Document, Don’t Create

If we want to actually create something out of ourselves, we have to start documenting, not creating. And that’s not a typo.

Lately I always tune to #AskGaryVee while working on html to CMS conversion side by side with client’s website. You should check out the dude. He is a loud businessman, big talk, but the best thing is always back what he said with true hardwork 18 hours a day in a single day. That’s an actually real bad-ass (Save you argument about work-life balance in another occasion).

This is genuinely a really good show for a entrepreneur who is just starting out where you can learn an actual business practitioner (not some motivational bull-crap or business lesson with some premium access to be mentored in the end).

In one of his episode he stated if we wanted to producing content, whether it’s a part of our creative process, inbound marketing, or learning a hard skill, do not wait to create a single best content that we can produce, because either we never will or will crippling our works. The trick is we document stuff we are working right now.

Wouldn’t it be good enough for people to consume? This is the part where we usually wrong about, especially for us who is on the process of climbing the ladder, including me myself. Documenting vs Creating.

When creating something, we often try to create an ideal form of the content we want, usually based on someone else or our imagination. It can be good, but the fabrication is strong and this won’t actually stand out among millions of contents on the internet nowadays.

This is have been discussed on the last post about being real.

In the other hand, documenting is gonna be more authentic, more real, because we should not bother with the process of over polishing the content it self. In other words, application Pareto laws 80 20. We can save more time, producing more content, and sending more signal to the world that this is what we’re actually do.

This will also save time of our time from too much planning, strategizing, pondering, thinking over and over, to actually doing it.

This has been done by a lot of famous creator nowadays thanks to the internet. Look at what PewDiePie has been accomplished. Creating 1 video every single day. Casey Neistat, one of the best youtube creator (sadly he is ending his daily vlog because he already felt too comfortable about it).

Do you know DFTBA Records, one of the biggest merchandise ecommerce founded by Hank Green, The Vlog Brothers? Or maybe most of you know more about his brother, John Green who write The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns. Yes, that movie where you cries a lot, girls.

Or someone that you follow in Instagram (there are thousands of them) that somehow getting famous and now getting thousands of dollars, try to look at how much posts they have been producing on their accounts.

The logic is, by documenting, we’re evolving in the process because the sheer quantity of content that we create will force us to be ourselves, to do what actually we like to do, because we will never gonna have time to over polish it or do what we don’t actually like if we have to produce that much contents. When we hate if we have to sleep or do another urgent things instead of doing what we do, then we’re winning.

The process of someone evolving from nothing to something will always fascinating people. Remember every story on every movies you like? Yes that is real.

Document my friend., don’t create.

Peace.

Original idea is from this video.