The Common Hurdles Of Consistency And How To Solve Them

What is going on guys. Today we’re trying another experiment because I’m an experimenter. New device got a new location and we got a new format. Sixty frames never never shot at 60 frames before. But the topic of today’s video I think is gonna be the hurdles to consistency. And there’s a reason why I pick this topic because a lot of people especially since I’ve been on the consistency train the last couple days talking about a lot going through some stuff.

(Video Transcription)

I notice that a lot of people have a lot of objections to it. And they’re not necessarily external there they’re more internal objections. The questions that they ask the things I can tell me I could tell that maybe they don’t quite get it how I mean it. And maybe there’s some things that I should kind of address. So I’ve had people tell me and this is happening multiple times now yeah Tim this is easy for you because blank. You know because I know marketing because

I’ve been doing development longer than they have whatever the reason. This is a common thing. And it happens not just in in my videos right. This happens in life all the time. There’s so many people that just say yeah if I was that guy I could do what that guy did. Yeah if I had what that guy has I could do that too. And they completely discount the amount of work that that person has taken to get there.

And what what they don’t realize when they say that is like if you look at a football player to say well that guy’s good at football. If I was him I could do that too. If I had those muscles if I had you know whatever. But that guy’s spent a lot of time to build those muscles they spend all the time to build that skill he spent all that time to get there. And even if there is luck involved.

Let me tell you a secret about luck. Luck happens to people that are consistent with their work right. Like if you look at some of the top like Angry Birds made thirty some games the Rubio made thirty some games before they made Angry Birds. Like luck happen to people that are consistent that they keep doing things right. Even super meatboy. Super Meat Boy was not the first game Edmond had made he’d been out there on the forums doing it working out loud doing that over and over and over and over and over again.

And I just want to say look if you say that yeah that person can do it I could do it too if I had blank you are summing up your progress to a lack of resources. And if you think a lack of resources is holding you back you’re making a big mistake from the get-go. Because this is not about resources about resourcefulness. That’s what Tony Robbins would say and I would agree with him. Because resourcefulness is how you learn to work with your constraints figure out the things you need to do get places go places make shit happen you know be be the person that you want to be.

And if you constantly say I don’t have X so I can’t do Y you’re not gonna get anywhere. You’ve got to learn to work with what you got build the things that you need to get. If you need money if you need time figure out ways how to get those things right. Like if you need more time to work on your game figure out how you can get an hour today what can you cut out of your team what can you do this what can you do that. Like you just gotta you got to think about you got to be dedicated to it.

So second thing that comes up a lot and this came up with the comments this came up in emails came up in a couple places and that’s people saying Tim and I don’t know why this is thing but they say Tim you know you you post a video every day but that’s not easy for people to do for longer forms of content that’s not easy it’s sustainable when you’re when you’re sitting in front of a camera it’s easy to do everyday.

And then other people brought up the fact that like you know I know what to do because I’m marketing guys so they they’re consistent I’m being consistent on things that I know will work whereas if a normal person would try and be consistent they might be consistent on the wrong things. And what I would say both of those points cuz I think they’re kind of combined at at their core is that note first of all no I didn’t know what was gonna work ok. Game Dev Underground was in existence since 2013.

I’ve tried everything from running Facebook ads to literally giving a giving away $100 as a competition for who could give out the most invites the fastest. Back when it was invite only to which didn’t make sense at all cuz it was invite only but I was giving out money to invite people why don’t I just make it… I tried that I tried logging for months didn’t work. I tried the YouTube for months still wasn’t getting anywhere. So consistency and I want to put this out consistency does not mean you do the same thing every day okay. If the same thing that you do every day is working yes then do the same thing every day.

But consistency means working on the same goal every day okay there’s a distinction there. Because if what you’re doing over a long period of time doesn’t make a difference consistency is the thing that helps you learn why right. So and and this is tricky because a lot of people don’t have they don’t give the time needed to do certain things. The blog is something that I tried for months in months and months and it was the month four I think it was where I was like I’m not really getting any traction and that’s also when I learned that I could do YouTube.

