Things need to grow otherwise they deteriorate. A tree left on its own grows, but a house left alone doesn’t. After centuries, the house is in ruins, and the tree is blossoming.
My first bigger attempt at videos
I ordered my first camera in September 2021 and wanted to use it on a trip. Unfortunately, I waited for it to arrive for six months, until February 2022. I use this camera to record all my cinematic, time-lapses, and standard videos. The camera could also record slow motions.
After my programming course ended in April 2022, I published a three-minute video, “Spring Timelapse 2022,” my best video at the time. A new idea struck me: I could upload the individual timelapse clips as shorts and gain massive traction with little additional effort. I would have to export them individually, add some music, and use my archive of a thousand captured moments from the previous year.
Because I believe in speed, I got started almost right away. The short I uploaded was a timelapse where I strapped my camera on an egg timer atop a mountain. I was hooked after it got three hundred views, a magnitude higher than my usual videos. Then, I started to innovate. Not only timelapses, but slow motions of breaking glass, pouring colorful liquids against the sun, and dropping items underwater.
The educational value of these videos was zero, and I could only have done it because I had no experience in anything. I created 375 videos in 60 days. After the 375th video, the 884th subscriber, and the 650.000th view, I realized I was wasting my time. I didn’t grow anymore.
The concept didn't work. My videos got, on average, less than two thousand views. No matter how many videos I produced, that number didn’t grow. I put in the effort and saw no compounding results. I lost.
Stagnation
I didn’t want to create videos that brought zero money or no experience and only two thousand views. Creating the next video would have brought another two thousand views, but there was no growth. You see, my efforts were rewarded, not my ideas.
Stagnation occurs when results don’t grow with continued input. Stagnation takes place when you refuse to learn a lesson. Things scale to the point of their biggest constraint. If you don’t see that constraint, you will stagnate.
What was the constraint of my short slow-motion videos? The first constraint was the wrong platform. The second and biggest constraint was that these videos were ultimately worthless. If that constraint is so fundamental, it’s time to move on.
It is almost impossible to see where a constraint lies. Hence, you need to ask others to spot it for you. If the constraint is not fixable, it’s time to give up.
A good idea yields compounding results. An average one yields results proportional to one’s effort. This input-to-output ratio may be too low to justify putting in further effort.
Let me put it this way: If you start working minimum wage as a teenager and your salary stays the same five decades later, you messed up at some point. You put in effort every day, and seeing no improvement or increased results means you stagnate.
Do not mistake stagnation with a lack of results. Things take their time. Yet, when you keep putting in effort for hundreds of videos, thousands of calls, or millions of words, you are better off moving on or reinventing yourself.
You could make anything successful. You could listen to motivational stories, never give up, and move on. The problem is, it’s not worth it most of the time. Let me tell you a secret. Every successful person becomes successful because they figure out what works and what doesn’t. They weren’t stuck with their first project. They reinvented themselves. Only when something is supremely purposeful and you are highly capable should you keep going.
I have a framework to help me decide when to quit. Did evidence disprove my original assumptions, or did it just test my dedication?
“Why did you quit?”
I quit creating these shorts because 375 tries were enough. I wasn’t planning to reinvent myself in the realm of slow-motion shorts anyway. Some of my friends pointed out that a thousand subscribers are often the tipping point, and I quit ten percent short. Others pointed out that I should have given more time for the algorithm to process my videos. If, if, if… It doesn't matter. Why delay the inevitable? The idea I imagined didn’t work.
In September 2023, I had to give up my apps. Why? The last ad campaign of the few
before did bring downloads. And
here lies the problem. If my apps were great, people would have told their friends about it, and my audience
would have grown organically.
A year later, in July 2024, I can confirm this never happened.
Why things need to grow
Life has destructive and creative energy. If something doesn’t grow, it deteriorates. A house breaks apart without the effort put into it. A tree grows and thus can survive centuries. Growth is the counterforce to mistakes, failures, and noise. Without growth, these things compound.
Something must grow; you or your project.