AI Summary
The video presents seven practical rules for aspiring creators to overcome procrastination, self-doubt, and fear, based on the speaker's decade-long experience as a professional content creator. It combines neuroscience insights with actionable strategies like first principles, daily to-do lists, and Pomodoro timers to build sustainable creative habits.
Chapters
The speaker introduces seven rules that have helped him stay motivated and keep creating for over a decade, promising to reveal a secret weapon for focus.
The first rule is to consciously lie to yourself with positive affirmations. The brain is gullible; if you tell it you can't do something, it will believe you. Conversely, telling it you can improve will help you grow. This is backed by Compassion Focused Therapy.
Motivation and talent are not intrinsic; they are skills that can be grown. The anterior mid-singulate cortex acts like a muscle for motivation and willpower. It strengthens when you tackle hard tasks and weakens when you avoid them.
Instead of setting a daunting task like 'make a full YouTube video,' break it down into smaller, manageable tasks (first principles). This prevents analysis paralysis and makes starting easier.
Batch work by day and write a daily to-do list with achievable tasks. This provides a clear starting point and gives dopamine hits as you check items off, which tricks the brain into feeling good.
Fear builds a narrative that holds you back. The longer you wait, the harder it is to start. The advice is to be brave for just 10 seconds and say yes, without giving yourself time to talk yourself out of it.
The speaker's secret weapon is a physical Pomodoro counter. He loops 5 or 10-minute work sessions, which feels incredibly achievable and provides frequent dopamine rewards, helping maintain focus.
Perfectionism sets you up for self-hatred. Instead, view perfection as a direction of continuous improvement. You'll always notice flaws, but that means you're getting better at observing your mistakes.
Even if you fail, the effort you put in is not wasted. It contributes to your growth. Reflect on mistakes and try again; progress is still progress, even if slow.
The most important step is to love the process of creating, not just the potential rewards like money or fame. If you don't enjoy the act of creating, you'll quit. Find joy in the process itself.
The video concludes that sustained creativity comes from loving the process, not the outcome. The speaker emphasizes that if you don't enjoy creating, there's no point in doing it, and he shares his own experience of quitting a successful channel to pursue what he loves.
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💡 Key Takeaways
Motivation is a muscle
Explains the neuroscience behind motivation, making it a tangible skill to train.
02:32Be brave for 10 seconds
A simple, actionable counter to analysis paralysis and fear.
05:58Perfection is a direction
Reframes perfectionism as a growth mindset, reducing self-criticism.
08:35Love the process
Emphasizes intrinsic motivation over external rewards, a key to long-term sustainability.
10:25Full Transcript
[00:00] You want to be a creator, but goddammit, how the hell do you motivate yourself to actually make shit? Every project is too big, you don't know where to start, and even if you did, what if you tried and inevitably failed? No, it's easier to just keep dreaming, right?
[00:13] Screw that, I want to show you guys seven rules that I've used not just to motivate myself to create, but actually keep myself creating for over a decade as a job. And I'll even reveal this, my secret weapon that has made me actually able to focus during the day.
[00:27] I've broken today's video up into steps, each filled on me last, so make sure you watch all the way through, but first, it doesn't matter what you do, you're doomed to fail if you're not a good liar.
[00:39] What? You might think you're this highly evolved creature who walks around on two legs and wears clothes, but in reality, you're just a little lizard brain piloting a bunch of bones and meat. All of the anxiety, fear and negative emotions you feel every day are just leftovers from when you needed that shit to stop yourself being ripped to shreds and eaten alive by a saber-toothed tiger.
[00:59] Which is great if you still had saber-toothed tigers around, but nowadays if you let it run wild, it actually gets stronger. You see, no matter what you're trying to achieve, the first thing you have to change is how you talk to your brain.
[01:11] Because it is an amazing machine, but it's also really quite gullible. If you wake up every day and tell yourself you'll never be a successful creator, or you'll never be a good editor, or you'll never be able to make a video or write a script, then yeah, you're never going to be able to do those things because your brain will believe you.
[01:27] But if you force yourself to lie and say, I can become an amazing editor, I can learn new skills, I can grow and improve and earn my mother's love. Wait, what? Sorry about that. But seriously, if you can do those things, your brain will start to believe you, and depending on how consistently you do that, it will believe you much quicker.
[01:46] I know this sounds stupid, I thought that as well, but trust me, if you want to learn more about this, there's a very proven and researched concept called Compassion Focused Therapy, which helps people like myself, with diagnosed chronic anxiety and invasive suicidal thoughts, to, you know, make my bed and get up every day and actually function.
