I'm quitting live streaming again. I've deleted Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram completely, and I've also live streamed on all of those platforms off and on for the last 10 years. What I've been asking myself lately is, what is my main goal? What is the point of the time I spend on this computer in this studio? The point is thought leadership. The point is teaching. The point is to communicate ideas to you.
And what's the most effective way, the main way I'm doing that? It's in videos on YouTube. My videos on YouTube get hundreds of thousands of impressions a day, and I use the title and thumbnail to communicate the idea. That's my main thing. That's the main way I make money. That's the main way people watch. And streaming is just a distraction.
An 80/20 analysis showed me Twitch was the problem
I've been really consistent over the last four months streaming on Twitch, and what I've noticed is it's screwing up my video creating. Now, yes, I have made lots of great videos. But I plan my whole schedule around being able to stream, and I often optimize around streaming.
I read one of Tim Ferriss's posts on YouTube lately, and he said one of the things he does is an 80/20 analysis on his business once every few months. And I'm like, all right, 80/20 analysis. Where's the part of my work that's generating the most value? Making videos. The 20% of what I do that's generating 80% of what you might say I want, which is impressions, is uploading videos to YouTube. And then what's the other thing? What's the 20% thing I'm doing that's taking up a huge amount of my time that's not driving hardly any value? That's Twitch. If you want to follow how I keep working through decisions like this, I keep these conversations going in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
Streaming games ruined playing games
I've been thinking that even for video games, I would rather play video games off stream, and then just record a video about the game I played. That seems to be what almost everybody else does. In fact, streaming games has really ruined playing games for me. Playing games for me is a time to be quiet and to relax and to learn something and to escape. Playing video games on stream is like the opposite. It's like I can't focus on the game, and then I'm talking to the stream constantly.
I noticed that I played some zombies yesterday, and half the time I'm talking to the stream. And aren't I playing to play the game? Some games, like Hogwarts Legacy, were totally ruined by playing on stream. It was so much better to play it off stream.
Everything is easier off stream
For my videos, it's so much easier and faster. I just hop in a studio, film a video real quick, and upload it. Everything takes longer on Twitch. And when I stop recording this, I can play it back several times. On a live stream, I feel like I'm just wasting people's time. I'd rather you watch my videos than hang out on Twitch.
There's another problem with streaming, too. People inevitably, even if my moderators are doing a great job, screw up my live streams with their nasty comments, and I'd rather be able to look at those off stream. So if you're one of the very few people who actually watches my streams on Twitch, I really appreciate you.
If you're a content creator, one of the things you can do to really streamline your process is just don't stream. There are very few benefits to streaming, and there's a lot of time and effort involved.
The blue screens were a sign
I also had my streaming PC completely blue screen to death twice. And finally, instead of getting mad, I asked, why is this happening? I realized this is a sign. This is an indication: stop using your streaming PC.
Today I had the breakthrough thought after I was pretty down and sad this morning. I woke up at four in the morning and realized: you need to stop streaming. And as I was trying to set my Windows streaming PC up again, after getting a new hard drive, I realized, why don't I just do a one-PC setup? I've been using this two-PC setup, which is so much more effort, for so long. Why? Because I can stream.
But I'd rather make music off stream. I made some really funny music off stream, and I just want to experiment off stream and be quiet. I don't want to talk about it. I just want to go in my studio and be quiet and make music. Or I just want to go in my studio and be quiet and play a video game or do my research, and then record a video and upload it.
Here we are again
I've quit streaming so many times, and I always came back because I thought I was missing something. I thought I just hadn't done it right. The last time, I thought it'd be fun to get back to gaming and streaming on Twitch. But I realized I want to get out and have fun off stream more, and streaming ends up taking too much of my time. I can take an hour a day and film plenty of videos, and then have the rest of my time free, which is such a blessing. If you want the longer version of this story, I wrote about why I'm quitting Twitch after 9 years too.
So here we are again. Jerry's quitting streaming again. And I hope this was useful for you.