- Thanks to Brilliant
for sponsoring this video and supporting my channel. (mellow guitar music) Over the course of a
couple of days last week I put together this little
song that you're hearing and watching on the screen right now. I composed it, I recorded it,
I mixed it on my computer, and then I shot this little music video which tied together the entire thing, and I am absolutely stoked that I actually finished this song, because even though
I've been playing guitar for more than 10 years, and
even though I have wanted to be a musician for a very long time, I find it very difficult to
actually finish music projects. I get song ideas all the time. If you look at my Voice
Notes app on my phone, there are literally
hundreds of voice memos that are me just singing
song ideas into my phone. I am very good at starting music projects. I'm very good at having ideas. I'm not so good at
finishing those projects and actually putting
them out into the world and I know that this is not something that is unique to me and it is not something
that is unique to musicians. A lot of people, including probably you if you clicked on this video, have trouble finishing the
projects that they start. In your case it might be a book
that you're trying to write or an art project you're trying to finish or maybe even a YouTube
channel you're trying to get off the ground, whatever it is, if you're anything like me, you start off with a great
idea and a lot of energy but eventually you get into the project and you're so inundated with
choices that you could make that you just feel paralyzed. You fall victim to what's
called analysis paralysis and that leads to you never finishing, and in many cases, abandoning the project. And while there may be
other factors to blame here, I truly believe it is
the abundance of choice more than any other factor
that causes most of us to abandon the projects we start, especially personal projects
that don't have real deadlines. Too much choice can make us unproductive. It can paralyze us. There's actually scientific
evidence to back this up. Back in 2000, to just
give you one example, there was a study done where they set up these two booths for people
to sample different types of jams in supermarkets. One booth had only six
types of jam to sample and the other booth had 24. Now, the booth that had 24 jams had 150% more visitors, but only 3% of those people
actually bought a jar of jam. Meanwhile, over at the booth
that just had six types of jam, 30% of the people who walked
up and tried something ended up buying a jar
and going home with it. And if too much choice can affect our buying
decisions negatively, then it absolutely affects
our tendency to take action on our projects as well. So at this point the
answer to this problem should hopefully be obvious. You have to create
limitations for yourself. Good limitations reduce
the number of choices that you have, which
reduces analysis paralysis and makes it much more likely
that you'll actually finish the projects that you take on. So here are four different
types of limitations that you can apply to your projects. The first one is gonna
be good ol' time limits and deadlines. I find time pressure to be one
of the most action-spurring types of limitations that
I can apply to any project and it necessarily reduces the choices that you can make because
you don't have very much time in which to make those choices. And when you're under time pressure, you often have to go by instincts, just go with whatever looks best. Now, this isn't always
good to apply to a project. Some projects really need breathing room, really need time for you
to kinda sit back and think and cycle between intense work periods and periods of rest where
you can kind of ruminate on your progress, but if you find yourself
habitually abandoning projects then it can be worthwhile
to go through the exercise of doing a project under
a strict time limit. A great example of this is the ubiquitous one our song challenge that you've probably seen here on YouTube by YouTubers like Andrew
Huang and Jared Dines, a lot of these people
have done this challenge and while the songs that come out of it aren't always the best,
it's a great exercise and it proves to them that
they can make something that is a song in under an hour. And I actually used a deadline for my little Instagram song as well. I gave myself two days
to finish it and, yeah, it's 45 seconds, but it's actually done. And that actually brings us to
our second type of limitation which is the scope limitation. It can be very useful to take on projects that have a purposefully limited scope, even if they don't seem as epic or grand as you would really like them to be. I actually made a video about this, it was called How to Make
Progress on Your Goals, I think, and that video was kind of a case study of a couple of different
people, Neal Stephenson, who is an author, and Matthew Thornson, who is a video game developer, both of whom kind of cut their
teeth on smaller projects, which gave them the ability
to tackle much bigger projects later on in their careers. And this is exactly
what you can do as well. Oftentimes you're trying to bring together a ton of different skills
that are all necessary to complete a project, but you
haven't mastered any of them, which again, makes the whole
process kind of overwhelming. So if you take on tiny little projects, they are sort of like a training ground for you to develop your
skills, make them habitual, and then apply them to
more challenging projects in the future. Our third limitation is
the limitation of the tools that you have available to you. And this can be really, really important, especially if you're doing something where you have a ton of
tools at your disposal. As a musician who has a
computer right over there with lots of virtual instruments and a bunch of real instruments sitting in this room with me,
