I’ve customised my YouTube channel to remove ‘activate learning’ and to just be Life Lessons Through Books.

Some time ago, I asked the question Should I Get Off YouTube?

The reason is that after getting off social media, I’m reflecting on every single aspect of my working life and my output that I have shared online since 2011.

With over 500 videos of working and sharing my lessons, experiments, projects, questions out loud to the world, I realised that I had an immense body of work that I put out to the world. Some of which helped me in my working life but in many aspects, putting myself “out there” meant that I was also at a greater risk of failing publicly because showing the “warts and all” is bad for business. To be successful in business is to create illusions.

And so fail I did. I never was a good illusionist.

Instead I wanted to build a model that wasn’t following what others were doing. In some way, I wanted to lead something new and different – something inspirational.

In particular, I baulked at the idea of having to build myself into a “thought leader or entrepreneur” and then base a consulting business where I had to rely on being at the whim of platform algorithms; to build a business around my expertise, which then I could extract huge amounts of money from subscribers or corporate customers.

That business model never sat well with me as I espoused continual and lifelong learning NOT as a “thought leader” of lifelong learning.

There was always a contradiction that never sat well with me because I was always learning.

The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. (Therefore I’m no expert – but why don’t we learn or build something new and unique together?)

The more I don’t know, the more I want to learn with others so we can make meaning together in our own ways. (So bring me on so that we can design a co-created solution that inspires change and adoption).

However, putting an economic charging model around this concept is difficult because I’m not teaching per se. Instead, I’m teaching through role modelling.

Putting myself out there – getting out of my comfort zone, taking risks and learning for myself in the hope that inspires others to do the same for themselves.

How do you price that?

So, I wanted my model to be inclusive around a community of learning socially through me role modelling the same behaviours of peer learning; and where others decided the value on what I provided them.

Alas, I learned that many people and companies don’t want this. I found it challenging when they wanted templates, hacks, copy best practices of other companies or weren’t invested themselves into participating.

So I changed my mindset for my own sanity. I became too emotionally invested in my work which burned me out. In some way, I felt saddened that the world had changed so much, so quickly that in some way it had set us backwards when it came to being mentally and physically ready to do things differently. To relate, to be open to learning and understanding, to question, to experiment. Instead, people had mentally retreated – and in a big way, I did the same.

Over the weekend, I went through ALL my YouTube videos and saw that I’ve done so much. I had to go through this activity because I had lost my confidence over the last couple of years over the value, meaning and significance of my work. Going through these videos made me realise that I do share value even though companies may not see it.

I had shared over 500 videos of my “learning life”. I have been lucky to put myself “out there” and been involved in some fantastic projects that have been life changing and life affirming for me such as:

• Intergenerational Film Project by our Local Council
• CNT Fake News Channel on Snapchat
• Learning to Read Music and Play Ukulele
• Learning New Language (French) to Fluency
• Co-Writing two books about Microsoft Teams
• Collaborating on Discover2Learn website with Jane Hart
• Building Third Place (a learning community of over 400 people across Australia)
• Spoken at International and National Conferences
• LearningNow TV Reporter
• Community Reporter at Microsoft Ignite
• Building upon my Knitting and Crochet (new) Skills
• Getting into the Women Into Golf Program
• and so much more….

I have achieved so much these last years through working and learning out loud. Sure, I haven’t built a business, become a thought leader but I’ve EXPANDED my crafting, musical, language, writing, video editing and filming skills DURING my working years.

I’ve embodied lifelong learning – and accrued some skills now that will set me into a new direction – and that’s exciting. People would look at this list and argue “but why are you learning about language when you should be focusing on building a business or sharing Tik Tok videos to build a following for your business?”

Through learning something that you love, by default you will learn the tools you’ll need for your business over time. You learn research, technology tools and apps, you’ll learn curiosity, you’ll be sense making and reflecting. Over time, doing something you love and letting your mind wander, explore, build and create, you’ll see and know instinctively the right tools, people and networks to use when the time comes. It’s not wasting time – it’s giving life to your work.

So while others have been accruing skills for professional outcomes or finding new roles or careers, I’ve been using that time to also devote to my own interests because I needed that creativity in my life. Without it, I’d feel stale.

I need creative outlets to breathe.

However, there was a downside too. I became burned out to the point where I questioned why I even was doing what I was doing. Many people simply “didn’t get it”. After all, many people explore these type of interests AFTER retiring. Stuff I chose to focus on weren’t related to professional development or career building. However, what I was seeing was that these were ALL about professional development – they were about RELATING.

Instead, they weren’t seeing me follow the typical trajectory of a consulting business. At worse, they felt sorry for me.

I wore my heart on my sleeve – and that’s dangerous in a cut throat world of business. Maybe it was simply naive of me to think that others would be inspired to also do the same: that is, follow their heart and learn things beyond what their manager or organisation were telling them to learn and instead, take a risk and learn something THEY wanted to learn.

So it was time to customise my YouTube channel and reclaim the videos where I was learning out loud.

I deliberated making the entire channel private – or deleting it completely. However, I couldn’t face deleting over 500 videos of my working life and projects above – it was like deleting my life. Instead, I made them all PRIVATE or UNLISTED.

I made public only those reviews on books and the lessons I’m learning from them and made everything else private. I had some videos about ‘Learning Through Experiences” which are unlisted meaning that you can only see them through this blog when I post about it but otherwise, you won’t see them openly on my channel.

In effect, it means that my entire online body of work will be from this website from which you can access the videos of what I’m learning. The public face of YouTube will be about lessons of life through reading and books and only those videos will be public.

In some way, I’m trying to reclaim the stuff I put out there all this time – to get back a bit of myself that I spread out to everyone and anyone. The future is exciting and it’s unknown but I have confidence everything will turn out alright.