You Need To Understand This Before You Try Anything New
This weekend I took my Canon 70D out for the first time to “vlog.”
It was super weird.
People were definitely shooting me looks for talking to a camera, but that’s not why it was weird.
It was weird because I didn’t know what I was doing.
I have a strict set of processes for opening up Medium and writing a piece of content, but for videos I, well, don’t.
It was like getting pushed into a pool without knowing how to swim.
I did my best to roll with the punches and figure this new art form out, but for the most part I was pretty lost.
And I loved every second of it.
Let me explain.
Expect Absolutely Nothing When You’re Starting Out
Blogging for me has been super difficult to “master.”
It required/requires an insane amount of research.
Speaking of which, this is normally how I research stuff…
- Set out to learn more about something.
- Realize 10 minutes in that there’s 5 other things you have to research before you can properly research what you were just researching.
- Spend two hours researching one of those things.
- Pull your hair out because you feel like you’ve gotten nowhere.
Then you have to come back the next day to dive into the other four things.
Expertise only comes after we pop open about 1,000 Russian dolls (the ones where there’s one inside of one inside of one inside of one).
Sure, you want to maybe be a blogger or a vlogger or an artist of some sort.
But to be a blogger you have to become proficient in a TON of different things that you had no idea were part of the equation at first.
About 10 minutes into my little vlogging trip yesterday, I realized that my first month’s worth of videos are probably going to suck.
I need to reacquaint myself with Premiere Pro, and lighting, and editing, and shooting, and storyboarding. Not to mention I need to LEARN what makes a whole new platform tick — YouTube.
Do I really expect myself to hit the ground running and have 1,000 subscribers by the end of month 1?
Absolutely not. Which brings me to my next point..
It’s Not About Numbers, It’s About Learning
Yesterday I learned how to make slow-mo videos in Premiere Pro. The day before that I learned about f-stops and shutter speed and ISO values.
Yes, I feel like the biggest noob of all time for now, but I have to trust in my abilities as a filmmaker (the abilities I used to wield in high school) to carry me through.
I’m learning something new every single day.
That’s progress.
That’s progress towards the goal that I eventually want to achieve — average 1,000 views per video on YouTube someday.
Celebrate learning, not the numbers.
The numbers WILL NOT be there at first, but they will arrive if you focus on learning and improving.
That’s a damn certainty.
And here’s one other thing..
Our Proficiency Multiplies Exponentially Over time
Say I spend the first 3 months sucking on YouTube..
That’s fine.
Even if I suck on YouTube, I’ll still probably grow a small following of 100–200 people, right? If I posted 20 videos per month for 3 months (60 videos), I think getting 100–200 subscribers out of that would be pretty realistic.
I may miss the mark pretty often but I’m DEFINITELY not going to miss it 60 times.
Something really funny starts to happen around month 3-4 when you actually start hitting the target..
You start never missing.
Then your content starts to resonate more.
Then you build a small tribe of people that will watch EVERYTHING you put out.
Then you start getting the YouTube algorithm working in your favor.
Then making videos gets about 50 times easier (because you’ve developed a process).
Then you basically just sit back, create, and keep growing your audience exponentially over the next few weeks/months/years.
It’s the weirdest thing that it occurs like this.
It’s super frustrating, especially, when you’re first starting out and everything you’re doing sucks.
You know you need to learn about 1,000 things, but there just isn’t enough time in the day/week/month to learn about it.
If life was fair, we’d actually get good at something and see results in the first few days because we’re learning, right?
The universe does not allow this to happen.
That’s because there’s a boatload of things we need to learn before we can scratch the surface of being anything but terrible at something.
But then after we do work through that boatload of crap, it’s almost like a switch gets flipped and we make more progress in one week than we have in the last few months combined.
If you know this going in, it should give you more patience.
Make Peace With Sucking
My advice is to make peace with sucking.
You need to understand that it’s perfectly normal to suck.
Yes, it is exhausting and tiring to not be good at something and to put your heart and soul into creating, but before you say you’re not making any progress, think about what you’ve learned.
Think about all you’ve learned.
And realize that you ARE making progress. You are.
I hope this helps.
Want to get started writing online? I actually have a free 5-day email course called “Your First 1,000 Medium Followers” that will teach you how to build an audience here on Medium! Sign up for it right here. I’d love to teach you a couple things.