I have a ton of choice when it comes to composing a song, and that can be a bad thing sometimes. When I'm creating a song, I can kind of just get overwhelmed with the number of instruments
I have at my disposal. So with my little Instagram song I used my acoustic guitar,
which is my favorite instrument and then I told myself
I am only allowed to use one virtual instrument to
kind of flush out the song. So I chose a little virtual
piano, called Noire, and I doubled the chords that I used and just kind of added
a little bit of low end and that was it. In addition with the music video, I could have used all the cameras, all the gear I have in the studio, but for me music videos are
something completely new and as somebody who makes
mainly educational videos, everything I've seen in the
music videos I've watched has, again, been a little bit overwhelming as somebody who wants to get into it. So for this song I told
myself I can only use that one wall over
there and I can only use one single camera, that was it. And the interesting
thing is when you reduce the amount of tools you have
available, well, as they say, "Necessity is the mother
of all invention." When you have a very limited tool set, you tend to use it a
little bit more creatively, so that's another side benefit. Finally we have a limitation that you may not have thought of before, which is to restrict your ability to undo. Now, being able to undo your mistakes can be great for many reasons, but it can also have a downside, because when you can
easily just hit Control + Z on any mistake that you make, then it becomes very easy to
let perfectionism take over. Additionally, because you
know you can always hit undo, it basically becomes
impossible to get yourself into that slightly high-pressure state where you know that there are stakes. And I think it's really important to spend at least some of your time in that state, to feel like everything
is on the line right now and that you can't hit undo. I mean, right now I'm
filming this in my studio with nobody around, which
means that I can flub line after line and it doesn't really matter. My editor is just gonna cut out the crap. And, well, sometimes it's
actually a bad thing. When I speak on stage at
conferences, I don't screw up, because people are watching me. I can't just edit things out, I have to get it right, which
means that I honestly feel a little bit more eloquent. And there is something to be said for the analog methods that
we used to use to create art. Back in the day musicians
had to record onto tape, which meant that they had
to play their part right the first time. There was no such thing as overdubbing, there was no such thing as comping. And artists and authors had
to do the exact same thing. An author had to commit to typing what was going to go
on that piece of paper when they used a typewriter, unless they wanted to
retype an entire page or use whiteout, I guess. And artists had to commit
to the brushstrokes they were putting onto their canvas, either it was right the first time, or as Bob Ross would say, "It became a happy little accident." But when you use a computer to create, you introduce the choice to undo literally every single action you take, and those choices can,
again, overwhelm you. So if you really wanna
push your creativity and ensure that you finish, try restricting your ability to undo. Either do a project in a
completely analog format or temporarily set your undo key binding to a keyboard shortcut
that you're not used to. Now, you don't have to go overboard and use these limits on
every project that you start, but again, if you find yourself
abandoning a lot of projects and you wanna see yourself
finish them more often, then try introducing some limits. Not only will this help you get rid of the analysis paralysis that is caused by too much
choice, but many times it'll also help you think
more creatively as well. And if you wanna further improve that creative thinking ability, which can not only help
you in your own projects, but in your career as well, then spend time regularly
solving tough problems that require creative thinking. Brilliant is a great source
of problems like these, especially if you also
wanna improve your mastery of math, science, or computer science. They have a library of more
than 60 in-depth courses that guide you through these subjects in an active, problem-based approach that throws you into challenging, yet bite-sized and
logically ordered problems that help you to stay interested but also improve more quickly, because you're working
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gonna full math suite with courses ranging from
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and gravitational physics. So if you wanna start learning today and improving your ability to creatively solve tough problems, head over to
brilliant.org/thomasfrank and sign up. And if you're one of the first
200 people to use that link, which you will find down
in the description below, you're even gonna get 20% off their annual premium subscription. Thanks so much for watching. Hopefully you found this video helpful. I know that this idea of using limitations has really helped me in my own work and in my ability to finish
my own creative projects, so hopefully it is useful to you as well. And if you did find it useful then maybe consider gently
fist bumping that Like button to show the YouTube algorithm what's up. You can also get
subscribed right over here if you haven't done so already and check out a couple of
other videos on this channel, which will be somewhere on the screen, hopefully not covering my face, 'cause that's what I use
to talk, but you know, maybe right over here, or right over here. And if you smash your
face into the phone screen then you will be able
to activate those videos and watch them, but if
you don't wanna do that, as always, go do whatever you want, 'cause I'm not your dad.
