It's February 21st, 2025. It's my 5,016th day on YouTube, and this is an actual day in my real life as a YouTuber. This time I'm getting my iPhone out to film it play by play to make it more real, raw, and authentic. I figured I could test doing something like this. The truth is I'm so annoyed this morning, struggling, because I want to make better YouTube videos. Should I do more long-format and fewer videos, or should I keep chasing quantity?
The quantity versus quality grind
I've been publishing something like six videos a day, and before that three, four, five a day. This quantity is just such a grind, and the videos aren't evergreen. Mr. Beast is all about publishing higher-quality, researched, "purple elephant" videos that nobody's seen before. So I'm grinding on that thought all morning, wondering: where do I optimize my YouTube workflow?
I just finished running a mile. I ran a mile last night too. I was talking to a guy after tennis and I had the thought: why can't I at least run a mile every day? It takes 10 minutes. I don't see why I couldn't run a mile every day. That should be really good for my health, in my experience. He told me not to run too hard, to the point where I couldn't hold a conversation. Well, I did that, but it took nine minutes and 57 seconds to go a mile. I haven't run much for the last decade.
I just had hummus for lunch slash brunch, and now I'm finishing up with this raw honey cocoa chocolate bar. I'm not going to eat the whole thing. I had a couple of little pieces, and I might have a couple more. This thing's 82% cocoa. It tastes good, and it has a ton of iron in it. Look at that. When people go to their doctor and the doctor says they need more iron, why does it have to be "take this pill"? Why not just eat some chocolate? It says right there it has a lot of iron in it. Although, I was listening to Mr. Beast's video about chocolate last night, and I don't see anywhere that they don't use child labor, so unfortunately they probably do.
Trying a new vlog format
I want to try a new vlog format. Instead of just getting in my YouTube studio and taking 10 minutes to film a video describing my day, those feel pretty rambling and get pretty boring. So I'm thinking I want to try seeing if I can do 30-second to one-minute videos, maybe 10 times a day. I was thinking it'd be really nice to have a nice new iPhone to film this on, honestly, instead of my iPhone 8 Plus that I've had for seven-plus years. But I think wanting new gear is one of those forms of resistance. If you don't want to do it on whatever piece of equipment you've got now, then you don't really want to do it. So I'm going to try filming around 100 of these little short videos for a week on this old-school iPhone, and if I really like it, if I enjoy it, and if it lands well, then I'll upgrade to a new one.
Instead of jumping in and filming videos and grinding like I usually do, today I'm stopping to think: what work should I do if I want to get the most views and make the most and best videos for people? I've been laying in bed thinking I just want to grind out a whole bunch of videos. My last crypto video about Dominic Williams went out and did great. I should have just made that a whole hour-and-a-half-long video and done that as my only video for the week.
Should I even be streaming?
I'm also thinking, again, that streaming is wasting my time. Mr. Beast doesn't stream hardly ever. Most of the top YouTubers don't stream. If making videos is what I'm really good at, then that's what I want to focus on. For example, if I wanted to make a gaming video or a music video, putting out a live stream where I don't interact with people, or a gaming live stream, just ruins the experience. Gaming is so much more fun without live streaming.
I just filmed a crypto video. I ended up taking all my work time today to film a crypto review covering all the top 100 crypto YouTubers and how fraudulent and incompetent they are. It bothers me, though, because I'm taking such a big risk putting so much time into one video. In the same amount of time I could have filmed five short videos. But we're going to try it. When you have six channels, it's just too many videos. So let's see how this one does. I think it's going to be called "Exposing the Top 100 Crypto YouTubers."
School pickup and second-guessing myself
I'm going to pick the kids up from school now. My wife's out in Tampa for the day at a conference, so it's weird that I'm the one doing school pickup and drop-off today. My daughter's going to have a sleepover with her friend tonight, so I've got stuff to give to her friend's mom, and my son likes seaweed snacks. We're going to go to Home Depot and buy some bricks for the patio after school pickup.
On my drive to pick the kids up, I've been regretting that I took two hours of my time to film that one long crypto YouTuber review. I keep thinking, man, this is never going to work, it's so stupid, I should have just filmed five or six crypto review videos that I know will work. And I'm so dumb for making this new crypto channel. I should have left the last one up. It feels like all I do on YouTube is make mistakes. At the same time, though, if I don't try something different, like trying this new filming process, then I'm just doing the same thing all the time. I need a different filming process, not the same old approach.
My son and I just got back from Home Depot. We got the bricks in the front and the back of the car, and we're going to take them to the patio. It's been months of work to get this patio set up, but I've done all of it myself. We're going to put the rest of those bricks from the car onto the back of the patio, and then I'll push these edges in to hold it together. Then we'll put some sand in between everything.
Dinner and a much-needed reality check
I'm making some mushrooms for dinner with olive oil, and then I'm going to have some kale from my hydroponic garden, and we're going to call that a meal tonight. I love eating whole plant-based because it's very filling and, in my experience, so healthy for me.
I just talked to Laura about my YouTube channel for a while. I was feeling so down and hopeless, wondering why I'm doing this, putting all my time into it. I felt like I suck, like I'm a mediocre YouTuber. I was watching my son play soccer, had my mushrooms and a couple of packs of dry maple oatmeal for dinner along with the mushrooms. Laura reminded me that most people can't do YouTube in the first place. They try and quit. I'm comparing myself to the 1%, and all of us will feel poor if we compare ourselves to the 1%. That was a good reminder. If you want to see more of how I think through this work over time, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Now I'm brushing my teeth and going to my AA meeting. There was a girl raising money for something that I walked by. She was asking if I wanted to give money to help kids and families struggling with a disease and paying all these medical bills. My honest reaction, for better or worse, was that I believe there are free and natural approaches to health that get overlooked. I went out and filmed this on location throughout the day to show you my day as it actually happened, instead of just rambling on about it afterward. Do you appreciate the extra effort to get more of a raw and authentic experience?