Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Don't overthink it
0 Plays2 seconds ago
In this episode of General Musings, I discuss the theme of not overthinking content creation, inspired by Jason and Caroline Zook's Growing Steadily newsletter. I emphasize the importance of focusing on content quality over polish, sharing personal experiences from my own content creation journey. I encourage listeners to learn in public and share their knowledge without the fear of imperfection, highlighting that genuine content is what resonates with audiences.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to General Musings
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, my friend and friends, and welcome to my podcast, General Musings. My name is Kevin, and this podcast is somewhere where I talk about whatever is front of mind for me in any given week, usually in some way that's related to front-end development.
Inspiration from 'Growing Steady'
00:00:12
Speaker
And this week's topic, which is not to overthink things, was inspired by one of the few newsletters that I haven't unsubscribed to yet, which is Jason and Caroline Zoox. Zoox? Zoox? I'm gonna say their name wrong, I apologize.
00:00:26
Speaker
It's one of those things you read all the time, but then you never actually say it out loud. Jason and Caroline Zooks, I think that was right. Anyway, the name of their newsletter is called Growing Steady.
Substance vs. Polish in Content Creation
00:00:35
Speaker
And it's more of a business related newsletter. So it might not be something you're interested in, but it's refreshingly like the opposite of those marketing and grow your business type things. It's much more of like being human about it instead of some growth hacking.
00:00:48
Speaker
business-y thing that you usually see um about sasses and all of that stuff. And the message that they had this week was not to overthink things, and it really resonated with me, especially the more I read it. It was Caroline that wrote that part of the newsletter, and she was talking about how she made her first online course just using her computer's webcam. And it made me think a little bit about how I started my YouTube channel, because if you go back and you watch those early things,
00:01:14
Speaker
they're definitely a lot less polished from sort of the technical perspective of things. I had a mic actually the very early ones I wasn't even on screen and I probably should have left it that way until I had a better setup because once I was on screen that side of things wasn't the best.
00:01:30
Speaker
ah But just you know as the the content I think was decent anyway though, and over the years more and people started actually watching my content and then I slowly tried to up my game in terms of the presentation of it all. Though I recently was watching back really early material of mine and some of it. I'm like, hey, I did a pretty good job there of of how I'm teaching it at the very least. So I guess the content itself is what mattered the most. right And I think it's really and important thing to remember when you're starting stuff off. And that's not just for content creation. This is about basically anything. But it's not to worry about the polish. It's to worry about getting things done. Even for me now, when I look at my own videos, I like my background now. I have good lighting or better lighting. I'm probably way too shiny and stuff.
00:02:17
Speaker
I think that like overall my that side of things is looking decent. But then I look at a lot of the new creators that are coming along that have After Effects stuff going on, these animations. like The polish is top level. But the polish only matters if the content itself is good.
Building a Functional Course Platform
00:02:33
Speaker
So don't worry about the polish. Just worry about creating stuff or doing stuff. This could be for a website too, if you're trying to create a website.
00:02:40
Speaker
don't worry too much about the polish of that website at the very beginning, ah and another I guess, to put it in that perspective instead of a content. creation perspective is I'm working on putting together my own course platform right now and for things like that where the user's interacting with it some level of polish I think is important because you need you know you want a decent user experience but if I'm making a course platform the most important parts of the platform are the functionality of being being able to log in and for the student to get through the lessons
00:03:12
Speaker
Like that's the important part. And of course the content of the courses too, right? You need good quality course content in there on top of all of that. And even when it comes to like that, the extra polish you can put into these things.
00:03:28
Speaker
I think having a certain level of humanness to it all, where maybe it's missing some polish, I think is going to become something that's more important as time goes on as well. Maybe more with content creation than websites necessarily. But like as AI is continuing to just be able to generate mass amounts of content, having genuine stuff like an unedited podcast like this one is something that I think will resonate more with people.
