Week 2022#50: peer pressure

I finally got to experience the wonders of being held accountable

What I’ve learned

For the longest time, I thought that I’m not affected that much by peer pressure. Mostly because I don’t let other press me into activities that I don’t want to do.

The flip side of this is that I also never really took deadlines for low-risk activities seriously and thus missed out on “positive peer pressure”.

That changed last week: I had said “yes” to running a workshop on talking to strangers at the Creative Incubator on Friday, said “yes” to having my first test client on Saturday, and said “yes” to running an “Understand how Estonian works” workshop for a handful of friends on Sunday.

This time I actually felt like I don’t want to let these people down.

It feels like this is starting to snowball as well: having made more promises and having kept them felt great. Especially the higher-stakes ones like running a workshop for many people on topics I deeply care about.

This makes me want to gradually promise more things to people and then keep those promises.

Just like writing this issue of “Everyday Adventure”.

Expectation vs Reality

• The market research (identify and analyze 10 competitors) for Talking To Strangers gets done: yes! We split the work in half with my assistant Käti and it got done just in time for the meeting with my mentor at the Incubator.
  
  I started super late with this and seeing that Käti had already done excellent work pushed me to do my part.

• My father is going to do markedly better by Sunday: yes! After the shock of seeing him so weak when I came to visit, it was a big relief to see him get better every following day.
  
  This Friday I’ll return to Germany over Christmas to spend more time with him.

• I will not disappoint my mentor: I didn’t disappoint, I believe. The market research got done in time and the workshop on Friday the 16th was also well-received by the audience.

• I will have one offer for renovating the house in Sweden: fail! While I did talk to a builder I trust here, I dropped the ball on reaching out to all the people in Sweden that have been recommended to me.

What Happened

Week 50 actually felt more like two weeks compressed into one, because of the sheer amount of activities:

• Returned from Germany to Estonia on Wednesday,

• Thursday I went on stage in the evening to talk on one of the Minu Mikker evenings organized by Paul.

• Friday was dominated by the first “test workshop” for Talking To Strangers,

• Saturday: the first “test consultation” for an individual. We met at Fika and within 90 minutes she stepped out of her comfort zone successfully at least three times. It felt great to see somebody grow so quickly!

• Language teaching on Sunday: another workshop, this time about Estonian. It ended up lasting more like 5 hours from beginning to end rather than the three I anticipated, but I could see people finally understanding things they always wondered about. Very satisfying!