I want to save you from frustration, using YouTube | #11
A small story about a time I got frustrated recently.
I got annoyed the other day, and it reminded me of why I'm doing what I'm doing.
As you may know, I'm learning animation with the goal of launching a YouTube channel.
Emphasis on launching. As in: I want the channel to take off.
I already have a channel with videos, but nobody watches them.
That's OK, for now. But, down the road, I want people to enjoy my videos.
To enjoy my videos, they need to click them.
To click them, they have to want to click them. I have to make them clickable.
To do that, I need great titles and great thumbnails.
Making great titles is doable. Making great thumbnails is hard.
You can get away with using Canva, but I want them to be great. Thus, I'm teaching myself Illustrator and Photoshop.
During that quest, I stumbled upon this video about Illustrator:
Part of the video is a little tutorial where he makes this logo:
I was intrigued, so I tried to follow along with it. I opened up illustrator, created a new file, and immediately ran into friction.
My canvas was white:
His was light green:
So I try to turn my canvas light green, like his. I assume I would do so by clicking the color and making it green:
Seems reasonable, right, dear reader??
Plot twist: it did not turn green.
So, already, I'm failing at step 1. This causes a normal (to me) cascade of frustration, assessment, and reorientation.
I take deep breaths, I play the video again, and I ask myself what I'm missing.
Why do I get so angry? I've thought about that a lot.
Part of the anger is PTSD from high school and college. Not getting something meant that I wouldn’t do well on the test, that I couldn’t do the assignment, that I’m falling behind. I wired myself to feel anxious when I don't get something. 😬
Another part of the anger is helplessness. It's hard to come up with a plan to move forward because this is new territory. Although most of the details don't matter, I'm not experienced enough to identify the ones that do. All the details pop out at once, overwhelming me. At the same time, everything looks the same.
Another part is the audacity of the person who made the tutorial. To be clear, this is not fair to the tutorial maker, but I catch myself feeling this way, anyway. I think to myself: How could they assume I would follow this explanation? How careless of them to not include these crucial details? The nerve of this person!
Another thing I've wondered: Is this normal? Am I alone?
I would buy that I get more angry than the average person, but I'm far from alone.
I believe this is why a lot of people don't try to learn new things: because teaching is hard.
One big reason teaching is hard is the curse of knowledge. There's a joke in the math community about it:
A professor is teaching. After explaining a concept, she finishes by saying, "This is obvious.”
A student raises his hand and says, "sorry professor, I don't think that is obvious."
The professor stares at the board. She thinks for a bit. She starts pacing in front of the class, thinking. She looks back at the board.
Eventually she leaves the room, comes back 20 minutes later, and says, "I've thought about it and, yes, it is obvious."
The point is that, once we understand something, it's hard to imagine ourselves not understanding it. Much like how it's hard to act as though we don't know something, or to act normal when we're on camera.
And actually, that's part of my angle for my YouTube channel. The plan is to
start learning something new
keep careful tabs of what questions I have and where I get stuck
succeed in learning the new thing
make a video designed to help my past self learn quicker
rinse and repeat
I want to spare as many people as I can the frustration of getting stuck and feeling helpless.
I want people to not hesitate when it comes to satisfying their curiosity.
I want everyone to feel the eureka moment of understanding something complicated.
That’s what motivates me to keep learning all this stuff and to make YouTube videos.
PS: If you’re wondering why I couldn’t change the color of the canvas, it’s because the canvas doesn’t have a color. It’s actually transparent, it just shows as white because it’s easier on the eyes. But I can turn that off:
The way to make the canvas turn light green is to add a light green rectangle that covers everything. 😊
If you ever want to shoot the breeze about YouTube, let me know. I'm running four channels and am a Part-time YouTuber Academy alumnus. I mean I don't have massive channels or anything, but I'm in the game and would be more than happy to share some of what I've learned on the way.