James Clear: Creators must prioritize volume before intensity early on
James Clear · James Clear – Mastering Habits (Capital Allocators, EP.171) · Jan 4, 2021 · at 13:50
Author James Clear explains his creative process to Ted Seides, drawing a parallel between progressive overload in weightlifting and discovering one's writing voice through consistent output.
0:00 / 0:45exact quote · 45.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Well, I think you need to focus on volume before intensity. And what I mean by that is early on, it's kind of like in the gym. If you just roll into the gym the first day, and you try to squat 500 pounds, it's not going to go very well. But if instead, you just work your way up slowly, and you start with the bar, and then you show up the next day, and you put a little weight on it, and you do that for 10 years, well, then maybe you have a chance of squatting 500 pounds. But you have to do volume before you do intensity. And the same thing is true for creative work, especially early on in your career, because for me at least, I didn't know my voice, I didn't know what I wanted to say, I didn't know how I wanted to say it, or what my style was, and so by writing a new article every Monday and Thursday, I got a lot of reps in, and you start to gradually refine your approach”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from James Clear
Clear: Writing weekly on a topic for years makes one an expert
“You can become an expert by writing about something every week, because once you get two or three years in, It's like, yeah, actually, it turns out there are very few people who've written a hundred articles on habits, and so you learn a lot along the way”
Clear: Most 'how-to' books only explain 'what-to' or 'why-to'
“Most how-to books are not actually how-to. They're what-to. They're what you should want or why-to.”
Clear: Modern creators risk becoming disconnected ivory tower academics
“I think there is a potential danger in these kind of new age content creators becoming sort of new versions of academics in an ivory tower where you just share ideas all day but you don't actually have to implement them”
James Clear: Core research method is 'curating the curators' for consensus
“For me, the best strategy that I have so far is to essentially curate the curators. So I try to find people who are trusted sources in each domain, and then I use them as my proxy to say they're going to act as my experts, and if they say this is more or less …”
Clear: Creators should never hoard ideas and lead with their best
“Every interaction, you should always lead with the best idea that you have at the time... Never save your best idea for the next week. And I think that idea of like never save your best thing, always send it out to the audience. That kind of serves you well. L…”