Make Things Now, Learn How As You Go

Listen: you suck at lots of things. I do too. And that’s absolutely okay. You can still start doing those things.

I began making YouTube videos with absolutely no idea how to make YouTube videos. I was using a borrowed camera, I had no audio editing of any kind, and I kind of fumbled my way through the video editing software hitting buttons to try and cut and stitch those poorly-lit clips together. But even though I didn’t really have any of those things properly going for me, I did have one thing.

And that was a deadline.

Granted, it was a self-imposed deadline. But it did the trick. I told myself that I was going to upload my first video on that particular Friday night, no matter the cost. And it worked! Sure, it was not the best final product, but at least it was finished.

And when it comes to making the first product, the most important thing is finishing.

In psychological terms, people suffer from too much social comparison. That’s when you focus on what other people are putting out instead of working on putting things out yourself. This kills the artist. Especially the novice artist.

Social media is a great way to share work, but it’s also a great way to feel depressed if you aren’t putting time into creating your own work. But the unfortunate thing about putting time into work that you aren’t yet “good at” is that a lot of the time feels pointless and wasted. You might spend hours struggling at something that a veteran would have no trouble breezing through.

If social comparison makes your self-esteem related to your abilities go down, then finishing something is exactly the remedy you need to boost it back up.

It doesn’t matter what the medium is. Videos, music, painting, crafting jewelry, anything. You have to suck at it before you can be good at it. Pick something small and finish it. Ignore everything else and work like a crazy person obsessed with a dream. It’s just you and the marble from which you are chiseling your art.

And honestly? The time when you suck at it and nobody is paying attention are moments to be proud of and to be nostalgic for.

Look at you, trying and stuff. That’s a quintessential human right there.

By most metrics, the majority of the videos I have ever made are failures.

They didn’t come out right or make the right impact in some way. But I’ve made enough of them now, struggled with countless obstacles to produce them, that every once in a while one of them might be considered “good.” I’ve won some awards and admiration from people that I adore. My face was (briefly) up on the big screen at EduCon US 2019, a conference for educational video creators. I guess I no longer suck.

But I’m proud of every single video, even the ones that did suck. Even the bad ones taught me something to probably not try again. Each was a stepping stone on which I could precariously balance myself as I hopped blindfolded and frothing at the mouth down a path of self-publishing and internet comments.

Your journey might not end up going anywhere. Hell, you might just end up with one single thing that you made and then quit forever.

But one finished project is better than zero.

Or you could do what I did with my ARTexplains channel. Slowly learn over time how to make it work. Implement little changes here and there. Use trial and error to figure out which tools work and in what ways. Read your critiques and learn from them (and sometimes learn nothing at all). Meet people like you who like the same things like you do.

And before you know it, guess what? You’ll have the opportunity to finish another project.

And two finished projects is better than one.