Today is video #367.
This is the one-year anniversary for me publishing a video every day.
So in this video, I’ll talk about what that has been like, for any of you who might be interested in trying something like this yourself.
It started with this idea that I would publish a video a day for 1001 days.
I just thought that somehow this would lead to good things.
I wasn’t sure exactly what, but somehow good things would happen if I could do this.
I wanted to start a community, reach out to people that were interested in the kind of topics that I’ve talked about.
And so I just started recording some thoughts.
At first, there’s that initial burst of enthusiasm through the first several days, and then it starts to get into a grind.
And it really alternated throughout the year between periods of being very enthusiastic, full of ideas, I’m excited to get the next video going, and periods where I was just like grinding out each video.
I had to think “Oh, ah, got to make another video.” And so I just sort of went through, got through those times where I had no motivation and just felt like this was just another required duty added to my day, and those times when it just seemed like I’m so glad I’m doing this.
So it was really up and down, maybe a period of a few days or weeks at a time between being motivated or not.
So when I was in those periods of not being motivated, that’s when I feel like it really trained me somehow in discipline and mindset, because something stopped me from stopping.
Something stopped me from just giving up, because I just felt that I would be very disappointed if I just let it suddenly drop, and that I was going to follow through with my commitment, with my plan, no matter what.
So there were these ready-made points to stop, like when I got to 101 videos: well, that would have been fine.
That would have been great.
Hey, I recorded 101 videos.
But it just happened to be in the middle of one of my motivated phases, so I went right through video number 101 without even really noticing, and then it was I got to around video 120 or so when I started to feel that grind again.
Like oh, why did I get into this? And it was a long way from 200.
And even 200: what’s special about that? 200, 300.
I thought maybe 333: that’s a fun number.
Maybe I’ll stop there.
But by that point, I was already close enough to a year, so I just thought OK, one year: that’s a good point to stop.
I had a while where I was very focused on all the views and subscribers, and looking at my Youtube stats, and it’s amazing the effect it had, where I would just see a few people had viewed my videos and it would just like lift my mood, and like wow, I feel so great.
And then the next day, I’d see that chart line go straight down, and there’s almost nobody watching, and then I’d feel sad.
And I really rode that roller coaster for several weeks, and it eventually reached a point where it kind of broke, that pattern kind of broke, and I just reached the point of not caring.
Just feeling that what I’m doing is worth doing for its own sake.
I’m gonna do this for myself, for its own sake, and I don’t need anybody to watch the videos.
I don’t need that.
It’s going to be worth doing even if nobody watches.
And that was a useful sort of thought experiment to go into: just imagine what if nobody at all watches my videos? Would it still be worth doing? And that I found to be helpful to kind of step off the roller coaster of statistics, and just appreciate it for what it is, appreciate what I’m doing without needing some kind of validation from others.
So that helped me to get out of that focus.
Of course, it still feels great when I see that lots of people are viewing my videos and responding. […]
But it just becomes a little bit less of a focus, and that I think was necessary for me to keep going.
I just couldn’t keep riding that roller coaster.
But it taught me about priorities, and like we don’t really need to worry too much about popular approval.
That’s not the most important thing.
As much as it provides an easy hit of pleasure to be appreciated, that’s not really what we need, and we can do things that are worthwhile regardless of how much approval we get for them.
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If you’re considering trying it, go ahead and do it, and just see how it goes.
I think that it somehow does lead to good things, even if we can’t see what they’re gonna be when we start.
But there’s a lot of days in a year, and it’s a lot of videos in a year, and I think just the process of going through making and publishing those videos can lead to surprising new things in life.
So now I am switching to once a week videos now, and I will continue for the indefinite future releasing a video every week.
But certainly I thank any of you who have been following any of these videos, and I wish you success as well.
If any of you are also doing a daily video program, I would love to hear from you and how that’s going.
#videoeveryday #dailyvideo #publisheveryday