Why Your Work Disappoints You

Key Takeaways

this video is sponsored by skillshare use the link in the description down below to get a two-month free trial which includes my productivity essentials course if you're an ambitious person then you like me are also probably somewhat of a perfectionist whether you're trying to write a novel or make videos or record your own music the work that you're creating right now probably doesn't measure up to your standards there's always some tweaking you could do or something you could change or some improvement that you could make but it seems like no matter how much tweaking you do it still never quite measures up to that vision you have in your head right this is called the taste gap which is a term that was coined by the podcaster ira glass you're inspired to start creating by other art that you know is good which means that you start out with great taste but as a beginner your skills don't quite match up to that taste and by extension neither do the first things that you create and i recently got an email from somebody that echoed this exact idea they were in the process of writing a novel but they were frustrated with the fact that the quality of their own writing didn't match up to that of their favorite authors the taste gap was still there despite the fact that they were able to successfully and accurately analyze what authors did the way they described environments the way that they developed characters now you might not be writing a novel but it's likely that you've experienced something similar in some other discipline that you've been a part of so what i want to talk about in this video is a rule that i've used successfully over the past few years to start closing this taste gap and actually start making progress instead of remaining paralyzed by my own perfectionism it's called the one percent rule and before we get into the specifics of it i want to do a quick thought experiment that will hopefully put things in perspective so picture in your mind's eye if you will your normal everyday routine think about the mundane boring sequence of actions that you go through every single day but with one slight twist you haven't done any of them ever before now you've seen other people do them so you know how to do these things but you have precisely zero experience with brushing your teeth with tying your shoes using a microwave you don't know how to read you know how to write you don't know how to use a computer you've never done any of these things in the past but again you've seen people do them so they should be easy right well in this thought experiment you can probably come to the conclusion that if you've never done these things before you're gonna have a hard time with them in the real world the only reason you're able to go through your routine basically on autopilot is because you've done every single action in that routine so many times that they've all become habitual now most people intuitively understand this but a lot of them fail to apply it to the art that they want to make and the skills they want to build writing a novel is just like your daily routine in that the process of doing it contains lots of individual steps and your favorite fantasy author has spent years or possibly even decades practicing each and every one of them at this point certain parts in the writing process are automatic for these people which means that they can now focus all their attention and their creativity on other things meanwhile as a beginner you're over here trying to split your brain power between adequately describing environments and developing characters and relationships and catching plot holes and 800 other elements that you haven't practiced before this is why you're experiencing the taste gap you simply haven't had enough time or enough tries to make some of these sub skills into nearly automatic habits and this is what stops a lot of people in their tracks because so many people are unwilling to let their idealized perfected vision for their first piece go and as a result they never finish it and they never develop the necessary skills to close that taste gap that's where the one percent role comes in and it's really simple it just has two parts number one put yourself on a schedule and publish on a regular basis it could be a once a week schedule it could be once a month schedule that will allow you to not get mired in perfectionism because you know at a defined point in the future you are going to have to say this is good enough it's going out i'm shipping it number two each time you make something on your defined schedule focus on getting one percent better in some element of that discipline this is exactly how i got over my own perfectionism when i started my youtube channel i had that taste gap i was watching tons of youtubers that i really looked up to and i understood what made their content great but i couldn't replicate it myself so instead of getting mired in perfectionism i put myself on a once per week deadline and with each video i would try to focus on something new sometimes i would focus on the audio sometimes i focus on my delivery as a speaker sometimes i would get really into animation i remember one week i was learning how to keyframe animation so i could make pictures move across the screen and then another week i got really into after effects and learned about easing curves so i could get rid of linear motion and make more more natural motion and then eventually i got into really complex masking and if i were to try to do all these things at once well i would have failed on my first try but because i was focusing on just one of them for each video i didn't get overwhelmed and i started to build a repertoire of skills over time now i understand lighting setups i understand audio i understand animation i understand lots of elements that go into the process of making great videos but it took four or five years to get to this point now the one percent rule is something you can apply to any discipline that you're pursuing it doesn't have to be video making because let's face it video making is a pursuit that is very easily broken down into different steps pretty much anyone can identify that there's lighting there's audio there's on-camera presence animation all these different things that you can focus on so let's take one more example that's a little bit harder to break down let's take the discipline of singing i remember when i started singing i thought it was pretty difficult to identify exactly what a great singer was doing to sound the way that they did but this is a discipline where the one percent rule can apply as well in this case you just need to do a little bit of extra work beforehand to figure out what the sub skills are and that can involve working with a coach like i do or just going and doing a little bit of extra reading or joining an online community where people can give you some pointers and eventually you're going to learn about all kinds of different sub skills there's resonance there's eliminating nasality and you're singing voice there's dynamics vocal fry head voice enunciation singing with emotion and once you've identified those sub skills then you can go start picking projects that allow you to focus on one at a time for instance i have a whole bunch of playlists on spotify that break down singing skills so i've got one for high voice training i've got one for low voice training i've got one for really powerful singing that utilizes a lot of vocal fry and since i have one vocal lesson per week i usually pick one or two songs to work on and practice and make recordings of which means that i'm essentially on a once per week schedule with singing as well so to recap the two big benefits the one percent rule are number one the deadline as the old aphorism goes perfect is the enemy of good and well a deadline is the enemy of perfect meaning that it's the friend of good and it's also the friend of completion putting yourself on a schedule means actually finishing things and let's just say you put yourself on a once per week schedule for two years that means two years from now you're gonna be able to turn around and look back on a body of work containing more than 100 finished projects secondly there is the improvement because focusing on getting one percent better in a new area with each project means that over time you get vastly better in many many different sub-areas of your discipline again if you make 100 things over the course of two years that means you've given yourself 100 opportunities for practice and improvement and each time you're picking one new area of focus you continue learning and expanding your horizons but you're also gaining more practice in the areas that you have focused on before now i do want to point out one resource where you can go to learn the sub skills and whatever skill that you're trying to build and that is skillshare on skillshare you're going to find a library with thousands of in-depth courses covering video editing photography illustration animation and even productivity and since i talked about my own video editing journey in this video the course that i want to recommend this week is how to make an animated youtube video by my friend evan who runs the channel polymatter and if you go to his channel you're actually going to see evidence of the one percent rule in action because he's been publishing consistently for years and you can see gradual improvement in his videos over time and you also might want to check out jake bartlett's course on animating with ease and after effects especially if you want to learn how to start doing some of the things that we did in this video also skillshare is incredibly affordable platform with unlimited access to their platform starting at less than 10 bucks a month which basically makes it like a netflix subscription that's a lot more useful to your future and your skill development and even better if you want to get a two-month free trial you can actually sign up with a link down below and get that while also supporting my channel and by the way i actually have a brand new skillshare course coming out in january 2020 so even if you sign up right now and activate that two month trial today you're going to get free access to that course when it comes out either way thanks so much for watching this video hopefully you found this useful it's definitely a rule that has been very very useful in my life so i really hope that you can apply it to yours as well and if you enjoyed this video definitely hit that like button so the youtube algorithm kind of likes my channel a little bit more i guess otherwise you can get subscribed right there if you haven't done so already and also maybe subscribe to my music channel right there if you want some some cool tunes in your life i suppose otherwise i'm gonna throw a couple more videos on the screen that you can check out if you want and i will see you in the next video