One Take Brian

FIRST TRY!!!!

If you’ve got too many ideas floating around in your head (like me), consider this approach…

Do it in one take. No editing needed. Show up, hit record, ship whatever happens.

In a world of "content", this is my strategy/dream. The goal is to be able to sit down and hit record on whatever I'm making. Then to publish it with the least amount of editing possible.

The peak expression of this would be to do it in one take. Or in the words of Bill O'Reilly "We'll do it live!"

That would be the most amazing place to be.

What's funny is it's entirely attainable.

Grab a camera, hit record. Publish whatever happens.

Start a new blog post. Write whatever comes out. Publish whatever you write.

Whatever the shortest distance between you and the publish button is, that's where the magic is.

Part of the trick to this is using formats, libraries, and other tricks to not make the same decisions twice. Let the creative part be the interesting difference between this one and the last one.

For example, my stupid little rant video format seems to work. I can get my idea across with just enough production value to be adequate, but not enough that I spend time/energy editing the production.

To get here I ask questions like, "how can I do this without writing a script?" or "is there a default guitar setting I can come up with that would work for almost everything?"

Getting rid of every form of knob twiddling that I can.

Sort of that whole "I don't want to make any decisions about any of this again."

That's not a lazy thing. It's optimizing for getting the ideas out of my head.

The shorter the distance between the idea in my head and the rest of the world, the more likely I am to produce/share/publish it. If I don’t ever hit publish, nobody benefits.

So then the gimmick is to go from idea to product as fast and simple as possible.

For making music, it's about having one preset that is good enough to get the song across.

For writing, it’s sticking close to the first draft and only fixing a few minor speeling issues.

For videos, it’s ditching the script and talking to the camera like you’re talking to a friend. Only cut out the most necessary interruptions or verbal nonsense.

For programming, it’s working in tiny pull requests instead of big feature branches.

Cut out everything “extra”, even if it hurts.

The goal is to get the ideas out into the world as quick as possible.

To get there… make one decision that makes 10,000 decisions.

Then repeat it 10,000 times.

Remember, whatever the shortest distance between you and the publish button is, that's where the magic is.

-Brian