing any of the normal filters that we all put on our stories. I couldn’t believe how hard it was to show areas of myself that I felt most vulnerable about but was inspired by the ways that my fellow classmates embraced this exercise and let it all out.
  • We had a couple individuals in the group that hadn’t spent much time on LinkedIn; therefore, getting their accounts setup and organized was a major step forward. It was interesting to see the messages of encouragement that they received from their new connections congratulating them on embracing the platform and learning more about their background.
  • The learning lessons Glenn and I compiled from an interview with Jenna Fryer, an AP reporter, as well as Graphic Art 101 by Caroline Fogel were all exceptionally helpful. I used this eight-week course to test different content ideas and develop content in multiple ways including written, audio, and video forms.

We started with 19 people in the first class and are ending with an average of 10 participants who develop content each week and contribute valuable feedback to our weekly calls. This has been a tremendous learning experience that I am excited to continue while also celebrating my teammates along the way. There was a bunch of great content that inspired me to do better and here are a couple that stood out amongst the rest:

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Mars Minor League Omnicom Sprint