I published 1000 videos on YouTube
“Yes” is a commitment and “No” equals freedom. I like that saying and seldom have it been more appropriate than yesterday when I published my final daily upload on YouTube after publishing at least one video every single day since November 2019. I had concluded that video is the medium of the future, and decided that I needed to get comfortable in front of a camera, and that the best way to get there was to publish at least 1000 videos with a minimum of one per day. It is physically impossible to not get at least decent at it if you do it one thousand times. Yesterday, after I pressed the upload button for the final time in my somewhat insane endeavor, I experienced a strange and very satisfying feeling of inner peace. A sense of freedom.
In case you’ve seen some of my acoustics videos and found them useful, don’t worry. It won’t end here; I will keep making more of those. I will just not be a slave to the daily routine anymore. Some days ago, when I passed the 1000th video in the playlist I created, and I did some more just for good measure. Just like if you are planning to achieve an “iron butt” as a motorcyclist (1000 miles driven in 24 hours), you should always get some margin of error and do some extra miles just in case. In my case, a thousand videos took me 937 days (~2½ years). It is interesting to go back and look at the early videos and how awkward and uncomfortable it felt back then. Today, recording a vlog style video is all but frictionless in comparison! Practice makes progress.
As I mentioned in the introduction, I feel “free” today. By ending the daily video publishing routine, I now have the freedom to start a new project! And one of the things on my to-do list is to build a better plan regarding how, what, and where to publish. From what I can tell, it does not work to be totally diversified in your content. The algorithm rewards focus, and that’s where I am heading next. I have experienced great success on LinkedIn with my acoustic educational videos – and on that platform I am indeed very focused. Well, except for these weekly blog posts perhaps. My YouTube channel on the other hand contains everything that passes my head on that day. From death metal drums to men’s fashion, to RGB computers and acoustics. And everything in between. Step one should probably be to register a new channel that is 100% focused on acoustics videos. And it should be in English only, not a mixture between Swedish and English like I sometimes do now. I am thinking of calling it Creative Acoustician, just like this blog. And then my personal channel can evolve in another direction. Probably towards music, because that’s where I have seen the greatest traction on YouTube. My Youtube vlogging has served a very similar purpose as this blog. It is a creative outlet. I never know what piece of content that will come on a particular day. I improvise almost everything. Regarding the blog, I could probably achieve much better growth should I focus on a strictly acoustics-themed blog and not the everything between heaven-and-Earth-approach that it currently is. But I am not there yet. I am still searching for something by writing a piece every Monday. And sooner or later it’ll come to me.
Another thing that I have been interested in for a long time, is to start some kind of podcast. I was a guest on Alexander Landborn’s podcast recently and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I know a ton of very interesting people (to me atleast) and it would be a pleasure to publish conversations with them, in a similar way to the blog and vlogs. I don’t think I can pull off a micro-niched podcast just yet, because I am not sure what it would look like. But just as my 1000 videos has resulted in a well-defined format of acoustics-themed educational short videos, starting a PodCast without mental filters will probably result in something similar, given enough time. I suspect the PodCasts would gravitate towards acoustics, civil engineering, sound and music one way or another. And now, after saying “No” to daily uploads I have been granted the freedom to pursue the Podcast. But first, I think I need to get a little distance to social media. A couple of days of radio silence might do the trick.
Whatever I end up pursuing next, I know for a fact that 99% is all about showing up. Just pull the trigger and get going. Publish that first embarrassing Podcast and work your way from there. See what happens!