“A man,” wrote an Irish poet, “is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.”
- President Barack Obama (Beau Biden eulogy)
Today is the first day of June. So, happy new month!
And instead of focusing on self discovery, how about sharing an all-too-common, albeit enduring insight this Monday?
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Azziad Nasenya started lip syncing and creating content on TikTok in August 2019. In April this year, her Utawezana Challenge video went viral and she became quite a sensation.
The adorable household name that she now is both in Kenya and beyond.
What many of us fail to realize is that it took quite a while for her to come up with a hit video. None of the previous videos she did may have seemed to be paying off, until the day #UtawezanaChallenge happened.
The growth both in numbers and fan-base was gradual, until we suddenly noticed. That "suddenly" is what the media wrote about, it is what we talked about for days.
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Just how long does it take to design a good logo?
This is a question I often have to address on the few occasions I wear my graphic designer hat. That most logos are seemingly simple graphics or typefaces gives that misleading impression that it takes just a little time to create one.
The same goes for creative writing, composing music, painting... or any other skill that takes painstaking, meticulous and unrelenting practice to get it right.
But what we notice is the novel that takes less than a week to finish reading, the song that is less than 4 minutes long ...you get the drift.
This human tendency to value things based on how long we take to appropriate them is where the importance of gradually gets lost.
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Losing everyday opportunities is a gradual thing. It is barely noticed when little bits of value are lost. Who has the time to notice or even appreciate the journey, when all focus is on the destination?
But starting today, I want to also make the intricacies of the race count, even as I have my sights on the Finish Line. I don't wanna miss a thing, when it comes to the process.
Neither will I waste another moment...