I could talk about the same topic at the same amount of time I could get the same point across in ten minutes of talking in a video than I could in two hours of writing a blog post. So that’s why that’s the main reason why I switched to YouTube. It wasn’t so much I thought it was gonna be this thing that’s gonna work and it’s gonna grow and and do all that. I just thought it would be simpler for me to do. This whole learning experience in gaming of underground has been me adapting what I’m doing to figure out how I can get this to work.

And so when you you think like oh someone else knows better someone else knows better consistency they know what to do being consistent and I don’t know what to do. It’s really simple. You try something you try it you see if it doesn’t work. You got it and you can’t think about this whole you can’t get stuck in this…of efficiency. Like I remember so long so long and I still can’t believe this. I used to think that I had to be efficient with my life.

So like I’d be driving down the freeway. I’d be like I know I got to get an exit in like ten miles right. And so I’d stay in like the right lane because I normally have to get off on the exit in the right lane. So I’d stay there I’d stay in the lane for ten miles even when it was slower even when I could get around and go past people and do stuff I would stay in the lane because it was more efficient. It was more efficient use of my time in my effort to stay in that lane.

And it may be efficient but what I learned is that it’s not effective okay. There’s a difference between efficiency and effectiveness and this is probably a whole nother topic for the day. But if you’re trying to be efficient with your consistency you’re trying to think well I want to figure out the perfect thing to do before I do it that doesn’t make any sense. Because the way that you figure out the perfect thing is by being consistent and working toward the same goal for a long time and trying a bunch of different shit.

So I just want to say that if you’re one of those people that is like out there waiting for the moment to start because you’re looking for the right thing it’s never gonna come along. You got to try a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work to figure out what does. Which is exactly what I did. Like in my YouTube video I only talked about the last 180 days of consistency but I didn’t talk about the three-four years of trying stuff. The Facebook Ads.

The original launched. The the emails that I was sending out randomized times. The people that have been here with me for years know this they saw this they witnessed all this. I didn’t talk about the blog post I didn’t talk about practically you know spamming indie game developers groups with the stop trying to help out people and show them and say hey hope this helps hopes this helps.

So it’s not about just being a smart dude and knowing exactly what to do. I didn’t know this is just the result of me trying a bunch of stuff and seeing what works and YouTube happened to work being consistent in it but it took being consistent at it to work. And so last last point that I want to make on this real quick is some people think that like a video a day on YouTube for example they say it works really well for sitting from a camera but not for people that have longer forms of bigger stuff or stuff that takes weeks to build and I would just say that like with consistency of course YouTube specifically it promotes daily videos.

This algorithm obviously is geared toward that. But it doesn’t mean that you have to post every day. I would say consistency is working on your craft every day. Doesn’t necessarily mean pushing out in public. And YouTube just like with anything else I think you could do weekly just as well as daily daily is gonna be way faster it’s gonna help you accelerate faster. You’re gonna catch on to that algorithm quicker.

You’re gonna do stuff. Same thing with blog posts I’m sure if I would have tried blog post daily I would’ve got more results than I got with weekly. But so it’s not about like you know I’m not saying that you should post everywhere every day I’m not saying that’s ultimate thing I’m just saying work towards your goal everyday. Like work on it move it forward. Try and try and do something. Like if you can’t post on YouTube every day maybe maybe your videos take two weeks for you to make that’s cool but work on them every day and push them out of you two weeks and stay consistent on that.

Keep doing that keep going. That’s my message for today. I know there are a lot of excuses. Excuses which are holding people back but also there’s like this unintentional barrier like this mental block that I see a lot of people have. They’re worried because they they want to do the right thing but sometimes they’re paralyzed by the decision on what to do so they sit there and do nothing.

And I made a whole video on indecision you can check it out. But don’t be indecisive just be consistent. And again to summarize being consistent does not mean that you have to do the same thing every day. You can evolve what you do over time because you’re gonna learn stuff you’re gonna try stuff. But you got to try a bunch of stuff to see what works okay.

That’s one message for today I hope you guys found it useful if you did please leave me a comment below. I would love to hear from you. If you have anything else that you’d like to be addressed on the subject please leave it out in the comment below or a question form I would love to answer it.

But until next time I’m Tim Ruswick and I’ll see you guys tomorrow.