Balancing Creativity and Discipline: A Day in the Life of Building My Channel
August 26, 2025 – Tuesday
Entry #7
Yesterday I attempted to plan my day in an efficient way. I’m happy to report it worked. I started off track, spending almost 1 hour researching mechanical pencils. I didn’t even know there was such a community behind them. I went into it looking for lead as I was running out in the pencil I use to write this. It’s actually my first time using a mechanical pencil. I used to hate them, not sure why, but since using them daily, I started to enjoy them. Anyway, when looking for lead I had no idea there were different thicknesses. I decided I might as well get a new, more comfortable one since I’ll be using it daily now.
Well, I was hovering over the buy button for a $30 all-metal self-feeding pencil, one of the best from my little bit of research. I was able to reel in the impulse and settle on an $8–10 one. I can’t believe I’m excited for a damn pencil to arrive… anyways, once that was done, I started with my title planning. I currently settled on the idea that I’ll finish the video, record the voiceovers using some of the talking points I came up with, cutting it down to what fits, and picking the title that works best for the full video. I think it’ll be mainly about my experience but with some encouragement sprinkled in. After that was done, I got to my website, which I was excited for. I really wanted to set up the blog where I’d be sharing these entries, but I felt like I needed my “about me” page first, so I focused on that.
I planned to make it simple, hopefully giving me time to do the blog too, but as I took the AI-generated text from my Etsy’s shop story, I started to feel like this wasn’t the story I wanted to be “about me”. I started making edits to it as I laid it out. 2 hours later, I had an entirely new story, but this time written by me. I think it turned out great, truly authentic, only one or two sentences used from the AI one I started with, completely different from the original text I pasted in.
At this point, I felt on a roll, I was ready to tackle the blog, then realized I still hadn’t edited the footer, which I had left the night before so I could get more than five hours of sleep. It would be quick, so let me do it now, I already knew what I planned for it. Well one hour later and multiple redesigns plus 2–3 crashes losing all progress and relaunching Chrome to an old ugly footer, I had it complete. Looking at the time in the corner and seeing it’s noon, I sat thinking if I should continue on my website or do what I planned, editing my video… I told myself “whether I make the blog now, or tomorrow, there would be no difference, but if I edit my video, that’s extra time to refine it before my planned upload on Friday”. I decided to edit, and thankfully I did.
I started editing and got it to a final piece. My opinion on it slightly changed in an attempt to be less attached and cut more of the unneeded parts, aka being more strict with the edit. I feel like the pace is a bit fast, almost like information overload with not enough breaks for the viewer to catch their breath. I tried to add some moments of silence but without needing to re-record b-roll I couldn’t get it to what I thought was good. Now my other concern is the intro; it’s not built in a way to “hook” the viewer, but I do like it. It kind of has two intros.
If the retention drop is bad after the upload, I could edit the first intro out to see if it improves, but even that intro isn’t very “hooky.” I think with these concerns, the intro and pacing, my results may turn out bad, but I’m also curious about that. Maybe the pacing is good, just not what I’m used to. The intro I’m still hesitant about, but if I upload it and there’s a big dip even after editing out the hookless part, I’ll probably attempt a re-upload. Unless the analytics can see results with the pacing before the re-upload, I’ll probably leave it as is or experiment to see if it’s actually too fast or if it’s just me.
Another thing I planned to do with this video was colour grading. I never really understood what results I’m trying to achieve with colour. I brightened up some shots, but can’t understand what others “needed.” I decided to ignore it as I didn’t think investing the time would give me good enough results to claim it worth it. Earlier I said “thankfully I did” for editing the video. Reason is Zoe and I decided it’s best we visit my Mom’s tonight and for the next few days. We planned to visit the EX (which we are doing tomorrow) and I need to fix my mom’s brake line that’s leaking. I’m unsure how long that’ll take, hopefully not long because I don’t want to do it, nor do I want to work in the possible rain on Thursday. But having that video rendered and uploaded as unlisted will ensure it’s public by Friday, so long as I can find time to take photos for the thumbnail today.
I have a lot I gotta do, so making the thumbnail and title/desc/etc can be done at my mom’s tonight or tomorrow. If you asked me 2 months ago what my upload schedule was, I’d say one video a week, posted on Wednesday afternoon. Ask me today, I’d say when the video’s done and posted on that week’s Friday. The reason for the change was because I wanted to focus on quality over quantity. I do believe the quality has increased, but it may not be due to having more time, but rather more skill from practice. From changing my schedule, I do lose some anxiety about not having a video ready by Wednesday. I was typically editing right up to the last hour. Any life interruption made it difficult to stay on schedule. I also kept wanting to be ahead of my schedule, having videos lined up in advance but anytime I had this, I found myself using that extra padding as an excuse to slack off.
Since being a business owner, I have had to learn self-discipline, and it’s not easy. Now I’m still reading that book “Create Something Awesome.” (affiliate link) (almost done it by the way), and in the book he mentioned that for a year he posted a video every day without losing quality and tripled his audience growth compared to the year prior. Now obviously, I don’t think I could handle that, plus my niche may not even handle that (as he even notes), but it did get me thinking.
Right now I have zero income, everyday I have spent trying to grow my brand, whether that’s by YT videos or my woodworking. Basically, I have almost all day, every day, every hour to devote to this dream. I’m very fortunate for that, as many do this while working full-time. Anyway, my thought was right now I don’t need a schedule, I have nobody expecting videos on a specific day, nor have I promised to post X videos on X day. But I do have time, and the goals to grow. Maybe I could try something like posting as many videos as I possibly can, with the attempt not to lose quality, but instead of having a planned day, I just post it the next day that it’s done.
This could be not only a creative challenge but also help me possibly grow faster. I may find out what days my videos perform best, and what times too. I can go back to my old ways of timeblocking my day to leave room for optimizing videos that didn’t perform, time to think of video ideas and plan them, time to review analytics to see what is/isn’t working. The biggest thing I can’t do is burn myself out.
I am hoping by not having a set schedule will help with that but it comes down to me being completely honest with myself by checking in and making sure I’m still having fun, getting sleep, eating, taking care of IRL duties, and not feeling the pressure when I feel like I can’t think of good ideas, that day will come and I need to be prepared. Considering I’ll be away these next few days, I should have some goals to complete.
Setup a rough time-blocked calendar, not strict or stuffed from morning to night.
Consider what I do to keep ideas fresh and plentiful.
What will be my allowance for how far out of my niche I am allowed to go (while I’m not in a vulnerable position)?
What will I do when I don’t want to do an idea I have already started?
An exit plan if this becomes too much.
A very basic template for ideas. I know I can get carried away with this.
Will I consider short-form videos and/or social media?
How will I deal with projects that take longer? Will I do others at the same time?
How much off-topic (non-video) time is allowed (like non-important stuff)?
I think this is a good starting point. I don’t have time to go through all of this before I’m back, but I’ll do what I can.
Wow, this entry was a long one. I never expected I’d be writing so much in my life…
