What It Takes To Survive In This Pandemic?

Today is already the 2nd of May, 2020, and we are still in the midst of fighting against the pandemic even though there have been some good news here and there about the curve flattening and people can start to resume work. Yet, we still need to be utterly cautious about how we interact and commute as the virus can be potent and highly contagious. We never know where the virus is lying around and our immune system may not be 100% at its best performance all the time.

Looking back since the 1st phase of MCO where everyone is confused and has no idea how to execute it properly and until now, the 4th phase of MCO where people are getting used to Work From Home and being frugal and spend on necessary groceries and items only. I would say, this is a global change on how we can really change a behavior in a community in a short amount of time. In fact, with only a short 1 month time, people can adapt and change their daily habit with the right enforcement and rules. This is one way showing that with the right incentive (not being infected) and the right punishment (fine and jailed), people can be very cooperative. Even now, we see that people are still confused about the lifting of MCO as there are still active and suspect cases. There are also risk analysis on whether it is worth it to resume the business with the responsibility and precautions needed to be taken during the business hours.

I would just like to reflect on what I had done throughout this period of MCO which consist of 55 days (if I had not counted wrongly). Frankly speaking, this lockdown had driven me to do things that I had never think of doing before and it leads me to be more focus on getting things done as well. Despite the insecurity I have as well, the productivity does give me some lime light on things will eventually turn better. Let me just summarize them up in point forms for easier reading:

1 – I had started my own startup - Go Doodle

With just a matter of days, I had this idea of creating an online art learning platform to serve people who would like to learn about arts. I have been in the circle of artists for quite some time, on and off ever since I am in my primary school time. In my early childhood time, I gained self-confidence through arts as I get to express my creativity while earning myself some recognition through competitions. When I am going into my tertiary study, architecture is the path I chose where it is a combination of art and science. Not only it requires a vast understanding of how a building works, but it also talks about the aesthetic value of a building when it stands on the site itself.

Putting something beautiful out to the society is as good as doing a good deed to the society

This is what I realized when I practice architecture and still tag along with art as well. Personally, I do not enjoy getting repetitive tasks done plus it is not “appealing” in some way. Yet, I see myself did compromise from time to time which then diminish my passion for working on the tasks that I had in my hand too. Thus, coming out with this idea about Go Doodle excites me when I can be part of the education line and also indulging in the beauty of art.
Go Doodle allows me to connect with various kinds of people like art enthusiasts, kids, parents, schools, artists, corporates and so on. Through art, we can do a lot of wonders and when it is done right, we can also create a sustainable ecosystem where everyone can benefit by playing their parts well. Artists are able to teach, create and sell their expertise; kids, parents and the public can gain exposure and awareness about arts and at the same time, picking up some life lessons too! Corporate can benefit through the creativity offered by the artists to achieve a breakthrough in their marketing and branding. Just by listing these down, I already felt the fire burning in me.

In Go Doodle, we also focus on personal development as we believe that by practising and learning about arts, it is equivalent to train ourselves to be more resilience and self-aware in our daily life. For example, we can build up our self-confidence through arts as when we start to create art that people appreciate, definitely that we know we are doing good to the people. By creating arts, we also get to experience a state of mind that we are in the flow and nothing can disturb us. Such focus is quite rare to be found at this time with so many distractions around us like our phone notification, surrounding and so on. Next up are creativity and cognitive skill which are equally essential in the 21st century. We no longer need people with good “following order” skill but to be creative and critical.

So for the last whole week (from 20th April 2020 to 25th April 2020), Go Doodle had organized its soft launch and officially introduced to the public. Throughout the session, I get to invite 5 panels to have individual interviews to learn about how arts can impact someone’s life, especially to the guests themselves. With this topic, we can sum up that having arts as part of our life, we can be more enjoyable and content too. As of now, we have less than half a month before the official launch of Go Doodle where classes will start and we will be having more activities too. Hence, I really look forward to grow along this baby of mine.

2 – Learning & Action

Learning itself is an understatement if it is not connected with action. Hence, when I picked up new things, I try to take action which then will make my learning more efficient. To be honest, this is not an instant thing that I can do it successfully all the time as it really requires perseverance and good SOP to make it smooth. During this lockdown, I had done a reflection on my own direction and field of learning to focus on.

Digital Marketing and Branding

It is a very essential part for my whole lockdown period where I had gone through a few days of intense training and courses to really understand the marketing strategy and the action plan to execute. To be honest, I am naïve in the first place that I can achieve good result with just a few gimmicky moves but little did I know that there needs to be different follow up actions that can increase the conversion.

Urban Farming

I had been involved in urban farming on and off since I started to do research during my postgraduate time. Then, starting from last year, I had also joined Urban Farm Tech, a local urban farm company that provides design and build service for aquaponics and hydroponics to corporate and individual clients. Besides, I also volunteered to join the Association for Vertical Farming to help with the research and archiving works where I can participate to be the front line of the industry. To me, it is a long term game where I will be putting more time in this.

