I’ve recently started a course called the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and it’s been great. I’m doing this alongside many creative individuals across the globe and the mutual inspiration that the group brings is incredible.

One of the key messages in this course so far, is the notion that when getting started, quantity matters over quality. A simple illustration of this comes from the Parable of the Pottery Class:

There was once a ceramics teacher called Brian. One month, Brian decided to split his class into two groups. Over 30 days, Group A would be graded on the quantity of work they produced, and Group B would be graded on the quality of work they produced. Group A had to submit 50 pounds worth of pots to be graded an “A”, 40 pounds for a “B” and so on, whereas Group B only had to work on a single pot and submit it by the end of the 30 days.

At the end of the month, Brian judged the quality of the pots. Without exception, every one of the top 10 pots came from Group A, those that made one pot per day. None came from the group that focused on perfecting their single pot.

Source: Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. 

The idea is, your first few iterations of anything will probably suck, whether it’s videos, drawing or singing. And that’s totally fine, because:

• Nobody cares; and
• Being bad shows you how you can be better.

And once enough iterations of failing, improving, failing and improving occur… maybe you’ll wake up one day and realise you don’t suck anymore.

So here’s a short reminder to myself that even though my video quality is substandard, I have camera confidence issues and editing takes a long time, that over time, things will improve.

It’s all just a matter of getting started.