Hey Twitch Streamers - Stop trying to be perfect

TyfloRen and Moorph discuss the pros and cons of trying to be perfect in content creation. We all know that trying to be perfect in content creation can lead to several dangers. One is that it can lead to procrastination and perfectionism, which can prevent you from completing projects and publishing your work. Additionally, striving for perfection can lead to dissatisfaction with your own work and a lack of confidence in your abilities. Additionally, trying to make everything perfect can also lead to burnout and mental health issues. It's important to remember that the goal is to create high-quality content, not perfect content, and to always strive for improvement rather than perfection.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Sometimes our efforts to be perfect really are only pleasing ourselves, and they're not really doing us a lot of good. There's that law of diminishing returns, you know, how much time you spend on it versus what kind of value you're gonna get out of it. Welcome to Down the Rabbit Hole, a podcast for creators, where we stream live every Wednesday, 8 p.m. on Twitter Spaces. Tonight we're gonna be talking about the dangers of perfectionism and how what kind of impact it can have on you as a as a streamer, as a content creator. So perfectionism is a problem that affects you know a lot of streamers, um, a lot of people doing, especially creative types, right? Because you work very hard on your craft, and you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of pride that goes into it, and sometimes that the levels of pride can turn into something that is a a negative if you get too far. Just like last week when we're when our with our topic, if you let it get too far, it can turn into something that is a negative. Why don't we kind of start at the beginning, Typo? How do we want to define perfectionism?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02

So, perfectionism, at least according to what Loco has described it as, a content creator that I really look up to, is her definition of perfectionism is um sort of like an obsession of trying to create a product that resonates uh with as many people as possible, and that is great in both the eyes of the creator and in the eyes of the audience, to the point that the every single bit of it is fine-tune, every single second of a TikTok or a long-form video, or even to a point with live streaming too, like where an overlay has to uh look as clean and pristine as possible, or or even uh with like audio settings as well. And I know a lot of streamers can relate to that, especially since uh most people have said that audio is one of the most important parts of being a live streamer.

SPEAKER_00: 2:00

I think you know, and to tack on to what you said, you know, there there is a sense of of imposter syndrome that plays into this as well. You know, if you have ever had feelings of I'm not good enough, you know, I don't deserve this, you're going to strive to be better, to work harder than you were before, and that can lead to perfectionism as well. When we're talking about it, you know, there's not necessarily something bad if if on the surface, right, on paper, it says, Well, you're you're just trying to be good. Okay, sure. I mean, and that doesn't sound bad, but we do know there's a there can be a dark side to it. But what do you see as the positive aspects to perfectionism?

SPEAKER_01: 2:38

The positive aspects of perfectionism, and I know dad the gamer, another uh content creator that I relate to on many levels, can resonate with this, is that perfectionism provides us sort of like with a goal setting and to allow us to reach new heights in uh our career as creators or to strive to be better than uh what we previously were.

SPEAKER_00: 3:04

I think another good side again, it all comes from not letting yourself get too far down the road of perfectionism. But if you are just trying to make sure that something is that you're double checking it, that you're you're proofreading your work or whatever it is, that is not bad. That is actually that's inherently good. You you want to look over your things, you want to make sure that they're in good shape, uh, whether it's your content you're providing, you know, um, if you're creating a schedule for your stream, whatever it is, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think the problem is when you start looking at this and you're getting too far down. So let me ask you, when when do you think we know that it's it is too perfect, that we're going too far down this road?

SPEAKER_01: 3:50

And I would love to cycle back to um Loco's previous TikTok on the dangers of perfectionism. Um, I actually wrote a quote down from her um on this video where she said that perfectionism can be a detriment to a creator when they feel like their video uh or even short it does not uh look per exactly perfect in their eyes, and uh they fail to release it uh when they intend to, and it becomes delayed, it no longer uh will hold any interest uh for them or even potential interest to their viewers uh um later down the line. So I think to interpret what she's saying is when it gets to the point where you're becoming way too nitpicky with everything with like the most minute of details uh in whatever you're creating, that's when it starts to become detrimental. In fact, I will even open up and say that several of my I I cannot tell you how many drafts I have saved for TikToks and reels in Cap Cut right now. Um there's several sitting there right now as we're speaking. I'm scrolling through them, and I will admit there has been several times where I'm thinking, like, oh, I need to cut out this part of the clip or I need to extend it on uh like this topic more.

