On Yesterday’s Progress: Why You Should Let the World See Your Mediocre Creative Project

We can only see progress by looking back, but the work gets done in the present moment

When I created a YouTube channel in May 2020, little did I know the hardest part about it would be being a beginner. At the time, I had only created one video for a job application and another for a class I took during my exchange semester in Berlin. I had never thought about the parameters that produce high quality audio. Luckily, I had used Adobe programs to edit photos and graphics. But I had never noticed that my favorite YouTubers applied advanced photo editing skills to design the thumbnails of their videos.

Quite quickly I understood that if I wanted to continue making videos for a longer period of time, I needed to come to terms with being a beginner. To accept that the video I had in my mind would quite likely not be the video I could publish on my channel. Creating YouTube videos consistently meant being confronted with my lacking abilities over and over and over again — practically every week, since that was my chosen schedule for publishing a new video.

Gabriel Tovar from Unsplash

The process of creating videos for a YouTube channel is longer than most people think — or perhaps I should say some people since most people have probably never thought about it. I film two or three videos in one weekend, although I publish a new video once a week. This allows me to not film at all on some weekends and ensures I always have a few unedited videos at hand. However, I don’t always post videos in the order of filming them. I try to vary the topics to keep it interesting, both for myself and the few followers that have somehow managed to find my channel.

So when I finally sit down to edit a specific video, I’m often working with a collection of clips that I filmed three or four weeks ago. In the meantime, I have gotten new ideas, learned new skills or at least identified a bunch of improvements I could try to make in my videos. This makes me notice all the flaws: The microphone settings on my camera were off producing a hissing sound throughout the audio strip. The limited amount of camera angles makes the video seem uninventive. I stumble so much in my words that I will need to chop my sentences up into tiny pieces. What’s more, since I’m about to publish a video I filmed a while ago, it makes me flinch to think that people will not see my current, but my past, skill level. They will see the progress from a month ago.

Examining all the things I could improve can make me question the content I’m working on. Should I try to refilm that one scene I messed up? Or should I simply scrap the entire video?

I guess there are two options. The first is to not publish. I could continue making endless edits. I could also wait until the next weekend to have time to film again. But what if after filming the new video I also think it’s not worth publishing? And the week after that. And the week after that. Almost without noticing, I have spent an entire month not publishing any videos.

The second option is to finish editing the clips I already have and publish the video. 99 % of the time I go for this option. Why would I do such a thing if the end result is mediocre at best?

I’ve understood that if I don’t continue creating, the level of skill I have at this particular moment in time will remain my level. However, if I publish the imperfect video, I can move onto making a new one and try to improve in the areas I’ve identified.

I recently read Big Magic, a book on creativity written by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. In the book, Gilbert says that when she was young, she took a vow to be a writer. Whenever she is struggling with a project or begins to criticize herself to the extent that she wants to quit, she reminds herself that she never promised to be a great writer. She only promised to show up for the work. At first, I found this idea very odd. Why would anyone not want to be good at what they do? But then I realized that it’s also incredibly comforting — and particularly useful for beginners or anyone wanting to improve their skills.

This could be called the paradox of the beginner mind: To become skilled at something requires wanting to get better but not expecting to be any good in the present moment.

We cannot really control whether or not our creative or professional pursuits are successful. But we can do our best, and I truly think we should, because staying on that edge is where learning occurs. However, if our mind is constantly telling us we suck — and we believe that’s the truth — it’s very difficult to follow through and actually do the work. Ironically, when we surrender to the process, we may in fact get better at what we do. This could be called the paradox of the beginner mind: To become skilled at something requires wanting to get better but not expecting to be any good in the present moment.

But how on earth does someone who used to call herself a perfectionist overcome the agony of working on and sharing an imperfect project? I think some kinds of self-inflicted rules like deadlines can be extremely useful. I have created a pact with myself that I upload a new video every week. Currently, it’s Monday at 8 am. That’s when my video goes up and greets the world. The publishing schedule helps me finish whatever I’m working and not wallow in the ineffective misery of not quite meeting my personal expectations. After all, I need to leave time for creating next week’s video.

To underline my point about only making progress by letting the world see mediocre projects, I went back and looked at my videos from six months ago. I have made small improvements in many different areas:

• I am more consistent with video topics. I mostly create videos related to plant-based food whereas earlier I was jumping from one topic to the next.
• Each of my videos now focuses more or less on one particular theme. Not three.
• I’m more comfortable and fluent on camera. I can actually recognize myself in my videos and I don’t say “uhmmm” and “like” as often as I used to.
• My thumbnails (the picture you see before you click on the video) have improved. I have learned a few new tricks on Photoshop and have some idea of what people may want to click on.
• I’m better at optimizing my videos for search. I use Google or YouTube search to find relevant key words before writing the video title, description and tags.
• I use YouTube’s channel analytics to learn about what works and what doesn’t. For example, I can look at a video with a particularly high click-through rate and compare it to less successful ones.
• I’ve become a faster video editor. I know at least three keyboard shortcuts on Premiere Pro and I can use a few effects without first needing to search for a YouTube tutorial.
• I have a system for organizing videos on my computer. I follow a certain process and folder structure to organize anything from the video clips to the raw image files for my thumbnails.
• This list is getting so long! I will stop now. I think you got the point.

Unfortunately, we rarely see progress in the moment. We can only see it by looking back. That’s exactly why we need to publish, post or finish, even when the end result does not meet our expectations. And hope that today’s work is a tiny bit better than the work from yesterday.