Hi my name is Ben I am 16 years old and have recently started an internship in which I’m excited to share my journey with you all. Over my two weeks as an Artz intern I have been put in several challenging situations where I needed to improvise, adapt and overcome the different obstacles thrown my way. As a result, I have gained new knowledge and skills perhaps putting me at an advantage to other people of a similar age to me.
Time has been my greatest enemy yet also my greatest friend. This meant my greatest weapon was my calendar, really understanding the significance of using my calendar has helped me to work more efficiently and effectively. At the start of each week I went through my calendar. It is also important to understand that you should not live religiously by your calendar , it is more of a guide than a rule book. If I could give one piece of advice to anyone wanting to maximise their own productivity it is to start with a calendar.
Prioritising my jobs was also quite difficult for me, being able to understand the difference between long term and short term needs and knowing when a task should or shouldn’t be delayed and for how long. For me, I found it particularly difficult finishing work on a task that took longer than a week. It had gotten to a point were this one task had became a bit of a burden, and all though I could finish it whenever I wanted I just didn’t. After looking at it I realised it was a lack of motivation and therefore as part of my development I had listened to a podcast by Steven Bartlett where he interviewed Jim Kwik who spoke on motivation being an action as supposed to a thought. Jim Kwik says the formula for developing motivation is P x E x S^3 .P stood for purpose which meant first I had to look at the purpose of the job/why I was doing it in the first place. E stood for energy meaning I had to find where the energy for this motivation was coming from. For me this was blocking in my calendar some time to recharge and relax. S^3 refers to taking small steps (step step step) and this for me was even the smallest of jobs from even just turning my iPad on to opening the documents and completing them.
Finally,I had also learned the importance of documenting information in an orderly manner. This makes life so much easier when working in a company as it makes the information a lot more accessible for other members and is good practice for documenting information in the future. Creating accurate documentation and making it the norm in your team to share information helps your team to all be on the same page.
I would say the start of my internship has been productive, educational and really fun . Already spending time on personal and professional development and working towards different goals are continuously helping me to become a better version of myself every day !
-Ben Chane
PS- I elaborate on a lot of this in the Artz Insider Podcast which can be found below;