SPEAKER_00: 5:14

Done is better than perfect. Um you know to give you uh give you a personal example as well. You know, when I I work in IT and um I've been a developer for uh a majority of that time, um, and my nickname at several places was Gold Plater because I couldn't stop tweaking, I couldn't stop making it um perfect. And you know, my I would have managers coming up like, dude, you just need to give us this code. I'm like, yes, but I just need to fix this one little and I I couldn't stop. I I I just couldn't stop, you know. Um even when the the client wasn't asking for a feature, I'm like, but they will really appreciate this. So let me just keep working on this thing. And sometimes it's for me, it went even beyond just the thing that I'm doing had to be perfect. There was also a bit of I didn't feel confident that it was good enough, so I couldn't stop working on it. You know, it wasn't just that, oh, I can see that you know, grammatically it's not perfect, it was a fear of putting it out there, and so I would I would feel anxiety about like I'm gonna put out the door and I'm gonna have missed something. So perfectionism kind of went that direction for me as well.

SPEAKER_01: 6:21

Honestly, to relate with you on that level, I I'll also cite this other creator um that I found on YouTube, Ryan Lantham, um, to quote him uh like on one of his old uh YouTube videos where he spent a lot of time on it, and to him it didn't uh feel like it garnered engagement on release day. His quote specifically was nothing sucks more than than working hard on a video only to have it flop on the day of release. And I feel like that's also where perfectionism can be such a detriment to us as creators, where uh um we feel as though the more time that we spend on editing whatever we're creating, the more that we expect uh um it will that we'll gain from it, which honestly is not always the case, unfortunately. I hate to admit it.

SPEAKER_00: 7:14

When we're in that mindset of the thing needs to be perfect, uh that we we for some reason we can't get out of it, if we're able to kind of pull away and look at it objectively for a moment and we see that we're in that moment, how do we know when it's time to stop trying to be perfect versus it really does need to be worked on a little bit more?

SPEAKER_01: 7:37

Uh there's no uh clear-cut answer to that, unfortunately. Looking at some of my previous TikToks and even Instagram reels that did incredibly well, it's gotten to the point where I'm thinking that I feel like if I've been working on this for several days and I want it to do well, at that point I'm thinking, you know what? I think we should I should wrap up the final touches on it, get like the right hashtags and whatnot, and just release it. So if uh it's been several days of working on one or several videos, you should probably just release it. You've you've been working on it uh for a while, then this it remember, this is short form content that you need to get out there.

SPEAKER_00: 8:20

I think we also tend to get a lot more critical of ourselves um the more time that we have to think about it. So when you were saying that Loco's statement was, you know, just create it and just get it out there. I think there's a lot to be said for that because when we're talking about because this is a podcast for streamers, for creators, right? So what are what are the things that we put out there? We put out TikToks, YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Facebook reels, while those are the same name I do not know. We put out tweets, we put out a lot of different content that is short-lived. The only content we put out that's long, that sort of has any kind of shelf life are YouTube long form videos. Even Twitch streams, they definitely are not uh definitely do not have a shelf life. They're pretty much dead as soon as you hit stop streaming. So most of the content we create goes out, it gets consumed, and sorry if this hurts your feelings, people, it's forgotten about the next day, you know? There really is no harm in just if you if it feels good enough right then, just push it out there. Just push it out there because even if it's terrible, even if it's super cringy, people will forget about it. They will forget about it, you know, within a m a matter of days. You know, most TikToks I was on you before stream, I would say if I love a TikTok and I share it with a couple of friends, I probably forget about it definitely within a half an hour or an hour. You know, it's so it's is even if it was bad, okay, it's funny, it was bad, it's gone. I think there's something to be said for that. I think there's something to be said for just just not worrying about it and just kind of hitting published posts. When and also kind of changing gears a little bit. When we're pushing content out there, every now and then we're gonna have something that does well, you know. Um, whether it's a viral, you know, in in the in the strict sense of it, or if it's viral for you, because I I I like to look at it that way as to as well, you know. Not everybody's gonna have a million views on everything, but when it exceeds your standards, your your normal, your baseline, and that's that's considered a good hit. So is it logical to expect that when we have those better than normal posts that we need to recreate exactly subsequent ones?

