Do less; Better

Since starting on this journey of building my own business, I often find myself overwhelmed. There are a staggering amount of new skills that need to be learned just to build and run a website. Then add in social media management, marketing strategies, and "content creation." Everywhere you look, all the advice is, you have to be on this platform and that one, oh and this one over here, and oh, by the way, you have to post five times a week on each platform, and they all have different requirements, so you have to restructure every post to fit each platform, also be sure to use trending audio and create a ridiculous thumbnail and title, and on and on and on. Keep in mind that none of this is making any money and probably won't for some time, so you also have to have another job that actually generates income for you to live. If reading all that gave you anxiety. Hello and welcome. Coffee and donuts are in the corner, and group will start in five minutes, so come grab a chair when you're ready. But seriously, who cares, right. I could be back on an ambulance working 100-hour weeks, surviving off of rage, sarcasm, and enough caffeine to kill a wild mustang. This is not a pity party. What I wanted to talk about is the concept of doing less; better.

I spent a good deal of time this weekend in prayer and meditation, and the one thing that kept smacking me in the face was the phrase, do less; better. Now, I’m sure this is not an original idea that I just came up with. I'm not actually sure there is such a thing as an original idea, but that's a topic for another day. I wanted to talk about this because it's something that I now have personal experience with, and my eyes have been opened to a massive problem that our society is facing today. And that problem is "content."

I'm sure most people are familiar with the idea of the starving artist. And there's a reason that phrase rings so true. Good work takes time. Creativity is not an endless ocean. It's more akin to a seep well. For those unfamiliar with the term, think back to your childhood at the beach digging a hole in the sand. Once you reached a certain depth, it would fill up with water from the table below. If you scooped that water out, it would take time for the hole to fill itself back up with more water. Creativity is a lot like the water in the seep well. You can't continue drawing water from the well without giving it time to fill back up.

Now I'm not talking about ideas. I can have ideas on topics to write about all the time, but once I have the idea, then I have to write. Much like a painter makes each brush stroke with deliberate intent, each word, sentence, and paragraph is carefully crafted to deliver the intended message. Each expression is a deliberate draw from the well. There's a reason authors aren't turning out a book every month. It takes a year, because good work takes time, and the well of creativity requires time to refill.

Fortunately, today, the internet has provided many artists and creatives with the opportunity to make a living doing what they love. The trap for many, however, is the content machine. Pick your platform. They're all basically the same. Each one has a fat, greedy troll requiring a constant influx of offerings to stay in its good graces. That troll is the dreaded algorithm. If you want the benevolent algorithm to show, promote, and recommend your work, you must feed it a steady diet of content. The quality of said content is of no consequence to the troll as long as it brings eyes to the platform and keeps people scrolling or watching for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, we see this everywhere today. Legacy media is failing because if they wish to feed the troll they created, they must constantly produce content. The entertainment industry is full of remakes and sequels because they're incapable of creating new and unique films fast enough to satisfy the content machine. The 24-hour news cycle has essentially killed legacy journalism for the same reason. To keep all eyes glued to their channel or website, they must constantly produce content. They're not reporting news; they're creating content. In order to please the gluttonous troll, they repeat, reuse, and regurgitate. Producing a story about another outlet that wrote a story. They'll use photos from a riot 10 years ago to report on a riot going on right now because, in order to feed the beast, they didn't have time to get reporters to the scene to actually report. The same tactics are used to manufacture stories and incite fear and anger so that they keep all eyes on them. On a smaller scale, I see this all over social media platforms. People are making commentary videos on other people's commentary videos. Or filming themselves watching a trending video and posting that as a "reaction video." It's just an endless cycle of regurgitated information. All to feed the troll.

With that being said, I have found myself being lured into the same troll's den. I've spent hours researching topics on how to gain a bigger following here or how to stand out on this platform over here. The result, and just saying this makes me dry heave, has been the creation of "content." I have spent countless hours researching, creating, and posting "content." Not because I produced some work that I was proud of and wanted to share, not because I had a story to tell, not because I was inspired to make that 30-second reel, but because I felt the need to feed the troll. This pursuit of the production of troll food has done nothing but waste my time, suck dry the well of creativity, and occupy precious mental bandwidth. No more. From now on, I will not be doing more; worse. But instead, doing less; better. Or in the immortal words of Ron-the man-Swanson, "Never half-ass two things. Whole ass one thing."