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Workpost 28: Taxes & Art Therapy

Byjack

Today I feel very tired but at least better rested than normal. I really want to finish my taxes today and I also want to experiment with art therapy and exercise to help get through the stress and effort of finishing.

My initial thoughts about art therapy is that it is all about reconnecting with your body…to do flow theory or follow what you feel. Art is about touching the forms with lines and paint, music is about creating sound, dance is about moving your body.

I’m doing more research. Here is a video that talks about using art to find a safe place:

Here is another video:

Current art therapy ideas:

  1. Express what you feel kinesthetically
    • Scribbling
    • Banging on the piano
    • Flow theory dance
    • Free writing
  2. Create a safe space, express what feels safe
    • Drawing
    • Writing
    • Music
  3. Repetitive motions
    • Shapes
    • Chords
    • Motions

But how does this translate to greater art creation? How does this create a world?

Thinking about this more, art creation is about the following:

  1. What you want to share with others
  2. What you find beautiful
  3. What you feel wonder about
  4. What stories you want to tell
  5. What is quirky, unique, and creative
  6. What worlds you want to live in and provide others

I have a couple ideas of how to transition from therapeutic art to art art:

  1. My therapy exercise (take a problem and solve it in the story by making the main character face a problem 10x more painful)
  2. Express what emotions you are feeling strongly
  3. Capture a memory
  4. Start with a characters
  5. Start with world
  6. Do a fanfic
  7. Daydream

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Video Making: A Breakthrough

Byjack

I just made a breakthrough in making videos and/or content in general.

I have huge anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed when I make content because I want things to be perfect the first time, yet the thought of making it perfect feels like an impossible task.

I end up not making anything at all.

The question becomes, it is better to make a lot of bad content? Or very few good content?

The idea is probably to strike a balance. You don’t want to make tons of bad content because there is no point in making content if it is all bad. But at the same time, it is impossible to make perfect content because until you make bad or mediocre content, you will never learn how to be good.

I have an idea of how exactly to strike that balance….with time boxing.

With time-boxing content creation, you address both concerns at the same time, making content good but also not taking forever to make it.

I remember reading Alex Hormozi’s book $100 Million Dollar Leads, I was struck by this conundrum as well. He talks about making a lot of content, but at the same time he talks about how it has to provide a lot of value. He talks about giving away value for free and the more you give away the more leads you get. But I wonder, how do you address the fact that it can take too long to make all that value to give away?

Time boxing answers this question too.

Here is my formula:

  1. Set an amount of time you want to spend making the content
  2. Come up with a plan (syllabus method) if needed
  3. Create the content, for video focus not on what words you are saying but the emotions behind the words, they are far more important
  4. Use the remaining time however you feel makes the most sense
    1. One option is to spend the entire time editing.
    2. Another option is to spend it doing more takes, or gathering more footage.
    3. Either option is totally fine and can be a mix of both.

My big realization is this: I thought that I wanted to make really good content and was just too lazy or stressed out to do it. That isn’t true. I want to make really good content, but good content comes at a hidden cost…time. I need to balance the quality of the work with the amount of time I am willing to spend on it. It cannot take an infinite amount of time because that would mean I am getting less reps in.

It is all fine a good to give away tons of free value, but it is better to give away tons of free value while requiring a low time cost from you.

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New Coaching Instagram Page

Byjack

I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.

While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.

I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.

The videos were a little bit harder.

I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.

I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.

Shooting

This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.

Editing

This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.

Final Polish

I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.

A quick silly example of what this might look like:

  1. Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
  2. Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
  3. Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
  4. Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
  5. Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
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Coaching Session 11/18 VOD Review Part 2

Byjack

Initial Reflections:

  • Silence makes me feel anxious
  • Flippant responses feel forced
  • Would it be artificial or fake to decrease the length of the silence? I like the silences but not how long they go on.
  • My hair looks goofy
  • I feel annoyed by my laughing, feels nervous
  • There is something comforting about this conversation
  • There is something valuable here without any editing
  • I do feel antsy everytime there is a long pause
  • I really hate my laughter
  • I really take some time to get to the point, should I cut it down?
  • Urgh at the drill sargent ifs stuff I feel like it is dragging on, I’m getting bored
  • I think I can just do some initial cuts and ask Brandon to approve them

Responding in the coaching mindset:

  • Good! Also we can always get rid of some silence if we need to.
  • Maybe there is a way to edit the flippant responses to make them more genuine
  • No this is our video, we do what we want with it. Sometimes you can get the gist of the silence without keeping the entire thing
  • Goofy is good!
  • It’s ok to be nervous. Maybe we can reduce the laughter? Sometimes we gotta risk laughing.
  • Hell yea
  • Yes, the editing is just to create a curated experience
  • We can reduce the silence
  • We can reduce if needed
  • Sometimes its ok to take a long time to get to the point. Part of the discovery feeling.
  • We can entirely cut out portions we don’t like. We can cut a part out and keep trimming it until it makes sense.
  • Sounds good to me. We can also ask him for parts we are really not sure about.

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Coaching Session 11/18 VOD Review Part 1

Byjack

This is my reflections of the first part of the coaching session, the first 20 minutes.

  • Everything up to the 10 minute mark seems really slow, should I keep that or not?
  • Would my client feel comfortable posting things about him and a love interest?
  • There is a sort of peace in how slow it goes but also can be antsy for the wrong person.
  • Maybe I should think in the frame of “what if people understood”? Seems like a really cool mentality given that I have a great deal of material.
  • I wonder if I come off try hard.
  • Is it bad to edit a lot and cut a lot? What if I mess up the progression? Or be less honest?
  • I love produced cuts, but are they artificial?
  • Born to be this high (instrumental) sounds really nice in the background. I dunno if I am changing the experience. But I suppose that is a good thing.
  • Really starts to pick up energy at the 20 minute mark

Resetting in the coaching mindset, here is my reflection on the reflections:

  • We ain’t cutting shit, use the slowness as a texture
  • Yea we talking about love if he’s down
  • Let’s use the energy in the antsyness and also find ways to energetically cut
  • If people understood, we can speak to them more clearly though clips (thinking about cutting clips into episodes and using snippets to be the intro of every episode)
  • Use the tension of trying hard cut it out when it is distracting
  • I want to preserve the order, but cut as much as I want to, especially cut more creatively
  • There is nothing wrong with produced cuts but they take away from this coaching call in this scenario because there is so much there. Use the produced cuts to make shorts.
  • Can use sound in the beginning and the end, keep the audio clean
  • Nicee

Explaining What Coaching is to Me Draft

Byjack

DRAFT 1

DRAFT 2

I didn’t really change very much, but since I’m trying to lean into action, I’m not going to work very hard to create something that is perfect before I put it out to people.

The Four Types of Videos

Byjack
Video Poem
  • Voice over
  • Travel video footage
  • Motivational
  • Life theories
  • Strong feeling, music, sound design
  • FOCUS: Capture emotion, explain something profound
How To
  • Specific technique or method
  • Life hacks, tricks for learning, dealing with stress and emotions
  • Short and to the point
  • FOCUS: Teach something useful for life
Challenge Video
  • Apply life theories to something very difficult
  • Show progress and journey
  • Show how I achieved what I achieved and what I learned
  • FOCUS: Show a journey of pursuing the impossible through real techniques and theories
Conversation/Discussion/Reaction Video
  • Adding to some sort of larger discussion
  • Could be talking to people in the video about an issue, reacting to another video, or just addressing my viewers like in a live stream
  • FOCUS: Discuss and argue ideas and points