Happy big Friday everyone.
In this issue, I want to talk about current events in my life because it’s very relevant to my mindset now and what I’m thinking about.
The saying goes: “When it rains, it pours.”
And that’s how February has been in a nutshell. The first domino to fall was my advancement to candidacy. It’s time that I finally go from Ph.D student to Ph.D candidate. I was hoping that this would be scheduled in Spring Quarter, but the stars aligned (read: professor’s schedules") such that it would happen on February 29.
Then came a rent hike, sprawling for a new apartment, and the channel’s first sponsorship!
It was a lot, and it’s definitely taken a toll on how much energy I have each day to edit video. I didn’t mean for this next video to take so long to come up, but it just happened that way.
But no matter how stressful things have gotten, progress on the video happens from 9pm to 12am. No more, no less. Emphasis on no more.
Refusing to grind
If you’re looking to make educational content on Youtube and elsewhere, the lesson of this issue is to fall back on your systems, not your energy and motivation.
The last thing I want to do at the end of the night is edit videos. Maybe this is a sign that I should shift editing to the morning, but nighttime 9pm to 12am is when I have blocked time for editing. I’m not perfect, and some nights, I barely get any progress, but I do it everyday, regardless of how I’m feeling.
It’s the trade-off I’ve made with refusing to grind on videos anymore. Grinding in the sense of going as long as I could for multiple days to get a video out as fast as possible. That’s a recipe for burnout. I’ve committed to a more sustainable approach to content creation, and February just happens to be a month where I know I’ll be tested. I wanted to document this as a note to myself and as a reminder for others that it will inevitably happen to them as well. The work still needs to be done, whether you’re busy with other stuff or not. But it doesn’t have to encroach on your life either.
I’d also like to think that my audience isn’t drooling over my videos. It’s statistics. A few more days between videos will not send them to another channel. That’s what I tell myself at least.
A last note
Last week, somebody emailed me asking why I was talking about stoicism in a newsletter about statistics. I forgot to reply to you, but I knew I wanted to talk about this. This newsletter isn’t entirely dedicated to statistics, it’s also about chronicling my Youtube journey. But at the same time, I didn’t realize that some of my subscribers were coming in through Substack instead of Youtube.
I haven’t updated the newsletter’s bio in a while, so I apologize for any false advertising on my end. There’s still going to be statistics on this newsletter, but there’s going to be others stuff to because it’s important to me to talk about. No offense if this isn’t for you, the last thing I want to be is a nuisance in your inbox.
But if you’re still here for this type of content, thanks for your time, I appreciate you. I’m still figuring out how to make this newsletter more valuable for my readers, and I’m happy to take suggestions.
Thanks for listening, I’ll see you next week.
Christian
🧐 What am I enjoying right now?
Show — I’m on the last episode of Let’s Talk About Chu, and I’m a big fan. It’s not everyday that you can hear about sexual terms in Mandarin, so my vocabulary has definitely grown at least a little bit.
Books — Balancing two books right now. The first is still Bernoulli’s Fallacy (note: my affiliate link) to hear more about how surprisingly difficult it is to define probability. And the second is Million Dollar Weekend (also affiliate) by Noah Kagan, which just came out recently. I’ve been struggling to figure out how to make something of value to people and it’s definitely not something that they teach you in a Ph.D. I keep up with a lot of productivity books, so I’ve heard it all before, but it never hurts to see if there’s new insight to be had.
📺 Recent and upcoming videos
Upcoming: Like I mentioned above, I’m still editing the confidence intervals video. It’ll come when I’m ready to put it out.