Tip 111: Winning contests

I finally had time to blog again. It was premature to previously target 10,000 blog posts in my life time, but I am sure such endeavours are honorable. I still believe that a blogging daddy is a reflecting daddy, plus you are leaving behind a documentary of the labour of love in parenting that one day your kids can read about. I currently prioritise my blogging such that its something I do after finishing all my work, including any freelance project work I undertake. Having contacts in Japan and knowing how to look for research resources in Japan, have opened a door of opportunity and I have been doing 4-6 market research projects a year and one just ended after 2 months of tedious work with my highest payment so far of USD$15k. Its quite taxing on time where I have to put in extra hours after my day job and time in the weekends, but I reckon its always good to work a little harder while you're young (before 40?50?) and save more for unexpected expenses, children's education and retirement/holiday, plus learn something new through additional projects. Nevertheless, I still find time to bath Haruka my daughter every night, go out with my family on both weekends, have lunch with my wife near my workplace once a week, join cell group/bible study once a week after work, attend church service on Sunday and enter competitions. Its certainly not easy to balance what's important in life and most of what I am doing is probably not important enough to sacrifice a proper 8 hour sleep a day and the luxury of lazing around. (Though I gain in having productive sleep and not turning around in bed at all). It is hard to resist the opportunistic instinct in me and that's keeping me tuned in to joining contests wherever I go. The desire to win. Recently, I did win a few contests in London and that makes me satisfied. It's a kind of hobby for me and I think anyone can do it if they have a desire to win. I wrote a guide to winning contests in my previous website, but this tip will contain more insights after 8 years has passed. This is from someone with a track record of winnings of over a hundred contests (including small ones). In my previous guide, I concluded with the line "The bottom line is hard work reaps results". I said the more applications, the higher the chance of winning and be as creative, funny and catchy with your slogans as possible. The tip still holds true as judges of contest wants to see such efforts. Yet, in today's world of global competition, you compete with thousands of contest enthusiasts and you may feel that your labour is in vain. Putting your whole heart into a contest, then feeling worn out that you have not seen any results in all your applications can be disheartening. The solution is to mass produce good results and search for more avenues to submit the good results. Usually, when you are used to joining contests, you somehow would be able to think of slogans quickly. It would be good to keep a record of some of the good slogans you have written on a document in your computer where you can refer to them whenever you are looking for inspirations. You begin to build a slogan databank after a while of all things that rhymes. You can also take it one step further to post in on your blog or website, to crystalize these sentimental slogans, so it could amuse you one day of your slogan writing prowess. After a while, it begins to be effortless to mass produce good results, write poems at a blink of an eye and enjoy doing what you are good at. You then need to know where to look for contests. These days, newspapers especially the free ones that depend on advertisements are littered with most contests. Search for their website as its easiest to be entering contests through websites, since you need not be sending any applications through post. Plus, you may also want to join using a few User IDs submitting different answers to increase your chances. Even, while travelling to London, I have recently won a few contests including a nice lunch overlooking a horse race. Priorities change over time and the key to living is balancing what's important. But, for now, winning contests do provide joys that I can give thanks for.

Anyone else who is a contest buff? Share your tips and your winnings at my comment section. (Photo shows Kempton Park Race Course, London with my family, Richmond Park and Horse Guard Arch)