How I Overcame Procrastination to Complete a Udemy Course I Started 1 Year Ago

When I started teaching online, Udemy was one of those platforms where I wanted to establish an online presence. After building a sizeable audience on YouTube and improving my teaching skills, I decided to record and publish courses on Udemy.

I started with a free course teaching step-by-step how to use Autodesk Revit software to create 3D building models. That was followed by two other paid courses on Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD software. Both were step-by-step practice-based courses.

My main goal was to share stuff I had been learning along the way in my practice. So, I focused on computer-aided design software and project scheduling software tutorials. Also, WordPress website design and development was part of my future expansion plans.

A Draft Course

My fourth course was a practice-based course that taught learners how to use Microsoft Project Professional to prepare project plans, and schedules, and manage resources to optimise the success of the project.

I recorded the main lecture videos, edited all of them and uploaded on Udemy.

All that remained filling in the course learning objectives, recording and uploading the course intro and outro videos, and the promotional video.

I had done most of the heavy lifting but I got stuck on these. For over a year, I never made any substantial progress on the course.

My excuse was I wanted to record talking head video content but I did not have a professional camera. So, I waited and waited, and till now I didn’t own a professional camera.

My lack of action was fuelled by the need to produce a perfect video. I forgot that it’s not the perfection of the video that sells but the quality my learners get from the courses. Therefore, a good video that was clear enough for the students to understand what was going on (what I was demonstrating) was all I needed.

Then one day last week I woke up and decided all other tasks must wait and this was the day I was going to complete and publish that course.

Overcoming Inertia and Hitting Publish

The day I decided that I must complete the course I stopped thinking about the quality of the camera gear that I had.

I gave myself a deadline of the end of that day to complete everything. That urgency worked like magic.

So, I took my notebook, opened a new page and started writing the script for the videos. Sometimes I write a script, other days I just go all in without any script. It depends on the type and purpose of the video I am making.

The promotional video needed to sound well-thought and align strictly with the specific message that I wanted the viewers to grasp.

I took my tablet, opened the camera app and started recording the videos. Take one, take two, take three, and the videos were done.

These I transferred to my laptop, opened my Adobe Premiere Pro and started editing. Then headed over to Photoshop to design the required cover images and thumbnails.

I had the course ready. I went on to submit it for review. That way, I managed to complete a task that I had procrastinated about for over a year!

Here’s the course intro video published on my YouTube channel:

Lesson Learned

That day my perspective changed a little.

While I waited for over a year to get the videos done with a professional camera and a fancy studio setup, that is not what mattered. The sophistication of the gear didn’t matter. It is the quality and the value of the work I was putting out there that mattered.

I could produce good quality work with the tools and gear that I had. My phone, tablet or laptop, all in my lounge without leaving the house.

Sometimes when we work for ourselves, we do not impose strict deadlines on ourselves as we always think the next day will be the best. The reason we decided to go solo was to escape such pressures from our bosses. However, I realised that a little pressure and strict deadlines are important to fuel action. They help prevent you from wasting precious time and not making any substantial progress.

Going forward, all my tasks will be tied to strict deadlines. I must always push myself to make progress on the important things that I want to achieve. Progress, however small it may be matters. Being busy without making any progress is a complete waste of precious time which I must avoid by all means.