ProductivityLife | 4 Min Read
#74 - Give Yourself Permission to Suck!
Overcome your fear of not being good enough and start your passion project with these tips! Learn from my experience and make progress towards your goals.
Hey Friends 👋
At some point or another, I think everyone has been guilty of saying they'll do something and then not following through on it even though they keep saying they'll do it. I know for sure, I'm guilty of that!
Since September last year, I've been saying I'll create a YouTube channel and start publishing videos regularly but guess what it's now March 2023 and I've just published the first video to the channel!
After nearly 6 months of saying I'll do it, I've only just done my first one. And, at first glance, it does just look like laziness and not dedicating myself to the task and part of that would be true. But, this is what the "eat that frog" mentality I talked about last week and the week before has helped address. But, I think it goes deeper than just a lack of drive to do it, I think it was a fear of putting myself in a situation that I know I'll perform badly in.
In a world of amazing content creators on YouTube and professional-grade video quality being more accessible than ever, it's daunting to create a video knowing you don't tick either of those boxes. Pair this with my desperate lack of video skills and knowledge and the stage was set for a below-average first video.
And, this is why I think I took so long to create my first YouTube video, it's getting over the fear of not being good enough and putting work out there that frankly isn't all that good. But, I got through it and this Friday gone I published my first video, and I can't wait to make my second!
So, in this edition, I wanted to share a couple of things I learned from publishing my first video to hopefully help others who might be going through a similar experience to what I did.
People Won't Care
It sounds negative and a bit pessimistic but in all seriousness the vast majority of people won't care about your first video and it probably won't perform that well. But, this is a good thing because people won't care that much we don't need to worry as much about our first video being polished to perfection. Instead, we can make mistakes and most likely no one will see or care about them which greatly reduces our stress of failing and not being good at something.
Permit Yourself to Suck
If you were anything like me, the first video you create for YouTube will be one of the few if any videos you've made in your life. If this is true and videography isn't your career or skillset then why should we be good at it straight away?
There's no reason if we've never touched a camera or video editing software that we should be proficient or masters of them so we shouldn't expect ourselves to be. Permit yourself to suck at doing it and just experiment and have fun and see what happens.
At the end of the day, it's the first video we're making, not our millionth so it probably will be bad and we'll probably cringe at it in years to come but the most important thing isn't that it's a work of art but instead that we get it done and published!
So if you are thinking about starting up a YouTube channel and making videos I highly recommend it! And, I would love to hear what you want to make videos about and how you're going to make your first one so make sure to hit reply and let me know. ✉️
And, as always, until next time.
Thank you for reading.
Coner x
💻 This Week's Content 💻
As this edition has mentioned a few times, this week I published my first video which was based on a previous newsletter edition I did "5 lessons I learned from my first Product hunt launch." If you'd like to check it out, here is the link.
Also, this week I published a new blog post about using compression to save money when storing attribute values in DynamoDB, check it out here.
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