I believe that what you think you know about doing things… is refined and made real… when you actually do them.

Practice makes Perfect

Some of us learn more by seeing, by reading, by listening and also by doing… doing real work, shipping results, going public – truly makes what you think you know very real.

A ‘Correct’ Army Push-Up

When I was in the Army, the drill sergeants would always emphasize when we did push-ups that we were to do a “correct” push-up. We learned quickly that there is a big difference between doing some thing and doing it well.

Repetition is the Mother of Learning

So I’m five short blog posts and videos in. Although I’ve done this hundreds if not thousands of times in the past and read about it all the time, I’m still learning. In the world of technology, things change every six months or so. There’s always new little tips and tricks that you learn when actually doing things to make them work right.

Five Lessons Learned

Here’s what I’ve learned in just 5 days of stepping out and doing this live.

1) Writing comes easy to me

So far I’ve observed that it’s pretty easy for me to write a first draft rather quickly and then edit it up to copy and paste onto the blog. I’m passionate about the topic so the thoughts come out easy. Writing them down and editing the post takes about 15 to 20 minutes top.

2) The Clips App – Video Size

In using the Clips app. I learned that it’s really better to record your video as a square or in the 4:3 ratio. If you’re using the live captions, which I love, this allows room for them to be seen vs recording full screen.

I noticed in my last video the second line of the captions got cut off because the way social media platforms share the video, it crops the bottom of the taller videos, erasing the captions, where the square and 4:3 size look great.

3) Saving on YouTube

This also got me thinking about saving the video on YouTube. To start off I just posted these video to my personal channel, which has a bunch of family videos.

A business would setup a ‘brand channel’ and many individuals do as well to keep highly topical content separate from personal videos.

At some point soon, I will create a Brand Channel and show you how to do that. It’s really pretty easy. They work well for any company or hobby where you would want to share specific videos and playlists and not mix them up with your family videos in your personal account

4) Sharing on Social Media

I’m also starting to see the ever-changing nuances of how a post and a video gets shared on social media. That’s something that changes every six months and you have to pay a little bit of attention to find really the best way to do it so it looks decent and it’s actually effective in getting your message in front of people.

5) Have a Clear Introductory Statement in Video

I also learned that I need to make it more clear that my short videos are really just an introduction of the concept that is much more fully detailed in the blog post. I could do a better job of mentioning there’s a link in the video description to the actual post where all of the details and resources are.

So the purpose of the little videos are to introduce the content in the written post. They are to help a viewer quickly decide if it’s worth looking at the post in more detail – not to fully record the entire ‘show’ or content of the post.

6) Having a plan or template makes things go faster

The last thing I learned is now that I’ve done this a few times, is that the structure of my posts and videos is to some small degree formulaic.

I’m making a better outline of how all the different pieces come together. I’ll share more about that in the future post and actually share what I’ve come up with.

I realize that even with just a 500 word post and a 60 second video, I’m starting to see an obvious structure to it. This should it much easier to do it each time versus just staring at a blank page or looking into the camera. Checklists help everything go smoother!

Knowing and Learning vs Doing

These are all things that just became crystal clear as I began this project. Not because “I know what I’m doing,” but as I actually did it… You instantly realize there are real world refinements to make that don’t show up until you actually put something in public.

That’s the real value of doing this is to sharpen these skills in the real world, share helpful learning, insights and resources with you. And help you, make what you think is possible, very real and come to life in 2021.

Daily Question

What have you been trying to do or learn that, you feel if you actually did it a few more times, would really level up in real life?