Winning in the Long Term
A Letter to My Future Self
Dear Zake,
I’m the 27-year-old of you from 2020, how have you been? Since 2015, I decided to take a day every month to reflect on work, life, relationship, and mental clarity. This is the 57th mail that I send to you.
Winning in the Long Term
October is my first month back to the office, back to my beloved Internet/Tech/Software field, (everything besides overtime or 996), I have to say I’m quite satisfied with what I’ve been doing here.
During my one month experience, I always have time to schedule a deep thinking section with myself, exposing myself to a much stricter space also challenges me to understand my weak points and improve.
Meanwhile, the overall environment is better than I thought. The people around me, the open culture, as well as the actual office and free food.
That’s the good part of being back in the office. Yet I also have some new challenges for my side hustle and personal schedule.
Starting this November, I want to acquire OKR into my monthly review. You might be familiar with it if you also work for some big tech firms. It stands for Objective Key Results, usually it looks like this:
Objective xxxxx
KR1 xxxxx
KR2 xxxxx
KR3 xxxxx
This is the proven effective way to keep your daily todo list aligned with your end goal. It is not easy to write down a clear effective OKR, and I have to more time thinking about it in my monthly post, but I think it is worthwhile.
This is winning in the long term, also what I learn from Sun Tzu.
What I’m doing?
1. Talks with creators
Due to my work, I have the opportunity to meet with many video creators in Oct. One thing that shocks me greatly is that most of the successful creators are way more professional than I thought.
I have to admit that I have many misconceptions about those creators. However, no matter what content they are producing, whether they like it or not, the consistency, the pursuit of perfection are always there. They make content on demands, that’s why they have so many followers.
Here’re what I’ve been thinking lately:
Between the audience and every content creator, there’s a gap needed to be filled. The gap could be the topic of the next video, the way of articulating a visual story, or aesthetic related problems. The first 2 are way more important than the third, which brings me to another question.
Should I sacrifice the quality of my video for more frequent updates and more eye-catching topics? My most viewed videos are not those that I’m super proud of the overall quality. But it is all counted as the hot topics, sometimes they are the ones that I spent the least effort or no effort at all.
If the answer is yes, then what topics are you going to pick? Those clickbait titles are not in my consideration. My initial idea of making videos is searching for mental clarity and becoming a better version of myself. And my approach should include hitting topics, with something new that no one has done before.
So I guess the 3-step formula should be:
1. Your initial idea/interests
2. hits/topics that the mass would love to consume
3. telling the story in a new way/your style
I will take 2 of my most viewed videos as examples.
One is “recording every minute of my life for 30 days”.
- I want to make a video recording every minute of my life, and no one has done that before on bilibili;
- Social experiments and knowledge sharing are also what the platform is promoting these days, and I’m the lucky one that got the editor’s attention;
- I tell the story in a sincere and structured way, plus I make sure my video is color corrected and graded, the overall quality is above average;
Another one is “why I quit my job during Covid-19”.
- I want to make a video sharing my experience and thoughts on quitting the job, hopefully it might be helpful for anyone who is in this rut;
- Quitting the job or being laid off, are two hot topics during Covid-19.
- I shot this video in the woods, a place that most people in the city envy, and it is sensationally pleasing.
I think next time, when I think about new topics for video, I have to answer these three questions first.
Target Audience
Some also said that the threshold of watching my content, becoming my fans are a little too high, because I make serious videos that require a lot of attention, sometimes a pen and a notebook. The general public come here consuming content are looking for entertainment, relaxation.
However, I don’t think that’s an issue for now. 1,000 true fans theory says, you will be able to survive once you have 1,000 true fans supporting you, and I can’t not agree more. It is never about how many views or followers, it is about how many of them are willing to interact with you, every single time.
And because my audience are highly educated, middle/upper-class students and adults, the potential value of this channel is even bigger.
Oh, our new channel is here, don’t forget to subscribe. I posted our hiking video in Yading, and a hiking gear recommendation video.
2. Minimalism
Me and my girlfriend we have been intentionally practicing minimalism for the past 2 months. Starting with some outdoor hiking, we only keep the essentials and ultra-lighting every item.
After understanding what are the most important essentials, we are able to get rid of 60%-70% of the things we owned. This is the first step, throw or give away things that you don’t use on a daily or monthly basis, regardless of the value. I sold many stuff on a second-handed platform, like my iPad, 27' monitor, Bluetooth speaker, clothes and even a bed. The room looks much clearer and my life runs just as usual.
The second step is throwing aways things you might not be willing to. We sit down with each other, and point out things that the other needs to get rid of as well.
