Thank goodness that’s over!

We are not so much celebrating the start of 2021, it’s the end of 2020 that has us cheering!

26th December 2020

WOW!

This certainly has been a year we won’t forget in a hurry. There’s no need to say more than that, really, to encapsulate all the chaos we’ve all endured over the last 12 months. But, even though most of the reasons it will be so memorable aren’t positive, 2020 did have its moments.

In April just after the first lockdown started, we (much like most of you we expect) took a while to find our feet. We had to learn to juggle working from home, home-schooling and the finding a supermarket that still had toilet paper in stock. We took the opportunity to review many of our working practises and have made some changes we think will continue into the future.

The best example of this would be our adoption of a new video conferencing system (see blog post from 11 July for more details). The need for face-to-face interaction has meant that we have no instituted a company wide ban on audio only calls.

In June we attended our first virtual event: PATINFO2020. Usually held at Ilmenau University of Technology, in Ilmenau, Germany, due to the pandemic the usual format was converted to a fully online conference.

It was a real challenge, but also great fun thinking about an event from a different perspective. Planning, filming and editing the exhibition videos (which are all available on the Patently YouTube channel by the way) was a particularly rewarding exercise. One of our team was bitten so hard by the filmmaking bug that he has spent much of the last few months of lockdown making his own movies, and we are currently trying to convince him to submit one to the London Independent Film Festival.

We will all breathe a very grateful sigh of relief when we can finally say that we have moved past COVID-19. But, like any major historical event, we are certain to see its ramifications for years to come. The best thing we can do is stay informed and up-to-date, and adapt to whatever changes may come.

And after such a difficult year, which feels like it had 10x more downs than ups, getting motivated to start the new year with a positive attitude could be a struggle. To help, we are dedicating our traditional end of year message to helping you start 2021 with a bang:

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
-Lao Tzu

“Dream big. Start small. But most of all, start.”
-Simon Sinek

“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”
-Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
-Plato

“It always seems impossible, until it is done.”
-Nelson Mandela

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
-Peter Drucker

“Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.”
-Hellen Keller

“JFDI (Just F**king Do It)”
-Patently’s internal motto

What is your favourite inspirational quote? Let us know via social media.

For information on Patently, please visit patently.com and email us at ask@patently.com.