[02:06] So step one is done. You've started to lie to your brain. The next thing you have to do is understand that you've also been lied to your entire life. You've been taught that motivation and talent are things people intrinsically have.
[02:19] You don't have those. Just give up. But that's bullshit. Those things are, as weird as it sounds, skills you can very quickly grow. See, there's a little part of your brain called the anterior mid-singulate cortex,
[02:32] and learning about it changed my life. This part of your brain is essentially a muscle that controls your motivation, tenacity, and willpower. It's been proven that if you don't shy away from hard tasks or challenges,
[02:45] this part of your brain will grow stronger, making it easier to take on bigger challenges. But if you constantly shy away from challenges, or if you always take the comfortable path, it actually gets weaker.
[02:57] And that's really all we need to know about it, because once we know about that at least for me it creates a little voice in the back of my head and every time I would come up with reasons why I couldn go for a run or get work done that little voice yells your interior mid cortex will remember that And suddenly my shoes are on and
[03:15] I'm on the treadmill because the idea of my brain shrinking is terrifying. Okay, that's the brain stuff done. With that, we know how to lie to ourselves and how to get rid of the lies we've been told. Now it's time to actually start doing things. So, you sit down at your computer and you
[03:30] set yourself the task. Make a full YouTube video. And that's a stupid task, you idiot. Come on. The idea of creating an entire video is daunting. I can't just sit down one day and make a video.
[03:42] If I tried to do that, I'd become paralyzed by decisions and the overwhelming dread of how much there is to do. Otherwise known as analysis paralysis. But there are three steps we can take to start literally any task, no matter the size. Step one is called first principles. In
[03:58] Sure, this is the idea of breaking down major tasks that make you feel overwhelmed into much smaller, easier to complete tasks. Let's take the average YouTube video. Rather than writing the task out as make video about motivation, instead I could say plan
[04:12] video about motivation. But even that might be too much for you. In that case, we could go even more granular with a list like this on screen now. This is kind of the steps that I would take to write a script for a full video.
[04:24] And this process will continue in these bite-sized chunks until eventually I have not scripted but I've recorded and edited an entire video. Now I don't recommend writing out an entire video's tasks at once because that's still overwhelming.
[04:37] Instead you should follow the second step for starting a big project and that is a daily to-do list. I personally batch my work by day and then write a to-do list in the morning focused around specific tasks. For example I have one entire day
[04:49] devoted to scripting and pre-production every week. If I have to script three videos that day I break those down into smaller tasks and then write a to-do list that I can physically kick off. This not only gives me a clear starting point and direction to follow, but as I work through the to-do list,
[05:02] I get little hits of dopamine because I can see the list getting smaller, which tricks my little addicted lizard brain into feeling good about itself. Now, it's crucial these tasks are achievable. If you write massive tasks that you can't kick off today,
[05:15] you'll quickly feel defeated when you have to write them out again tomorrow. So remember, smaller, achievable tasks in a clear to-do list. If you're sitting down to eat a two-bone steak, you gotta cut it up first. But finally, I can see the comments now because I get them all the time.
[05:30] LJ, this is all well and good, but what if I do all this work and I fail? What if people are mean to me? What if I suck? And I will go into more detail about this again later, so stick around for that if this fear is intense for you. But for now, what you have to learn is that fear takes
[05:44] time to build a narrative that holds you back. The longer you think about something and the longer you see all the things that could go wrong, all the problems and ways you could be hurt, or even Listen just, the longer you wait to even start it, the harder it is to start naturally.
[05:58] Again, as someone with a chronic anxiety condition that has always wanted to be a creator, literally my entire life one of the best pieces of advice I was ever told was be brave for just 10 seconds and say yes Don give yourself time to talk yourself out of everything Instead just be brave for 10 seconds
[06:15] Tell yourself you can do this and then just start. Recently, I was asked with a week's notice to fly to America and talk at the world's largest tech event. I can't do that on a week's notice.
[06:27] So I immediately began to panic. Until my wife looked me dead in the eye and said, You need to say yes. You can figure the rest out later. So I did, and now I can say that I've talked at CES, the biggest tech event in the world.
[06:41] That's insane. But starting is only half the battle. How do you keep yourself working once you start? How do we stay focused? This is my biggest issue. I've always struggled to stay on task for my entire life, and it's only gotten worse with so many new distractions.
[06:54] So to help stop myself from being distracted alongside my to-do list, I use this, my secret weapon, a Pomodoro counter. Each side is a different length of time, and placing it on that side starts a timer.
