How 2+Years of cringe can change your life.
How to never run out of content ideas
Two years ago I started a YouTube channel.
It was cringeworthy! I had no idea what I was doing. I followed the advice of the time which was to “just start. You will figure it out along the way. Post a video every week for 2 years and your life will change.”
Well here we are two years later. Has my life changed?
Absolutely! But not in the way you might think. I’m not a millionaire. I’m not famous and I’m not sipping cocktails on a beach in the Bahamas.
What I have learned is a bunch of skills. I’ve learned to write, edit and speak on camera. My channel has grown to over 17.000 subscribers, I’ve even done brand deals and am I am able to supplement my income with this channel.
But the biggest thing that has changed is how I capture ideas. Capturing ideas is such a crucial skill to develop. It’s one which gets overlooked all the time.
The number one problem facing creatives is the inability to come up with good ideas.
Most people start out with a vague idea of what they want to talk about. They plan out maybe 10 or 20 ideas start writing or filming and post. Then they get no traction and loose the motivation to keep going.
This is exactly what I did. I picked a topic that I was interested in, I saw there was demand for it and I thought I could put my unique spin on it.
But after a year of posting relentlessly I came to the realisation that I didn’t care about what I was making. I wanted to go deep on topics but my audience wanted the superficial surface level stuff. It was frustrating.
What excited me very often didn’t resonate with my audience and this is a very common problem that creators face. Audience capture is a real danger. Look it up. It’s a thing.
I couldn’t come up with good ideas because I was overthinking. I was trying to work out what my audience would resonate with. This is more of an intermediate problem than a beginner one. But almost every creator has to work through this issue at some point.
Once you have built up a small audience get to know what they want to consume. It is likely to be something which you did not initially anticipate.
This dance of trying to work out what your audience wants to consume and what you yourself actually want to create is one of the hardest things to get right.
Ultimately I learned that I need to follow my own curiosity even if this means stagnating. This might be different for you but I’ve found that “being in service of your audience” eventually leads to burnout.
It’s not about self sacrifice. It’s about self discovery. Ideally you will find a way to marry to the two.
A sense of Meaning
When you care deeply about what you are creating it adds an immense amount of value to your own life. It essentially can provide you with a sense of meaning and purpose.
It is a new lease through which to view the world. You have a very tangible reason to read, research and loose yourself in your creative work.
It is in essense a vessel for learning and growth. This is the fundamental way in which my life has changed. If you feel a lack of meaning or purpose in your life creating online is one way to satiate that need.
I will talk about finding your niche in a future letter but just know that it’s ok if you don’t know exactly what you want to write about.
Intense passion doesn’t magically materialise it has to be coaxed out of you. The good news is that there is a process to build desire and create a passion:
Focus on a genuine interest that you have.
This interest is a spark that when fanned with the correct focus can grow into a roaring fire. Just like building a fire a creative needs the right fuel and air to breathe.
Igniting a log of wood with a naked flame doesn’t work. You need tinder and kindling.
Only when the kindling has caught fire can you place a larger log onto it. This is a delicate matter. If you pile on too much you will smother and extinguish the fire before it has even started.
Discovering an interest and firing it up onto a full blown passion is just as delicate. Treat your interest with respect and dignity.
As beginner creators it is our job to construct our lives in a way which nurtures our creativity. We need to fan the flames of that fire inside of us so that we can continue along our unique path.
Regularly unplug from the content flywheel
When I first started out on YouTube I took a whole load of courses. One of them was a skill share course from Daniel Walter Scott. One thing really stuck with me from that course.
He underlined the importance of breaks. If you’ve been working for an hour on a design which you think is really amazing, take a break. Make yourself a coffee. Go for a walk. Come back in half an hour and reassess.
Whenever I did this I was shocked. Something which I had thought was amazing actually looked pretty terrible with fresh eyes.
It’s not the amount of words you write. Its the amount of time spent rewriting that brings improvement.
Look at any successful writer from history: Hemingway, Orwell, Mark Manson. The majority of their time is not actually spent writing. Most of their time is spent reading, researching contemplating planning and editing.
So what is a good idea and how do you come up with them?
As a beginner a “good idea” is one which excites you. How you package and market it is a different matter but the core idea needs to speak to you on a deep emotional level.
Idea Capture
I have learned that good ideas are valuable and not always easy to come by. And so a practice for capturing ideas is essential.
Mathew Dicks, in his book Story Worthy, introduces an exercise which he calls Homework for Life.
At the end of every day, ask yourself “what was the most story worthy moment of my day?” Jot down a few notes about the moment and what made it special.
I did this semi-religiously for a few months, and then forgot all about it. It’s one of those things that I have to keep coming back to. When I write things down my memory and retention improve. It’s worth it just for that benefit alone.
It’s difficult to appreciate this but we are only seeing a fraction of most creators work. You never get to see their first or second or third drafts. The one idea they decided to pursue out of the 20 they initially came up with.
High quality output is more about deciding what to cut than what to include.
Creativity is fundamentally about :
Output - “Showing up” and being “consistent.” You have to translate ideas into tangible units of output. This should be a given but that alone will not get you far.
Organisation - This is what people mean when they talk about systems and optimisation. An example of this would be homework for life. That is a system for idea generation.
Refinement - This is the quality control process. It’s the difference between average and great. And should be your core focus once you’ve found your rhythm.
Completion - You might think this would be the end but whenever you put anything out into the world the “press publish” moment is actually just the beginning.
This is when you start to receive comments and feedback which can be psychologically distressing and derail your creative efforts if you do not have a clear idea of what you are doing and why you are doing it.
Writing.
Video.
Audio.
All of these mediums require a guiding structure. Some kind of system and a refinement process.
This all starts with idea capture. Find a way to capture your ideas throughout the week. Go through them and pick one to pursue further. This will become your newsletter, video or podcast for next week. Go deep with it and I promise you. Your life will not look the same in 2 years time.
Thank you reading.
Have a great rest of the day.
If you are thinking of how to jump start your creative career read this first.
I did this, but with public speaking and I conquered my fear of impromptu speaking. I started a few years ago and I still remember my first time—I couldn’t answer a simple question about what I had for breakfast. Now I won a couple of evenings and I’m gaining a reputation within the club as the person with quirky humor. Sometimes you discover things about yourself you didn’t know about. You just never know until you try—cringe, but true.
THIS is what I love about Substack: radical transparency and wisdom for days. As a new Substacker very much fueled by the "just start, and figure it out later" mentality, this was just what I needed to read. Thanks for writing!