FINAL DAY of The August Challenge: Curiosity Call Challenge & Performance (31/08/2022)
Reflections, lessons & announcing my September Challenge.
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My report for Wednesday 31st August 2022 - the final day of my August Curiosity Call challenge.
This report structure will be a little bit different. I’ll start with my reflections & learnings from this challenge in the form of:
My lessons & reflections from carrying out this challenge,
My improvement points if I were to replicate the challenge,
My practical actions I’m taking into the future even after this challenge has finished.
I’ll then talk about my September challenge, and finish with my ‘experience’ of the day (as I do in all posts).
August Challenge Reflections:
My intention was to have a daily ‘Curiosity Call’ with someone in my network that I had either never spoken to before, or had very infrequent interactions with.
I compounded this by also launching my Mentoring Programme for university students, which also took some Curiosity Call slots.
While I didn’t do Curiosity Calls on weekends, I did use the opportunity to write about other people I was speaking with (e.g. good friends or current mentees).
In terms of the subjects of my Curiosity Calls, here’s the breakdown:
15 x Curiosity Call with someone I’ve never spoken to before
Some were regarding the Mentoring programme, others were just to learn more about each other.
Also had many Mentoring programme calls that weren’t booked in the Curiosity Call slot.
5 x Curiosity Call with someone I’ve spoken to infrequently before (< 2 times in the last 6 months)
9 x Call or meeting with someone I’ve known, but haven’t been in touch with for a while.
4 x Short-notice cancellations for Curiosity Calls booked on Calendly.
1 illness, 1 caring for someone with illness, 1 forgot, 1 no contact.
Managed to replace 2 of them, the other 2 I chose not to. (One was the reflection with myself, the other was yesterday!)
So, let me summarise 6 lessons from this challenge:
It takes a lot of courage to reach out and book a call with someone you’ve never interacted with before.
The number of people who booked a call with me, having never messaged or interacted with me before, was really heartening.
I have so much respect for their courage - there have been many times I’ve held back from reaching out to someone for reasons such as not being sure if I had value to add, or thinking others may need it more.
I hope I added value to them in line with our conversations!
Writing about the insights from each call was a brilliant way of extracting more value from each conversation.
Knowing I’d be summarising the topics discussed on this SubStack (or elaborating on them, in this) meant that I was so much more mindful and present during each interaction.
I was receptive to learning from everyone I was speaking with - a great mindset to have generally!
Having a call 15 days with someone I’d never met before was a wonderful way of strengthening my muscle to build rapport with people.
Towards the end, it took very little energy to put myself in front of an unfamiliar face and be able to build an easy sense of rapport with them.
This has set me in good stead for the months to come!
We should all ask ourselves what advice we’d give to our younger-self, and what advice our future-self would give us.
The first gives us perspective as to how far we’ve come.
The second gives us guidance as to how we should act now.
Each person I asked these questions of had interesting insights to share, and all found them to be thought-provoking questions in a positive way.
Almost every Curiosity Call booked in with me was to receive mentoring/coaching from me on something, or to discuss enrolling in my Mentoring Programme.
It was reaffirming that the expectation they came into the call with was to be coached/mentored - this was a really good lesson/insight in the sense that it means people understand my personal brand.
It was also just reaffirming that almost every slot got booked - there was always a slight fear that no one would want to speak with me!
People are incredible.
Ask the right questions, and everyone has amazing, insight-packed stories to share.
There are insights and lessons to be received from every person - we just need to help them feel comfortable enough to share them.
What I would improve on if I were to do this challenge again in the future:
Perhaps send each person I was calling with a couple of questions I was going to ask them so that they were better prepared. While I loved asking about advice they’d give to their younger-selves, or advice they’d receive from their future-selves, I feel like the quality of answers would have been higher had each person had time to think about it.
Steady time to send off my SubStack reflections on the calls. I wasn’t as disciplined this month as I could have been - most my posts were being sent after midnight!
2 Action Points from this challenge that I will take with me into the rest of 2022:
Perhaps have a Curiosity Call slot per week available to be booked by anyone who reaches out. Though, as I go into my busier season, these will now be used for mentoring calls or for clients interested in working with me. But certainly something to do from June-August (my quieter season).
Check in with everyone I had a Curiosity Call with in December. Would be great to hear how they’re getting on!
