On avoiding the learning loop
The past few months, my instagram explore page has been filled with tutorials. Camera settings, combining lights of different colours, illustrations, filmmaking, video editing and sound design, animations, etc.
On most days, I watched out of curiosity, even though I knew I wasn't ready to put the tips into use. But, I decided to re-create an animation in Capcut and this was around 2am. It took like an hour to finish because I couldn't quickly find the feature to smoothen the animation as mentioned in the tutorial, and I was so sleepy.
But because it was just a simple animation, I posted it to Stories only, not feed. Until Adeola wanted to re-share to her story but couldn't. As of writing this, the simple video has 433 views and 4 shares. This is a small number, but it proved how my initial decision to post on Stories alone was short-sighted. The video has reached 248 people, with 69% being non-followers, and has 127 replays. On Twitter, it has 2 bookmarks and 234 views.
For something I learnt during the night.
It's made me think of how much time I've wasted between learning something new and making use of it. The amount of impact that's missing simply because of inaction.
Funnily, I almost didn't post because I noticed copy differences between what I wrote and what was implemented. And if I'd spent more time starring at the copy, I most likely wouldn't have posted. But, no harm done till now and it's been 3hrs since posting the video.
I want to be at this phase more.
I want to do stuff and not only learn how to do them. I want to ask if a copy passes the right message or not, even when weirdly different from the one I wrote. Copy can be improved — and it always will — but the time lost waiting till perfection can be used to drive results.