Why you must work with a sense of urgency

Long time ago, when YouTube had just gained popularity, I came to read about the Partner Program of Youtube, through a local newspaper. It said that YouTube would pay money to the content creators, when their viewers watch the ads that play on their videos. Me, being a curious teenager, decided to give it a try. However, my peers, and even my own parents, constantly put me down about my abilities to ever make passive income online.

Sadly, I gave in to their taunts. I deleted my account, which had like 50 subscribers, and decided to take a break from social media. After I turned 18 and started college, I experienced a lot of financial difficulties. So I decided to start a YouTube channel, in addition to my part-time jobs, in order to meet the monthly expenses. I then found out that you need at least 1000 subscribers and 6000 watch hours in the past 12 months to get monetized!

Desperately, I created a YouTube channel, and started to upload some content. However, it took me a long time to gain half of the required number of subscribers to be eligible for monetization, and the watch hour goal seemed too far off, even though some of my videos hit 100K views. I realized that I was just wasting time on a hard challenge.

“I thought about the time when the monetization criteria was simple. I wish I didn’t give in to others’ taunts… Had I worked on building the channel at the very beginning, I would have made a decent amount in passive income right now!”

When this realization dawned on me, it made me think of all the other missed opportunities in my life, which I didn’t bother to grab at the right moment. I kept fretting about all the benefits that I could have reaped from them. It wasn’t that I was lazy or anything, I believe I’m persistent enough to achieve even the difficult feats (which I have) in life. The truth is that I lacked guidance from a very young age, to grab opportunities early, and to work with a sense of urgency!

Competitions kill the chances of success

It’s not just social media, the fact known as competition, has even entered your local farmers’ market! Once a seemingly good opportunity pops up, more and more people try to saturate the market, which creates competition. Competition kills the chances of success in a given field, leaving newcomers to find their own path, and to put in more work than their seniors. Therefore, it is much harder to create a base once you’re late. Most people either has to up their game, change their strategy, or… quit!

Knowledge becomes outdated

Remember the time when the radio had just made it’s way into the market? It instantly became the greatest technology of that time. Radio manufacturing units and service stores popped up. The trending job became that of the radio technician, prompting many students to learn the trade. And lo and behold, comes “the computer”… Suddenly, nobody wanted the radio, or to become a radio technician! The existing ones went on to study computer engineering or update their knowledge, to work in a more advanced technology.

With increased competition comes the need to bring out the latest ideas into practice. This causes the existing knowledge to become outdated, and the practitioners will have to either update themselves with new information, or be prepared to give up.

I realized this much late in my life, but like they say, “Better late than never!”. I now mercilessly grab every good opportunity that comes in my way. I am now trying really hard to build my writing career on this site. To achieve that, I update my knowledge every time, and write any topics that come into my mind, without wasting time thinking. Moreover, I have come up with an action plan to build up my passive income streams, which will provide me with financial stability when I hit 40s!

Ever since I realized how opportunities are becoming sparse, I convinced my psyche to be go grab every chance I feel, will help me a great deal, in the long run… Call me an opportunist, but in the real world, you will come to a realization that, success only comes to the one that goes out of his/her comfort zone, to try out something new, daring to create something different!