The third part is digital minimalism. We plan to reorganize all the digital files, one copy on the cloud, one on a physical hard drive. By syncing everything to the cloud, we will be free and not attached to our own laptop only.
3. Tesla — Original rap music, gift for my parents
This is my latest video. I wrote a rap for my parents, also on my father’s birthday, I bought my parents a Tesla Model 3 as a gift.
Why Tesla? Tesla represents new technology, trail-brazer and the future, who challenge the traditional status quo. Not so many people held positive opinions on it at the beginning, but now Tesla is basically the first brand people can think of when they buying electric cars.
What I’m pursuing is not like most people around me, both my parents and I have a lot of social pressure from other family members and friends. I think when you consider yourself as a Tesla, suddenly everything that you are pursuing all makes sense.
That’s why I wrote this song and bought my parents a Tesla.
The statistics for the video in the past 24 hours are not that ideal. We can also review this one with our 3-step formula.
- Yes, it is something I want to share with the world and my audience;
- Tesla sounds like a hot topic, but only for a very small amount of people, maybe the editor considers this as product promotion and cut traffic on this one, who knows;
- Yes, I tell my story in music and wrote a song;
In a nutshell, this video means a lot for me and my parents, but not for the massive audience. I get high, but only myself high. This is not enough.
4. Live streaming
I tried live streaming the first time in Oct, and by doing it myself, my false perception about live streaming has been shifted. It is a highly engaging way of communicating online, you can use it as a way to attract attention, articulate value, interact with your followers, sell products and more.
All of your opinions could be wrong, until you really try yourself.
It is true for everything. And by experiencing more, we decrease our possibility of being ignorant.
What’s not working?
1. An effective productive schedule
Due to overtime and content creation work overloaded, I failed to keep a healthy schedule and lifestyle. Many times I stayed up late to 3 AM, and skipped many swimming workouts in the morning.
I’ve been reading the book Why We Sleep, trying to get myself more aware of the importance of sleep, as well as setting boundaries for sleep, 12 AM, I have to stop whatever I’m doing and going to sleep.
2. My website
Our original plan is to build the website during the national holiday in early Oct. But many trivial things came up during the holiday, which kept my main goal undone.
This is not acceptable. But we humans are not good at being harsh on ourselves like those capitalist, I have to think of something different. Applying some methods from work might be a good start. OKR my life!
What’s next?
In November and December, I want to build up a sustainable and effective schedule for my day job and side hustle, continue creating content and building up the personal brand, have 10K+ new subs on Bilibili, 1.6K total subs on YouTube.
Objective: Launching my website(workshop/store), and have 10K+ new subs to Bilibili
KR1: Build a proven effective schedule for side hustle, at least 2 hours are spent on personal branding on workdays, 5 hours on weekends.
- Get up at 7AM, go to bed before 12AM;
- Go swimming/yoga/boxing/football at least 3 times a week;
- Live streaming Study with Me;
- Set a boundary for the day job and night job;
- Practice minimalism, get rid of distraction and the unimportant;
KR2: Launch my website and have my workshop and store embedded.
- Pick a platform and purchase;
- Prepare photos, videos, copywriting files;
- During the developing phase, spend at least 2 hours a day on the website;
KR3: Create meaningful content and gain 10K+ new subs on Bilibili
- Apply 3-step formula for every video;
- Create at least a 100K-view popular video;
- Make videos that your audience expect to see and gather ideas from comments, flying subtitles and live streaming;
- Live streaming chat with fans 1 hour every other week;
We will still be running monthly review as usual, but consider 2 months as a sprint. Hope it might help you set up your goals for the rest of 2020.
What I’m Digesting
1. What I learned in the process of speaking to 50 Product Managers
2. 4 Steps to Defining GREAT Metrics for ANY Product
3. WTF is Strategy?
4. How I Wrote Shape Up
5. 17 Real Product Manager Interview Questions and Answers
6. A Three-Step Framework For Solving Problems
7. Book: The War of Art — Winning the Inner Creative Battle, Steven Pressfield
8. Book: 孙子兵法 The Art of War Annotated, Sun Tzu
These 2 books are what I highly recommend, if you are a content creator, or you plan to be a freelancer in your future career.
The War of Art talks about how we should view our work as bricks, and by showing up every day, everyone can build an Empire State building.
The classic Sun Tzu’s work touches on some macro strategy, by seeing everything around you as war and think in the long run, you might have different perspectives and solutions.
LIFE IS A DRUG. LOVE IT. LIVE IT.
Zake
