Not only do I have a Microsoft Excel and Business Data Analysis course on Udemy and already make a couple of sales. I have also registered for many courses I believe will be useful to me.

Notice the marker highlighting my name. I did it with Microsoft Edge in Windows 10. Cool!

And today, I will be sharing with you the courses I am currently taking on Udemy. Don't think I am being unrealistic due to the number and technical spread of the courses, I have planned to spend as many months/years as it would require to finish them. I have successfully completed four.

1. The Ultimate Microsoft Project 2013 Training Bundle 19 Hours 

2. Projects in HTML5

3. Scrivener - Effortlessly Publish To Kindle Using Scrivener!

4. How To Become a Bestselling Author on Amazon Kindle

5. Camtasia Mastery - Creating Killer Videos w/ Camtasia Studio

6. Six Sigma Black Belt Training and Certification

7. Photoshop CS6 Crash Course

8. Data Analysis in Python with Pandas

9. Project Management Professional (PMP)® - 35 Contact Hours

10. Writing With Flair: How To Become An Exceptional Writer

11. Learn Bootstrap Development By Building 10 Projects

12. Adobe Photoshop CS6 Tutorial. Self-Paced and Easy to Follow

13. Quick Windows [Win8] App Development - For Busy People Only

14. Go Viral on 7 Social Media Marketing Platforms: 2015 Edition

15. WordPress Theme Development with Bootstrap

16. Introduction to Java for Programmers

17. R Basics - R Programming Language Introduction

18. Comprehensive ASP.net MVC

19. The Complete iOS8 and Swift Course: Learn by Building 15 Real World Apps

20. The Professional Ruby on Rails Developer

21. Learning Python for Data Analysis and Visualization

22. Projects in PHP and MySQL

23. C# Advanced Topics: Take Your C# Skills to the Next Level

24. Learn To Code by Making Games - The Complete Unity Developer

25. Learn PHP Programming From Scratch

26. Learn and Understand AngularJS

27. Android 5.0 Lollipop: App Development for Beginners

28. The Complete Web Developer Course - Build 14 Websites 

Always aim beyond your reach. 

Everyday I think of what would happen if my dreams come true. How it would be like to hit my goals. And what big thing I can start.

I live an impersonal life. I don't take things personal. I don't evaluate the world from my own stance. I think of the world as a system. A system that is built on a set of principles. And regardless of who I am or what I think, those principles won't bend for me. It makes life much easier. It makes it easier to follow my analytical thoughts and take decisions that surprise people.

I just resumed putting money back in the stock market. And I don't feel any bit worried or unsure of what I am doing. It is a simple logical decision to me: the economy is shrinking and people are pessimistic; stocks are priced lower than usual and it won't be like this forever. Soon people will become optimistic again and the economy will rise, and my investment will rise with it. I don't try to overanalyze or just watch. It is not about me; it's just how the system works. After every recession comes an expansion.

I keep focusing on my niche business because the logic is plain and sensible to me. The data analysis industry is one of the fastest growing in the developed world. Everyone from Microsoft to Google is trying to get a piece of it. My worries shouldn't be if it is not too narrow but if I would be well equipped when the growth flood reaches Nigeria. It's how the system works. Though we always come late to the party, we never miss the party. I just have to be well positioned to ride the wave when it arrives.

I am learning to build web apps. It has been very difficult because of the time constraint and having to sacrifice part of my current business time. But it's also a simple logic to me. The world belongs to those who create things. The most profitable companies are not the distribution companies but those purely into creating. If I keep at this difficult goal and successfully become a web app developer, the payoff will be huge. It will mark a new era for my business. I would be able to build both the desktop version and web/cloud version of the solutions I make for companies. It's all plain logic. There are companies with less than 12 staff and are making billions of Naira yearly. And they are all in the app business. The learning curve is very steep but the payoff is unmatched. That's just how the system works.

We are meant to create ourselves, to extend our reach and aim very high. At the start of anything big is not someone big but a big aim.

I am a subscriber to Steven Pressfield's blog. He is a prolific writer and if you need motivation to become a published writer someday then you should consider signing up on his blog. Every Wednesday you'll get a Writing Wednesday article in your email.

Recently, he started a Friday series tagged What It Takes. And that is the one I am going to repost a part of, specifically a part of the yesterday's one. It is a very inspiring article on believing in yourself and standing your ground against "big names" trying to make gain off your skill and work. It's based on someone we all know -- Dolly Parton.

image: dollypartonfans.co.uk

Without getting too much in the way, here is a part of that motivational piece (you can read the entire piece here). It is titled -- Horse Sense: “Lay a Little Heavy on the Business Side” Revisited

*******************

“My daddy could not read nor write. Never had a chance to go to school. But my daddy was so smart. . . . I watched him maneuver, I watched how he would—he could trade and barter. And, you know, it’s like he would . . . What do they call it, good horse sense or horse tradin’? They call it street smarts if you’re from the city, but good old country horse sense. My daddy was so smart. And I just watched him through the years. And my daddy was also one of those people that was really willin’ to work. He was up all the time, up early, havin’ to farm before he went to work on construction or doin’ whatever he had to do to, to keep food on the table. But he always just managed to make some of the best deals and some of the best choices. And I . . . I was very influenced by that.