[07:07] Now, technically Pomodoro means to set a 15 minute timer, work for 15 minutes, and then take a small 5 minute break, in which you will then loop this until you finish a workday. I do not do this. I just keep looping the 5 or 10 minutes over and over because it's incredibly achievable
[07:22] to work for 5 or 10 minutes, and if I manage to focus for a full 5 minutes or 10 minutes, it goes a little fuzzy sound, and I feel incredibly productive. aka constantly hitting my work goals and getting that dopamine rush.
[07:34] Is this going to work for you? I don't know. Almost certainly in some format though and I can say everyone should get one of these and try to find a system that works for them with it. I'll link this one down below in the description because I have tried a few different versions of
[07:47] these clocks and even used some phone apps as well but let's be real touching your phone while you're trying to work is like asking to be distracted so for me this is the one I've I've found, I've stuck with, and I like it. I'll link it below.
[07:59] I've just recorded for 20 minutes. It was just supposed to be overlaid for the motivation video, and I've just written an entire short. It works. It just works, man. And now for the second most important part.
[08:11] You've learned how to start. You've learned how to focus. But how do we stop doubting ourselves or feeling like crap when we fail? What do we do when we step back, look at what we've made, and hate it because it isn't perfect? Well, that's the hardest part.
[08:23] And what I'm about to say won't solve it overnight. I'm sorry. There's no easy fix here. These two things we have to spend months telling ourselves before we start to even believe them. And if you stop believing them, you have to restart the process again.
[08:35] But the first thing you have to believe is that perfection is a direction, not a state of being. As people, when we seek perfection, we set ourselves up to hate ourselves. It's unrealistic to be perfect.
[08:47] But further than that, if you were so deranged to think everything you do or did or created was perfect, that you are setting yourself up to never improve. In reality, there is always something you can do
[08:59] to be better, and that's exciting. You'll always notice problems with what you made, and when you solve those, you'll notice new ones, because your ability to observe your mistakes is becoming better as you become better Now what happens if you work really hard to create something you proud of you accept its flaws you do your best and it flops anyway This is when we have to remind ourselves that effort is never truly wasted If you want to run a 5k marathon you break it
[09:25] down to small steps. You put your shoes on, go outside, start running as hard as you can, but you get winded 1k and have a soft breeze before going home. You didn't fail. You tried. You tried something really hard, and next time, you're going to be better at it. You recognize you went too hard
[09:39] too fast, so maybe next time you start to run slower, you warm up. And congratulations, you managed to run two k's before having to go home. Of course, success won't happen overnight, but you got further today and you'll get further tomorrow. Listen to these words and take it home with you.
[09:55] When you put effort in and reflect on your mistakes, that effort is never wasted. It all pulls together to make you a better person. Even if the progress is slow, it's still progress. Even if you fall off the wagon and stop going for your runs or stop making videos,
[10:11] you still made progress. And that's why you should be excited. Because if you're not excited, you'll quit every time. And this, to me, is the most important step of the whole video. Seriously, nobody gets into content creation because they like the feeling of clicking upload videos.
[10:25] There is a motivation, or maybe it's better to say a reason you want to do this. The problem is, that reason often causes creators like yourself, who have a lot of potential to be amazing to instead quit very quickly.
[10:37] I've been helping people do this for about five or six years and I can't count how many channels I've seen and helped who were going to be massive if they just stuck to creating and didn't give up. The problem is, their goal was they wanted money
[10:50] or fame or millions of views. They wanted things that aren't going to come for a long time. You can want these things, but if that's your key reason for doing, you're going to struggle because you won't feel rewarded
[11:02] until you're much bigger. To solve this, you need to love the process of creating content. You need to love creating ideas, titles, thumbnails, and then making those things should excite you. You don't have to love every stage perfectly,
[11:14] but you should enjoy seeing your ideas come to life and making something. You should enjoy the feeling of learning new skills and sharing your art with new people. And at the end of the day, something I have to remind people of, if you spend your time creating videos or content
[11:27] and you don't enjoy any of it, what's the point? When it comes to content creation, or I guess any of my hobbies, or how I spend any of my time outside of work or family responsibilities, I've always said the same thing.
[11:39] If I don't enjoy something, why would I waste my limited time torturing myself with it? I'm not saying to quit if you're not having fun, I'm just saying you should find your joy, your excitement, and allow that to fuel your content journey.
[11:52] I quit a 50,000 subscriber gaming channel that had 35 million views because I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I started a whole new gaming channel which is still far smaller than that, but it's on a topic I love and I'm getting, well, millions of views on there as well, but I'm
[12:06] actually excited to create the views aside, okay? Mostly because the comments are really funny on them. And if you want to see how new YouTubers are killing their channels, click right here. If you want to see how I monetize a new gaming channel in six uploads, click right here.
[12:19] I'll see you guys next week.