Art & Education

This is something not new but refreshing for me as I had been in touch with art and education in one way or another like I do sketches, I do teaching but not making into a business. Hence, having a business set up with the intention to make art learning accessible and a life long skill for people around the world, this is something that is worth putting a lot of effort in! Starting Go Doodle isn’t something comes in coincidently but I think subconsciously it is a calling. I really appreciate the exposure I had since childhood and definitely would like to go into it further.

Architecture

To be honest, this is something that I had been putting a side for a moment as the amount of learning is too enormous for me to cope at one time which I had decided to put this for a rest first before I take it up again. It is quite contradicting to what I have in mind just months ago without the MCO where I could focus on studying my professional exam and get my certification by this year. However, it turns out that getting my Go Doodle set up and have a good fanbase are more satisfying than this. Yet, I will not give up on this but putting this in my to do list.

Public Speaking

Never did I imagine that I will be doing live sessions on Facebook with different guests talking about arts. I had always been thinking of setting up a Youtube channel to talk about what I had learn or interesting thing that I pick up when I was studying or conversing with someone. Sort of like a scavenger to search for treasure for my audiences. Again, public speaking is something that requires a new set of skills like how to speak with confidence, the tonality, the speed and also the rhythm. Next, I will need to be clear in what I am about to say and how I can convey the message efficiently. Persuading people requires skills like good vocabulary, psychology understanding and also good interaction with the audiences. All of these are new to me and that really blown my mind after the live session.

Automate Tasks with System

This is another important lesson that I learned but have not put into action as I do not know where to start. First of all, I need to identify the actions that can generate me “income” like reading, producing content, work on product, sales pitch and also investing. So the next move is to maximize all of these action throughout my day and streamline the actions. What I faced is that some activities may not be aligned and not in the same field so I will need a lot of energy to change my focus to a new thing. Thus, it is essential to understand how my mind work best and create a workflow that can optimize myself.

3 – De-clutter Myself

I have loads of input but in terms of output, I would consider it as minimal. Hence, I am looking to push my output to at least 50/50 ratio so that the output can help me to generate “income”. Thus, getting information sort out and categorized is one of the way to achieve that as I could extract information that I had created with ease. Next, have more clarity for the audience to know what to expect from me. For example, in my Youtube Channel, one can learn about different skills and knowledge about life long self improvement and business. Since I am learning and walk the talk, so I might as well put it into content and share it out with others too. With that, not only it helps me to understand, it gets more people to participate and give me more input to improve too.
In order to make things easy for my followers, I am putting all of my social media together for easier management and I need to keep on pushing myself to create more output daily.

My Social Media:

My Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimzwarch/
My Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zhao.wei.90
My Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHI9RYNT_TCqAvuRFvPxxAw
My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimzwarch
My Telegram: https://t.me/kimzwarch
My Behance: https://www.behance.net/kimzwarch
My Steemit Account: https://www.steemit.com/@kimzwarch
My Hive Account: @kimzwarch

My Businesses:

My Startup - Go Doodle: https://www.facebook.com/letsgodoodle
Pet Supplement Business: https://vetamind.com
Urban Farm Business - Urban Farm Tech: https://www.urbanfarmtech.my/
My Telegram Group For Passive Income: https://t.me/torquetheway

4 – Restructure Investments

Another thing that I am doing actively during this lockdown is to restructure my investment and review whether is the investment is relevant anymore. I always wanted to move myself into the B and I quadrant which are the business owner and investor which was advocated by Robert Kiyosaki. Well, now I am on my way to go into that direction and that definitely requires a lot of reading and trying out. As of now, I see my portfolio have a significant change as I am mostly self-funding for starting up and adjusted my portfolio into an aggressive one. I know well that keeping cash in the bank does me no good but to have just enough cash to survive through, that would actually help me to get from zero to one. While building my active income, I also want to build my passive income bit by bit which can be my cashflow bed in the near future. Of course, all requires time and effort to build and maintain so it is better to start now than tomorrow. Here I am listing down some of the affiliate links that I have and I will personally do different post to introduce one by one about them.

Invest & Earn (Affiliate Links)

My Daily Challenge

A challenge to myself to pick up journaling/blogging again as a daily habit where I will spend around 30 – 60 minutes to do a post and to summarize a day. This is to keep myself on track towards the dream I want to achieve and by doing journaling, it actually helps to clear my mind and to be more systematic. Previously, I had started a few times but failed to persevere in the end. So definitely hope this time would not fail. Just take it easy and make every step counts.

Written: 2/5/2020, 001

What It Takes To Survive In This Pandemic? - My Self Reflection & Restrategize