00:03:55
Speaker
But even in terms of like the website itself for the course platform we're talking about where. Having a workable user experience with really high quality content i think is what's really important and just having no roadblocks like the polish in in the mvp of putting this.
Prioritizing Usability and Simplicity
00:04:12
Speaker
together this platform together for me is making sure it works right and that there's no as the users using it there's nothing that's frustrating for them or getting in their way it's something that just works and they're happy with that and then I can add polish later like I was working on a few things or like these like animations and like cool things on because when you have like modules that have tons of lessons I wanted to have a screen that had all the modules and you could get to individual lessons and the first thing I built was just this over-engineered thing where you could like expand it out and it would sort of cover up and and the usability of it was terrible. It was super fun to build. I enjoyed doing it and it looked fun one off. Like if you were playing with it, it could be fun to do it. But then to actually access the lessons, it sucked. And so like I added a whole bunch of polish without actually making it good. which So when I realized like actually in using it after that, I'm like, this is trash. So I just dumped it in the garbage. I found a much simpler ah way of approaching the same thing.
00:05:09
Speaker
And I think things like micro animations and other things that can help the user understand what's happening can be really good.
Embracing Imperfection in Publishing
00:05:17
Speaker
But those are like those small things you sort of add into on top of just it being easy to use in the first place. Right. And so, yeah, I think that's just one of those that That idea of don't worry about the polish I think is important in no matter what we're doing because it's so easy to not publish something because you're working on a product or maybe you've been told that you should start a blog and you're not starting it just because you're worried it's not perfect or you've written some blog posts and you won't publish them because
00:05:46
Speaker
You're worried that they're not perfect. You keep editing them over and over and over again. And, you know, I'm um the biggest advocate for telling people to learn in public either through video, which I know is a bit more of a production. So don't do video, do blog posts, whatever it is, anything at all. Just, you know, on social media, Blue Sky, Twitter, whatever it is, you're on Mastodon, just like little 250 character, little like, this is what I learned today. Anything like that, I think.
00:06:11
Speaker
is really beneficial for you. Like do it in a selfish way and don't worry about it being perfect because other people might see it and they're just going to find it useful and they're not going to notice the things that are wrong with things. And yeah, I think that getting stuck on like, or even on that, like you'll be like, Oh, I want to make a blog, but instead of even worry about the content of the blog, you're more focused on making the perfect site to host that content that doesn't even exist yet when like the content is what's the important part. And so just like make a GitHub repo, put a whole bunch of markdown files in there, and don't even worry about the site. Just share the markdown. Every time you make a new markdown file that has, like today I learned that this new CSS feature and just a little description of what it is and
00:06:53
Speaker
I've talked about it before so i don't want to go too deep into that idea but it's just you learn so much even just by writing down how something work like i did this and a little description of what the thing is. it It's the best way to learn anything is explaining the things that you're learning so a github repo with a bunch of markdown files and then if you eventually see oh i have some extra time in my hands now.
00:07:13
Speaker
I have all these markdown files. They're in a repo. I could just build something that, you know, use a static site generator to turn those into actual content eventually. Just so the presentations actually improve now instead of just reading them all on GitHub. but But they're just as accessible either way. The content there is the important thing with zero polish, basically, right? So just going and making stuff. And again, I'm doing this from a content creation perspective a lot. So I'm trying to turn it around into other ways as well. but This could be if you're working on a product that you are, you know, a sass or something that you want to make public. Just make the thing and don't worry about all the little details and all the other things. Those can come later once you have the ball rolling, but you need to get that ball rolling in, in the very first place at
Conclusion and Encouragement
00:07:58
Speaker
all. And yeah, nice short one this week. That's it if you, and yeah, I guess that's it for this week and i in a shorter one than last time when I was just really rambling on for quite a while. So I hope you enjoyed it. If you want, I hope you enjoyed it. and
00:08:10
Speaker
So thank you very much for listening and until next time, don't forget to make your corner of the internet just a little bit more awesome.