“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself?” — Epictetus
There’s a saying that if you hang around the barbershop long enough, you’ll end up getting a haircut. Well, over the last 9 months of COVID-19, having viewed hundreds of YouTube videos, I finally got mine! I binge watched my favorite YouTube stars — Matt d’avella making hot coffee and taking a cold shower, Ali Abdaal teaching you how to spin an Apple pencil while deciding to spin out of his NHS career to move to the USA, Uncle Roger grilling some of the best chefs in the world and teaching them how to cook fried rice the authentic Asian way, Nathaniel Drew learning a language in only 7 days, MKBHD making amazing quality tech videos, Peter Mckinnon hitting his 5 million subscribers and Casey Neistat returning on YouTube. And if this was all, Ryan Serhant jumped off of a helicopter (not for real) to reinvent the real estate industry in the USA! All of these happened in the last 9 months right before our eyes. So having spent long enough hanging around the barber shop (YouTube that is for me), today is the day I finally get my haircut!
As a tech product and innovation expert for the last 11 years, I was extremely fortunate to work in both startups and large multinationals in 5 different industries. While having a day job, I always tried to balance a parallel life where I built and failed in 3 startups of my own, and put in hundreds of volunteering hours in amazing community projects. Through those failures and countless unpaid hours for the community, I was lucky to mentor some of the most talented and successful startup founders back home, connected with people I never imagined I would get the chance to, represented my country (Bangladesh) in global settings more than 10–12 times despite coming from a very humble middle-class family in South Asia. And on one occasion, we even got the Hulk himself (Mark Ruffalo that is!) to support my first-ever Indiegogo campaign during a community project saving the largest mangrove forest in the world during a disastrous oil spillage. But that’s a story for some other time!
Earlier this year, when the Covid-19 hit the world and took us all by surprise, I couldn’t help but wonder what we will be left with once the dust settles and life starts anew, going back to normal. I realized all the hard work, the patience, the longing that all of us were building towards a better future, came to an absolute standstill. It is as if we are all in a giant ship together on a journey into the future, and suddenly, we are hit by something at the very bottom of our foundation, the keel of the ship, and a lot of holes got created due to the impact, resulting in massive disruption to the course of the ship from what was originally intended.
We are all in this ship together, some aware and some not of what can happen to us. But, one thing is for sure, if we don’t fix these holes at the bottom, we are all going to sink with the ship itself. Unless we put all hands on deck, by sharing all the knowledge and wisdom putting it into work, we will not be able to help save the ship from sinking and eventually saving millions of lives.
The more I thought about it, the more clarity I found in opening up this YouTube channel, something I always wanted to, but fear of being in front of the camera always superseded my dream. I am very sure the journey for all of us in this Covid and the post-Covid world will never be the same again. It already isn’t. But unless we shared more openly and honestly of the things we know and learned all these years, unless we realize that not all of us are so fortunate, and sometimes all we need is a little bit of direction or a bit of light to guide us out of a dark tunnel, we cannot repair the damages done to our troubled world from this Covid-19 and beyond.
Recognizing my passion for continuous learning, and always being curious about almost anything in life, I created this YouTube channel to share all the life lessons I’ve found so useful over the last 15 years. But to be honest, the big elephant in the room is my fight with my greatest fear to put myself out there while trying to reinvent myself. I don’t know of a 35-year-old corporate manager who’s publicly trying to put himself out there for a personal transformation. It’s even scarier to put myself in a beginner’s shoe while trying to navigate through the baggage that I have accumulated over the one and a half decades in my life.
However, I will (hopefully) embark on a transformative journey, where I will create new habits, change my mindset, find more productivity hacks that are more relevant in this changing time, and reflect a lot on my past to connect the dots in ways I never did before. I will hopefully create weekly videos for you where I plan to talk about beginners’ hacks, essentialism, productivity, and a little bit of tech! I don’t know where this channel will take me in the coming days, but I hope to share my personal journey with you, and it will mean a lot if you also join me in this endeavor!
> If you want to follow my transformation journey and perhaps start your own reinvention, follow my YouTube channel HERE.
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> If you’re someone like me, spent countless hours waiting for what you always wanted to do, this Casey Neistat video might help!
“We are reminded that, in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.” — Barack Obama
