On Monday, I released the Productivity For INFPs Online Course into the world. I had been working on it for about a year and had it on my mind for about two.
As this is “launch week” I’ve been reflecting on the process of creating it and thought it would be useful to share with you all because I actually followed my own advice while I was making it. 😉
The Productivity for INFPs Online Course is a direct result of the productivity ideas that I teach. Who would’ve thought?
Small Steps, Forward Motion
I got started on the course in late spring of 2021 and the first thing to do after a little planning, outlining, and brainstorming (but not too much 😉 ) was to start recording videos.
I felt fairly comfortable being on video but I wasn’t as practiced with them as with writing and I was also feeling a little pressure about the course.
Would it be good enough? Would it help people? Was I doing it right? You know, all that kind of stuff that goes through your mind as you make something, especially for the first time.
I would record a video and I would immediately start to question it. Did I say that thing right? Did I explain that well enough? Do I look good enough?
I had doubts, I felt uncertain, and my inner critic showed up regularly, but I knew enough to know that the way forward was to put one foot in front of the other and do the videos one by one (there are 18 of them). I let the voices in my head talk, but I tried not to listen to them too closely. When I was finished with one video I would do the next, and so on.
After some time of feeling very imperfect and questioning myself regularly, I had 18 finished videos. They weren’t perfect, but they were certainly good enough. And most importantly, they were complete.
It was little more than taking one step, and then taking another, and repeating.
Moving Slowly
This course took me about a year to create. Granted, it wasn’t the only thing I was working on during that period of time. I would weave in and out of various projects.
But sometimes I really wanted to move it along faster, and it just wouldn’t go.
As I created the course, I was changing and growing right along with it, and those changes take some time to integrate. If I was wrestling with my inner critic a bit, things would slow down, so I would take an action and then let the feelings of that action settle a bit before moving on.
I’m slow to begin with, really, but when I take on something new or unfamiliar I can really crawl. This was also why taking small, but consistent, steps was so important–to keep things moving steadily, even though they weren’t fast.
Lots and Lots of Feelings
Boy, did I have a lot of feelings while I was doing this.
In addition to the “voices in my head” outlined above, creating a course was something I had never done before. I had hopes, dreams, and aspirations for it. I would think about all the experiences I had that formed the basis for the material.
I would think about releasing it out into the world and what that would be like. I was growing, changing, transforming. I was doing something new. I wanted to help people who were similar to me in certain ways. I thought about the journey I had taken to get here.
There was a lot of stuff.
And then, of course, there was the fear. Would it really be helpful to people? Would it change things for me? Would I receive criticism or judgment for it? And the ever-present, would it be good enough? And the follow-up question, was I good enough?
Yeah, so it was a bit of a roller coaster.
Wrapping It Up
But, in the end, like all things, it was finally complete and ready to go. And I was truly a different version of myself.
There had been some steep learning curves, some doubts, some fears, but I got it done, and considering that this was a course on productivity, that was really the most important thing.
Amanda Linehan is the author of Productivity For INFPs. She is a multi-genre fiction writer, indie author and INFP, who has published five novels and has been read in 113 countries. Amanda was a speaker at the INF Summit in February 2020. Get her free Productivity For INFPs Mini-Course when you sign up for the For INFPs newsletter.
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