Where I am now with past challenges I’ve done in 2022:
January Challenge: Eating Whole-Foods Plant Based
Still eating plant-based and feeling strong. Mostly whole-foods. Some dark chocolate and olive bread. Include protein powders in my morning oats breakfast. I’ll actually be cutting chocolate out from 2nd - 20th September just to see how my body responds!
Body in good shape. Probably in the best shape of my life aesthetically. Feeling strong in the gym, and playing the best tennis of my life.
February Challenge: Sleep Optimisation
Not so good. Been variable. However, as my partner begins work in her new role, the hope is to bring this back to a steady 11:30pm-7:30am routine (for me).
March Challenge: Reading
Deprioritised. Currently reading Smart Growth, which has been an awesome read. I took the concepts outlined in their 6-step S-Curve of learning and used it to help a client understand their current situation with impostor syndrome.
April Challenge: Meditation
Has been good! Meditated for at least 10 minutes on 22 of 31 days this month.
May Challenge: Running
Still aiming to run 20km a week. Perhaps want to shift to some sprint-based sessions as opposed to slow, steady 10km+ runs. But on track for 1000km for the year, I think.
June Challenge: Social Media
Have deprioritised this. But probably best if I bring it back…
Excited to post more on LinkedIn again. But not as excited to make TikTok videos on academics, nor at all to get back on Instagram. May have to evaluate this going forwards.
July Challenge: Stretching.
Still stretching daily. No more than 10 minutes, which isn’t ideal (20 would be much better), but body has been feeling good.
So, what’s the challenge for September?
September Challenge: Learning Spanish!
Well, here’s a different challenge!
Over the course of this month, I want to spend 30 minutes per day learning Spanish. Initially, I’ll be using Duolingo, but this may change depending on my needs.
I’ve never learnt Spanish formally before, though I’ve picked up bits and pieces while holidaying (in Spain/Canary Islands) or backpacking (in South America).
So, why am I doing this?
First, I want to get back into the habit of learning languages.
Contrary to many students’ experiences, I enjoyed languages at school! I enjoyed them so much, in fact, that I took both French and German, achieving A* grades at GCSE in both.
I feel I owe part of this to my bilingualism - speaking Farsi as my first language (which sadly I’m nowhere near as fluent at now) definitely helped with picking up other languages.
Since then, I’ve enjoyed learning random phrases from a range of languages (e.g. Greek, Mandarin) to ‘surprise’ native speakers with.
But with Spanish, I think it would be cool to learn it more fluently, given I do plan on spending holidays in Spanish-speaking countries in the future, and it’s a fairly common language.
Second, I have a few close friends who have taught themselves Spanish to the level where they’re now fairly fluent.
I hope to have short conversations with them in Spanish over this month, so that I can take any written concepts I learn and apply them to speaking.
I’ll also try and speak to locals in Tenerife when I visit at the end of the month.
Third, most of my challenges over the last few months have been physical or social.
It will be cool to do one that’s a bit more cerebral in nature. There are a few studies linking learning a language with decreased likelihood of Alzhemier’s or dementia, so that’s a pretty good reason to ‘retrain’ my brain.
Fourth, I think my progress in Spanish over a month will be quicker than at any other language, which makes it appealing.
Spanish is not too dissimilar in structure to French, and I’ve informally spoken a bit of Spanish over the last few years. This puts me in a good position to benefit from 30 days of consistent learning.
Whereas doing a month on Mandarin would be nowhere near sufficient for me to achieve any proficiency - that would a 6-12 month challenge!
So, that’s the September challenge. Let’s see how it goes!
My Experience (Wednesday 31st August 2022):
Reflections on My Curiosity Call Challenge:
Call with no-one due to a last-minute cancellation.
They got in touch an hour before saying they had to look after their grandmother, who had fallen ill.
I respect anyone who puts their families needs first - I hope all is well with their grandmother, and wish her a speedy recovery.
Meeting duration: 0 minutes.
A fitting end to this challenge - it was almost too good to be true how there had been so few cancellations!
Instead, I had a call with a prospective client who signed up for 4-sessions with me, commencing tomorrow (1st Sept!)
I also received an email from someone else I’d had a call with over the course of this month confirming they were ready to sign up to 4-sessions of coaching with me!
What a wonderful way to end the month by onboarding 2 new clients :)
We’ve made it to the end of the August Challenge! Thank you so much for reading - I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
Hope that you have an amazing day ahead. Now to enjoy some dinner…
Until tomorrow,
Kam