Working Alone

The motivation problem — how do I motivate myself?

Vic Ward
5 min readSep 5, 2019
Learn from failure.
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

When working alone, there is no one to make sure the job is done on time or that the job is done.

About two years ago, no one signed up for my android smartphone, tablet, or iPhone classes at community centers. My business, MyPersonalPhone, vanished.

Where did the students go?

After years of teaching how to use portable phones starting with feature phones and then android phones and tablets, iPhones, and iPads.

My process for getting students came to an abrupt halt.

Where did they go? They went to a free course offered by a national nonprofit.
Taleb, the author of the “Black Swan, says this is the danger of using specific incidences to reach general conclusions. Like, I will be successful because I am successful.

Back to the drawing board.

I started on a new project. I decided to sell classes online. After all, I was a classroom teacher for years. It would be like Udemy or Lynda but my courses on my website.

So I started as I’ve done since the late ’90s — build a website. And develop a list of tasks and projects. Massage them into a rough Getting Things Done, GTD, project…

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Vic Ward
Vic Ward

Written by Vic Ward

Help people apply creativity, start new small businesses, use mobile devices, collaborate, understand the coming recession and keep up with the future of work.