SPEAKER_01: 10:41

I'm laughing at this just because I know every single one of your words there can resonate with not just myself, but every creator out there who has had a video go viral and believing that they need to create the exact same uh video or style of content with a similar or exact sound, and then having let's say that instead of like getting the thousands or even a million views to having it pushed down to uh only like a couple hundred. I'll even uh list an example myself. I'm scrolling through um some Instagram reels of mine, and one that had over 15k uh views that that I spent a lot of time on. It made me think that if I continue doing uh this type of um storytelling or motivational content, getting that out there, I would uh gain about the same ish amount of views and engagement when in actuality, like I'll admit it only got to like 2,000-ish uh views um the next time I posted uh similar content like that. Now, don't get me wrong, 2,000 views for some people, I know I know for sure like a lot of people out there will be thankful and will would even kill for those that amount of engagement. Um but I really don't think it's logical to expect the same results. It it goes uh back to what Devin Nash was saying too with uh um Twitch streaming, like you can't just because uh your viewership spiked one day, you cannot uh expect uh um the same trend analysis to happen uh the next consecutive days or even weeks. Um right. And it also ties into the fact that we as streamers and creators need to continue innovating ourselves and our content for the future. Um I posted this in the chat earlier, but I wanted to ask um people how long they edit their content and when do they know uh um themselves it's good enough or perfect enough. And the this also goes back to what I said too about my personal self, where I feel like if I come up with an idea, um, and I'll even uh like bring in ArcZombies uh comment too of like needing to batch content, like there's days where like I need to like come up with ideas, I'll write them down, um, start filming, and then after a few days uh of filming and then making uh edits, adding uh captions in CapCut. Once it's been three to four days, that's when I start thinking, oh, I better start releasing this content now because it's just literally sitting there. In fact, like I like I said at the beginning, I have too many Cap Cut drafts that I want to that I should just release now.

SPEAKER_00: 13:28

When it comes to editing, so that that's always been an interesting one for me. I think that it because I get into the mode I did when I was writing a lot of code. I can't stop editing it and you over and you overwork and you overwork, and then sometimes it comes out kind of overproduced in a way. Um, and you can do that with every aspect of editing. I don't know if we wanted to go down this far, but when you're doing audio corrections or color corrections or anything, you there you can definitely continue to overdo it if you are not trying to check yourself and and and whatnot. I think that it's maybe not always obvious how you would do this, but sort of set a if you find that you tend to go too far, whether you're overthinking, whether you're heading down that road of perfectionism, um, try to give yourself a feasible stopping point before you get started on that. Like, hey, I'm gonna work on this for an hour because you know that you can put up good work in an hour. So I'm gonna do work on this for an hour, then I'm gonna stop, and and we're just gonna we're gonna call it because it's it's gonna be good enough. Sometimes our efforts to be perfect really are only pleasing ourselves and they're not really doing us a lot of good. There's that law of diminishing returns, you know, how much time you spend on it versus what kind of value you're gonna get out of it.

SPEAKER_01: 14:42

And also bouncing off of um the question with editing, I'm not sure how other people would feel about this, but would it help to have someone, maybe another creator, review the videos in your drafts to get a second opinion on them? I uh this could be tied back into like writing papers for college, like you want uh someone to proofread them in a similar manner, so like having someone proofread or like proofwatch your videos before you release them, just to uh like uh get their opinion on it, and also it provides like a great way to um quote unquote network with the said streamer is like opening up to them and then sharing them, sharing with them a piece of uh your content creation before it's released into the world, and it's a great way to build trust as well. So I'm just wondering for our viewers in here, like, would you allow someone to take a look at your content or videos before you release them in the world? Would you need to do this for most of your videos or just the ones that you feel like you've been working on the the longest, like with myself, honestly, especially with like story uh and like motivational content?

SPEAKER_00: 15:53

I think there's a lot to be said for deaf for doing that. When I first started creating my YouTube long form videos, I I did everything in a vacuum, you know, everything. And I would release some videos and I would watch them back, and I didn't I could not watch my own videos because I just I just didn't like the way that I was presenting it. I think if I had shown them to someone else, I could have found out if A, I was just being too critical, or if B, yeah, there was something wrong with the way the video went. And I so I think it's helpful. I think this goes a lot of people like to stay away from that because they don't take they don't take critique well. Um I'm somebody that has struggled with that as well in the past. But I think that if you are somebody that doesn't take criticism well, this is a good way to do it. Find somebody that you can trust, somebody that maybe knows what they're looking at, it's somebody you know that isn't out to try to hurt you, they're just trying to give you good positive, helpful feedback. Let's put it that way, helpful feedback, try to accept that it is they're doing it with all positive intent. Hopefully that will work out for you.

