You can only learn so much about a given skill or subject area before you have to go DO.
Your brain can only consume so much information and knowledge before you have to work it yourself,
before you have to experience in application - or all that learning is worthless.
This is potentially one of the biggest issues facing new content creators today - something
many creators on every platform in every interest area struggles with, myself included.
There’s never been a better time to learn new skills or pick up new hobbies thanks to
the power of the world wide web.
How to guides, Instructables, blogs (remember those?), niche sites, Pinterest boards, YouTube
tutorials, Lynda courses, SkillShare courses, Master Classes - there’s more content available
than anyone has time to consume.
But that doesn’t keep you from trying.
Here’s a habit I’ve fallen into sometimes.
I’ll have a day where I’m too sleepy or not feeling well and can’t start it off
on a productive foot.
I wake up, feed the cats, fix me some breakfast and pull up the ol’ YouTubez.
I’ve been trying to break away from my addictive comment-checking habit so I usually pull up
a video or two from my Watch Later list or my never-ending void of tabs.
But some days, when I have the brainule desire to do something productive, practice a skill,
or learn - but not the physical energy or motivation to get off my butt and do so - 1
or 2 videos will turn into 4 or 5.
Then I’ll discover a whole new channel of content relating to that subject.
They make good videos, let’s binge their videos.
Maybe a second new channel, as well.
I can hit subscribe, but I might as well binge all the relevant videos I’m interested in
watching.
Oh it’s late afternoon, I should probably eat lunch by this point.
Time to watch more of these videos while I eat… again.
The passing justification for this (admittedly sedentary) time-spending is usually that not
being physically up for doing work means I can reasonably substitute that time for learning
something new.
Learning new ways to master my crafts.
It’s “research.”
This is, to be fair, the way that I had become usually the smartest person in the room about
YouTube’s inner workings, video production technicalities, video codecs, game engine
framerate analysis, live streaming software, audio production practices (depending on the
room I’m in) and a variety of other subjects.
But when it comes to the practical skills I want to actually ENGAGE IN at some point
in time… that’s not how learning works.
You see, by the end of the day I’ve watched more videos than I can count on cameras, tech
gadgets, photography, video editing, script writing, set design, whatever subjects my
brain latched onto for the day - but I hadn’t actually DONE ANYTHING.
I might have wanted to go and experiment with the unique macro photography videos I had
been watching, but with the excuse that most of the unique vintage lenses are far out of
my budget for now, never picked up the camera.
Learning all of these things - with regards to practical skills - is mostly useless if
I never put it into practice.
Sitting there consuming information and not practicing it yourself, and then wondering
why your photos or videos aren’t magically bettering themselves is not a way to live
life.
Especially since literally the only reason you’re not getting better at the particular
skill or art is because you’re simply not out there doing it.
That’s the funny thing - when you stop being a couch potato..
A desk chair potato..?..
And put the things you are learning to use, you usually DO get better.
I can spend weeks wishing I was better at this aspect of photography or editing, but
then once I actually do it I’m surprised as to how well it turned out.
Even today, I had a fairly unproductive sleepy and disconnected day of just consuming photography
videos.
Instead of doing ONLY that, I used my early evening slight burst of energy to actually
open Lightroom and start editing.
The next thing I knew my eyes were glazing over, but 3 hours had passed.
I’d edited the photos from my most recent state park hike with my wife, and I’d edited
almost 30 photos for Instagram in my own custom style that I started working on and improved
greatly on during those few hours and had them ready to go to schedule up.
My photos didn’t make themselves better.
I had to stop watching videos, stop listening to what other people had to say, and put real
time in on doing the work myself, and practicing what I had learned.
Obviously, there are some high-risk job skills that you probably do need to read every page
of the manual front to back 5 times before you ever touch a real work site and that’s
fine - but for us creative folks out there, especially those of us who grew up looking
to the internet to answer all of our questions… sometimes it’s more important to go try
and fail and try again than to listen to someone else’s TOP 5 TIPS on a subject.
Especially since, inevitably, people whose advice you listen to end up influencing your
own decisions and style.
It becomes much harder to develop your own true-to-self style and look and path when
every reference in your mind comes from someone else’s choices.
Maybe today stop watching videos on your favorite subject.
(Ironic to say in a video itself, sure.)
Pick up your pen, pencil, laptop, instrument, camera, tools - and go practice the thing
you want to do.
You might find you can get more tangible results if you make new results in the first place.