Stressed out? Try the one next thing.
“We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star” – Stephen Hawking.
I think it was supposed to put our troubles into perspective, but sometimes events can be overwhelming…
For reasons I may one day write about, we’ve decided to move out of London. It happened very, very fast . We went from a vague, ‘let’s have a look at options’ in May, to a signing for a rental in Winchester in June. Then we decluttered and put our house on the market, applied and got three girls into new schools (two of them started on Monday) and are now working through the summer’s “grid of doom” planning the move proper.
There was a point during all this when I completely and utterly lost it and called my friend Danielle—stressed-beyond-breathing—to tell her I couldn’t see a way through it all.
She dropped the most useful one-liner of all time:
“Just do the one next thing. Nothing else”
That simplicity and clarity has seen us through a crazy storm without a breakdown (yet!).
Which also made me ask myself…
Why do I make videos?
I sought advice from Chris Wright, fellow LinkedIn video creator, on the beautiful terrace of the Mandarin Oriental hotel in London. (check out his wild stories and fab music).
We chatted Queen Victoria, drunken dog buying, and Japanese gender rules. Along the way, we agreed three realities:
Stories make the best content. Your content doesn’t have to exactly match what you do—in fact that might be dull. I try not to bore you shitless with research… and he steers away from marketing psychology: but both underpin what we make.
Performance and content are key, but making it sing demands the right tech and kit.
What you publish changes your identity… but only slowly. You don’t need to start as a creator. Chris is confident with that description, I find the word too grand for me. I’m still experimenting… we’ll come back to being ‘acreator’ some other day.
My question for you today is: what is the one next thing for you?
Next week?
On which note, I am going to take a short break for the next few weeks to hang out in removals vans. Will see you on the other side.
Christine
