When I first started streaming, I held a pretty frequent schedule, 3 nights a week for ~3 hours each. Given that I worked full time, have a family, a kid, and other things, it took up quite a bit of time, and was one of the reasons I took a long break from streaming.
When I started again, I picked one day a week. It was a good fit, but left me wanting a bit more – so I decided to take a 2nd night which I was going to devote to creating content specifically for youtube. I’ve been considering this for a while, but I finally took the time to record and edit a video. I spent about a week thinking about what I wanted in the video, then about 1 1/2 hour recording the video, then another 1 1/2 hours trying to edit it down to 15 minutes or less.
In the end – I scrapped it all. But, I learned so much. Why? Because I learned so much and realize I can do so much better. At the end of the editing session – in which I only managed to edit half of the video – I asked myself: “Would I watch this video?” and the answer was “maybe, but I wouldn’t give it a like…”
The wonderful thing about the editing process is that you can get rid of all your “umms” and “ok, so…” and crop out lots of tedious footage of you running around your world that you don’t get to do in a live stream. But, since you aren’t interacting with a live audience, the content you have to create must connect with the viewer on a deep level. What you say must make sense, and most of all – it must provide value. At the end of the day, the content I created simply did not create enough value.
Thinking about it – life is the same way. Unless we stop, and really look at ourselves and the work we do. Unless we try to edit our day down to a low-duration high-value video, we can never get a good picture of our impact – good or bad. Taking the time to reflect on our actions, and ask: “Is this the person I want to be,” we can never truly be the person we want to become…
So, back to the drawing board I go, to think about how I can create some awesome content for Youtube. I have some ideas, and will have a teaser trailer up soon.
Thank you as always for reading.
-Wiz