Push

September 21, 2011

Your heart is pounding. Your hands are trembling. Words have turned into an unintelligible mesh of gibberish. You can’t remember what the last piece of footage looked like. You can’t seem to find the right word to describe your characters smile. Every cell on the spreadsheet looks the like cell preceding it.

Anxiety, depression, fear, worry, doubt and guilt all become one in the same as you constantly hear yourself saying, “I can’t do this”, “I’m not good enough”, “Maybe I should’t have bit off more than I can chew”.

The only things you can visualize are your mistakes, missed deadlines, broken promises and all of the credibility you’re about to lose. If you can’t do this one task, how could you really expect to make a living doing this. How can you inspire anyone when you’re so ineffective? What will people think? How can anyone ever trust you again?

No amount of advice, inspirational quotes or productivity rhetoric are helping. You want to curl up into a little ball and go to sleep, because you might feel better about it in the morning, but your deadline is 6am. There is no one to help you, and even if there was, they couldn’t help because you can’t do this.

Make no mistake about it, you are in a war. It’s the hardest battle anyone can ever face, and the only way to win it is to push. There is no trick, there is no 5 step guide, and there is no real manual. The only way to win is to type one letter at a time, even if your words don’t sound right. Drop another clip onto the timeline for no other reason than it looks like it might fit. Send one more email, even if doesn’t make you sound as eloquent as you’d like people to believe you are. Read another page, even if you have to read it over and over and over again for it to make sense, because you’re almost at the top of the mountain. Even if you can’t see it, we only feel so anxious, so lonely, so worn down and so powerless when we’re at the cusp of losing ourselves to something greater.

All you can do is push, because you’re almost there…even if it doesn’t feel that way yet.

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Ritual Union

August 1, 2011



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every Friday, millions of viewers check Freddie Wong’s youtube page for his latest video. Freddie W is the 10th most viewed channel on YouTube with over 330 million views and close to 2 million loyal subscribers. Every week, Freddie uploads a video, starring him in a new adventure full of special effects, guns and campy dialogue. His videos are well made and fun to watch, but the quality of his videos isn’t the main reason he’s had so many views.

Freddie has built a loyal following by being consistent.

His fans blog, tweet and repost his videos to their followers, spreading Freddie’s VFX heavy videos around to their friends. Freddie promises a product at a certain time, then he delivers. Freddie’s ritual, posting a video every week has created the ritual of watching, sharing and commenting on the weeks new Freddie W video for his loyal fans.

People need rituals, and they will reward you for being generous enough to provide them. Rituals give people structure. Sure Freddie has his off days but he delivers on time nonetheless.

Every Wednesday for 4 years, I had a contract with the comic book shop and the comic book publishers. I would come to the shop for an hour, there would be new books to read, new stories to discover, and new conversations to be had with fellow patrons and the comic book shops staff. I would buy my regular stories and promise to return for more of the same in 7 days.

It took me three months of not buying comic books to realize what I was actually doing. While I genuinely enjoyed the stories I read, I was there for the structure. I had ritual of making a pilgrimage to my local comic book store with millions of other people around the world.

Having a ritual like buying comic books gave my weeks some structure. People used to plan their weeks around the TV guide, not only because they enjoyed the shows, but because the shows gave them structure. And once someone has brought into something that satisfies such a primal need, they can become invested. Once someone is invested, they will work to sustain their ritual.

The lesson here is to ship consistently. Put yourself on a regular schedule, and let time dictate when something is ready…not your taste. For me, the first project is this blog. For someone like my friend Dave, it’s his album Beta Max.

Consistency isn’t the biggest determiner of success, but it solves problems many of the other factors to success creates. Doing something consistently and sharing it forces you to overcome fear of judgement. You improve much faster than if you wait, or are too meticulous in your execution. It also reminds you, that you have a a potentially infinite number of tries to get it right.

I think my favorite aspect of consistency is it reminds you that you don’t know everything. Kevin Nalt is a filmmaker whose blog Will Video for Food, saw a tremendous spike in traffic when he wrote about the youtube partnership program. I doubt he planned for that to be his most popular blog entry, but had he not written it, and all of the posts that came before it, his blog probably wouldn’t be as popular as it is now.

So with that, what will you make your new ritual? What will you ship consistently?

References:
Freddie W’s Youtube Page
Will Video for Food

 

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