🎨 The Weekly Scroll: Old vs new beliefs about creativity
🎨 The Weekly Scroll: Old vs new beliefs about creativityYou can’t be a beginner and a perfectionist
Hey y’all, My YouTube era has begun. Again! Thanks for reading The Weekly Scroll! I spent all of last Friday (and then part of yesterday) recording…and re-recording…my first long-form video since 2024.
A lot has changed since I made my first and only video for Buffer’s channel. I have a new location, new equipment, and a different mindset about content creation. 
At the time I recorded that video, I struggled with consistency. I was more interested in making my ideas efficient and organized than in being as creative as possible. I believed my creativity only really counted when it produced something polished. I wanted the finished video, post, or system to justify the time I had spent making it. The process was mostly something to get through on the way to an outcome I could point to. That made content creation feel much more consequential than it needed to be. When something didn’t meet the standard I had imagined, I would scrap it. The problem is that creative work rarely develops that neatly. Can you see where I’m going with this? That video took me 3 months to make. I had a script. I had already written the article it was based on, so I had the context. But from recording to editing to publishing, every step felt like pulling teeth. I could always find something wrong: the quality of my camera, my lighting setup, my editing choices. Making that video felt like wearing a skin that wasn’t mine. I was obsessed with perfection at every stage, even though the result was never going to be perfect. You can’t be a beginner and a perfectionist. Recording this time came with its own problems. We have new systems. I have new equipment to figure out. And I expect even more from myself now than I did before. But it only took two attempts this time. Partly because I was less concerned with perfection but also because I could rely on the hard-won skills I had developed through making dozens of short-form videos since my first attempt at YouTube. I’m no longer a beginner at content creation, so I could focus on adapting those skills to a different medium. More importantly, I approached the work as a student of the process rather than someone searching for perfection. Sometimes you need to record the same introduction several times before you understand what you are actually trying to say. Sometimes a shot looks better in your head than it does on camera. Sometimes you spend an afternoon making something that will never leave your hard drive. I used to see those moments as evidence that the process was going badly. Now, I just see them as the process. The biggest difference between making that first video and making this one isn’t the equipment or the location. It’s that I’m less concerned with proving I can produce a polished outcome and more interested in becoming someone who stays engaged with the process long enough to improve. I’m learning to treat recording, editing, experimenting, and occasionally getting things wrong as parts of the creative practice rather than obstacles standing in front of it. Of course the polished outcome still matters. It’s just not the only part that matters. YOU’LL LOVE THE CREATE SPACE Watch out for my video where I’ll walk through my content batching system, which I set up in Buffer’s Create space. But you don’t have to wait for me! Tap in ahead of time by visiting buffer.com/create. WHAT’S IN MY SCROLL? Speaking of YouTube… It’s Sabreen’s turn at YouTube this week, with a detailed breakdown of the Instagram algorithm. 
LinkedIn seems to have rolled out Collaborative Posts beyond beta. If you’re in line to try this, stay in line! That’s it from me. Until next week, Tami Sr. Content Creator Thanks for reading The Weekly Scroll!
|