“Now, I got my music from my mother’s side of the family. And most musical people, musicians don’t wanna work at anything else. So, I got my work ethic from my dad. I got my music from my momma. And I tried, in the early days when, when I would think about it and I started seein’ that I could make money at this, I thought, “Well, they do call this the music business. So, why don’t I kinda lay a little heavy on the business side of things?” So, I got to thinkin’, you know, what I should do to make it really profitable, not just to sing and just let the money roll in and let it be gone before you think about it. So, I started thinkin’ about . . . keepin’ my publishing to myself . . . you know, publishin’ my own songs, startin’ my own publishin’ company and just different things like that that I thought would be, you know, smart business. So, through the years, I have been lucky and made some really good choices. But I’ve got a lotta good people that’s helped me a lot, too. I owe a lot of my success to a lot of smart people.”

Wrapped into fewer words: Dolly knew that many musicians only focused on the music, but she also knew the power of solid horse-sense infused business decisions. That’s the difference between artists with long-time successful careers and those who never break through. Yes, talent plays a huge role, too, but business is a major factor. How many artists can you name who broke through on talent and then went bankrupt and faded fast?

We don’t all have daddy’s like Dolly’s, imparting horse sense wisdom on us, but we need it just the same. We need it to get us toward our “all-for-love” projects.

Steve has talked about doing “one for love and one for money” in the past—taking on those gigs that are just for pay, so that you can pay the bills and fund time to develop your craft. But what if all you did was your craft? What if your craft generated enough for you to live off of it?

In surfboard artist Drew Brophy’s case, “painting 10-15 surfboards a day helped him to get really good and to develop a very strong style of his own,” said his wife Maria. “If Drew had been working in another field and only painting in his spare time, he would have been wasting his talent.”

His craft advanced because he put in the time. He had the time because he focused on the business and sold his work.

There’s another piece to this, too. If you value your work and make those hard decisions, others will value you, too. (Look toward the beginning of Maria Brophy’s article “Why Artists Should (Not) Be Paid for Their Artwork“ for an example, and read on down to the end). For all those people who thought Dolly was crazy for turning down Elvis at the time, I’m betting her decision garnered her an even greater respect from an even larger group of people.

While some artists have broken through on talent alone, the ones with the long-time successful careers are most often the ones who took time to “lay a little heavy on the business side.”

****************

Read the entire piece here.

Hurray! I finally got the Windows 10 installed successfully, with all my programs and files intact.

I'll continue yesterday's post, where I stopped at the Installation prompt stage,

I clicked on Install.

My laptop restarted about 3 to 4 times.

71% done. 

96% done.

Almost done.

The new cool login view.

And finally done!

Take a look at the beautiful start menu and the new internet browser, Edge.

And Cortana is quite cool. You can ask it anything and be sure of an answer, even if it will be a funny answer. But it gets some very useful thing done. I simply speak to it like I do to Siri. 

See it's response when I asked it to sing me a song.

And it's got a lovely voice too. Only wished it would sing a not so short song.

Thanks for me wishing me luck yesterday!

Yesterday, Windows 10 was officially launched and I have wasted little time in joining the Windows 10 train.

I use Windows 8.1 Enterprise version so I don't have the free upgrade icon those using the non-enterprise version of Windows 7 and Windows 8 have. For me, the upgrade is not free and I would have to download the Windows 10 image file. Yesterday night I did the download. 

I downloaded the Windows 10 Enterprise version and claimed a free key from Microsoft (one of the little benefits of the MVP award). It was 3.67GB. Took me about an hour to download. Then I began the installation process.

Below is the installation folder after downloading the Windows 10 image file.

I click on Setup.exe and the first thing it does is to check if I need to install any updates before proceeding.

Then it moves on to setting up what's needed to have a seamless installation.

I am shown a License terms page because my own upgrade is the non-free one. I am reminded that I will need a valid license key.

After accepting the terms, it again checks for updates.

Finally I get to the installation proper page. It tells me to save whatever I'm working on and close my files as it will now take full control of my PC and I won't be able to do anything till it is done installing. By default it keeps all my programs and data (I hope it keeps to its word, though)

If all goes smoothly, you will get the part 2 of this post tomorrow.

Wish me luck!