Better the nth time
Through repetition we hone our ideas and our voice. And over time, those ideas and that voice become distinctive enough to be recognizably ours.
The other night, I went out for a walk just before sunset. Ever the multitasker, I recorded a video for TikTok while I was out.
It was unscripted but came together very nicely, or so I thought. Because when I went to edit it, I discovered that I had captured a lot of sky and double chin.
Yes, that’s right: Instead of recording myself speaking, I had recorded the pauses in between my words. A bit more avant garde than I was hoping for.
Still, I was more amused than annoyed. This kind of thing had to happen sometime. But it took me less than ten minutes to record the first version, and I knew that the second time around would take even less time and effort. After all, I had done all the good thinking the first time. As a result, I would be even better the second time.
My passion for repetition comes out of my past as a musician, when slowly going over the same passage again and again would magically yield the ability to effortlessly perform that passage later on.
As a teacher of everything from math to writing, I observed how repetition, over time, reduced the effort that it took a student to achieve the same result, making them more confident and better able to add complexity or difficulty.
And as a writer, coach, and creator, I have observed that returning to the same ideas over and over improves my ability to explain them and build on them.
Thus, if you’re one of those people who wants to create an online course, your journey will be that much easier if you have taught that same material a million times directly to actual humans before you create the recorded, DIY version.
You know, the real secret of a thought leader like Seth Godin is that he talks about the same stuff all the time, approaching it from different angles and offering different contexts. That’s not to diminish his creativity or insight — it's just to point out that he doesn’t carry the burden that so many of us do of believing that he needs to come up with something wholly new. We don’t need that from him. We need him to show up and sound like Seth Godin.
In fact, any musician who has become a household name has learned the same lesson. Elton John sounds like Elton John. Mariah Carey sounds like Mariah Carey. Even when they reinvent themselves, their sound will be recognizable. It better be.
So, through repetition we hone our ideas and our voice. And over time, those ideas and that voice become distinctive enough to be recognizably ours. By that point, we’ll be making it look easy, too, because it will be. We’ve just done it so many times.
When you’re at the beginning, it’s just annoying to have to repeat yourself. It’s frustrating to have to re-do takes where you stumble and stutter. It’s demoralizing to have to create yet another piece of content that probably no one will see or care about.
And yet, that’s how we get better and eventually, get noticed. There’s no guarantee of success, but it’s hard to imagine success without putting in that work.
Thus concludes yet another article on the topic of repetition. I think this one is an improvement on the others I’ve written. Hopefully!
First pancake is never right. Gotta keep at it.