I'm in the middle of launching a YouTube channel. Scripting, working out the visuals, getting close to recording.

The scripting is where I've hit the most resistance. I keep writing paragraphs I have to cut.

There's one in the current script I've taken out three times. It keeps coming back because it's doing something I trust. It sets up the context, then adds a second example in case the first one didn't land. That instinct has served me well in writing and in workshops. On video it slows everything to a stop.

Years of designing courses and running workshops gave me a foundation. Scripting for short form video is showing me where that foundation needs to adapt.

Before I wrote a word, I knew why I wanted to make the channel. To teach and share ideas through video in a way that helps creatives flourish.

Almost everything else is unknown. Whether the videos find anyone. Whether the format will work for what I want to teach. Whether any of the effort feeds the community I'm building alongside it.

Both of those are true at once. I'm oriented, and blind to the ground ahead of me.

What we look for before starting

When something matters, we want a sense of its shape before we commit. The more known and certain the better. That desire can quietly turn into an expectation that everything should be defined before the first step.

You know the version of this in your own work. The project that stays in research. The change you've been considering for months without moving on it.

What we're waiting on is usually some mix of three things, and they don't behave the same way.

The outcome concerns what something becomes. For the channel, that includes how people respond and whether the videos contribute to the community's growth.

The path concerns how to proceed. Which videos I make, at what pace, and how I respond to what happens along the way.

The intention articulates a commitment to a specific direction. For the video I'm scripting now, that's teaching creatives why goal setting doesn't serve their work, and giving them an alternative that helps them prioritize and stay motivated.

The three don't sit at the same distance from you. The outcome is furthest out and least certain. The path might start with some certainty but really only comes into focus as you move along it. The most certain and the one you have the most control over is the intention.

The decision in front of me

The intention is something I can define today, without knowing anything else. It was never a prediction about what might happen. It's a commitment to a direction I make in the present.

Which means it's already at the desk with me. It gives me something to measure that paragraph against.

Does this paragraph help someone see why goal setting isn't working for them, or does it help me feel better because I've covered every possible angle and left no room for anyone to doubt I know what I'm talking about?

That question I can answer immediately. Answering it asks only that I bring the commitment I already made down to the size of the thing in front of me. It doesn't wait on how the video performs, or whether anyone watches it, or what the channel eventually becomes.

The paragraph gets cut.

In the end, every paragraph got cut.

I realized through working that my entire approach wasn’t working. What replaced the script and trying to read it word for word was an outline and a decision to teach to the camera the way I'd teach in person.

The path I thought I was taking changed completely and in a way that I never would have predicted at the start.

What the work teaches back

That change came out of the work itself. I wrote a script, hit resistance, and then explored what the resistance was and why. .

The script had to exist before I could see what was wrong with it. The paragraph had to come back three times before I understood what it was protecting. Contact with the work changed what I understood the work to be, and there was no version of that I could have arranged ahead of time.

Through all of it the intention never moved. I still want creatives to see why goal setting doesn't serve their work, and to leave with something they can use. It held through a change in method, a change in pace, and a change in what I thought the videos were going to look like.

What's clear enough now

Take something you've been circling. A project, a change in how you work, something you keep almost starting.

You're unlikely to get a clear read on the outcome, and the path will keep revising itself as you go. The intention is the part available now. Name it, then let the path develop as you move.

There's an outline on the desk where the overly exhaustive script used to be. I still don't know where this new path will lead or how it will continue to change, but I know it will be in alignment with my intention.

Until next week, may what you've already decided be enough to begin.

Jeff

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