SPEAKER_01: 17:02

Right. I wanted to emphasize more on um the positive feedback from you. Um I know I am aware that Sam Woodhall, um, Harris Heller's like previous editor, um, now like making a name for himself too. He's done channel reviews for both Twitch and especially for YouTube creators. Um having someone like that um to critique your channel, your content, um, of course giving an unbiased opinion, but also with um crit with like critical uh critiques, um that like where it's not hurt intentionally hurting you, but uh making statements of like where you can improve on. So then uh like so then your future self will thank you later.

SPEAKER_00: 17:54

I can tell you how I have dealt with things, Ty Flo can tell you how he's dealt with things, but it may not be the same with you. If you are still struggling, you know, despite some advice that we're giving you or other people are giving you, then continue to do more research and look, you know, try to figure out what might work for you to sort of get out of that because it is it it like we said all this whole time, it can get to a point where it's not healthy.

SPEAKER_01: 18:18

So I just noticed this comment from ArcZombie um replying to my previous question of would you let someone watch your videos? Um, he said absolutely as a way to it workslash network with that said streamer. Um that also ties into potentially countering perfectionism, um, where you think like, oh, this is this piece uh of content isn't good enough, or I don't think this video will do well. Maybe that person who's peer reviewing your content will actually push you to release it where they they'll say something like, Hey, I resonate with this, or I get the message that you're trying to um push across to your audience. Um and then that way it prevents you from delaying uh um that said video of being released. Average gamer said, like it's uh like the quality of like content you put out there, the amount of heart, and then uh also um I was speaking with uh one of several of my streamer friends today, and they said, like, hey, we know you're not like always live on Twitch, um, but we do see your behind-the-scenes content, and like that's that's pro that's also why recently I've been doing a lot of like behind the scenes things like hey, I'm not live on Twitch, uh, here's what I'm uh doing right now. In fact, like I've even like filmed myself like taking notes from um one of your previous show talks, is especially with McQueva. That was like that's probably one of my most favorite episodes of yours.

SPEAKER_00: 19:47

That was that was a really good one. Um, it was such an uh honest conversation about things, you know, with without a lot of uh extra drama or anything like that. So it was a fantastic conversation. And actually, that was one of the few interviews I've done where I talked to the guests for like an hour after after we stopped streaming. Usually it's like, hey, all right, we're leaving. But no, we we just we continue to have a great conversation. It was a good time. He was a really good guy.

SPEAKER_01: 20:12

Oh, it looks like we have another comment from Cajun Geek here planning with my ADHD, get ideas, jots down on one note for later. Later on, doing other things. What was that idea? A week later, opening one note. What was that idea? Okay, so I I think this this is cracking me up too, because um Sorbiggy in a previous um YouTube live stream actually said, well, he he literally yelled at his chat to write their damn ideas down. So I I think that's the thing too, Cajun Geek. I'll admit I use OneNote myself, I even have it pulled up now. I've started using Notion more often too, um, just to better organize my thoughts. Even even if you write your ideas down, um, sometimes you just forget uh to like look back on them. And it's one thing to have ideas, write down those ideas, and you can be like me where like you plan things in advance, but at the end of the day, it's how and if you execute those ideas.

SPEAKER_00: 21:14

Because with ADHD, you know, if I don't get the idea written down, or if I don't ask a question during conversation, right then it is gone, it is gone, and it is not going to come back into my into my brain.

SPEAKER_01: 21:26

I think to wrap things up, um and to like tie all of our talking points together is Um not to let perfectionism get in the way of releasing your said content, whatever that might be. It might be like a Twitch stream or like a video itself. And I know a lot of people recently have been wanting to like get in the special events category. I myself have been really thinking about like having well thought out streams and uh like living up to the special events uh um like category of uh being a streamer, but also like just just release your content, um and uh like when you know it's done, like just like just know uh that at least you got it out there.

SPEAKER_00: 22:15

There's always time to to work on something the next time, but that's the best way to do it is just just release it. And this goes for people who are just getting into it as well. Just hit record, just hit go live, just just do it. Just just do it. Don't stop thinking about it so much and just just go for it. Thanks so much for hanging out, everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to like and share the podcast. Don't forget we are here every Wednesday on Twitter Spaces at 8 p.m. If you have a comment or an idea for a future episode, make sure to drop us an email at downtherabbit hole at elevated.media. Thanks. Have a great day.