We're spoiled superheroes
Could you reinvent the wheel?
I watched this youtube video, “why it took 200,000 years to invent the wheel“ where the YouTuber gave her friends rope, wood, and basic metal tools to reinvent the wheel from scratch. It took longer than you would think.
It’s a fun thought experiment but even harder in practice. I remembered this video after watching The Menu, a horror-comedy movie centered around the contrast between those who create, make, or otherwise provide service and those who instead consume without regard. The builders versus the spoiled.
We’re all spoiled:
The movie is a fine dining experience through the eyes of what I viewed as different examples of how society is spoiled; we don’t comprehend the effort it takes to make great things. Sorry about the tiny spoilers that follow.
One attendee is a food fanatic — a fan of the chef that obnoxiously tries to complete the chef’s sentences as the courses are introduced. This guest is passionate but appears arrogant by misjudging his knowledge, as compared to the expertise of cooks who are in the kitchen each and every day.
Another is a rich group who can afford the meal but do not have a taste or appreciation for it as a fanatic or critic does. When I told my friend Rebecca about this movie, she brought up that NOMA, the best fine-dining restaurant in the world, is closing because of grueling hours and intense workplace culture. Builders care about more than just the money.
Mr. Beast
Mr. Beast is another creator whose work most of us don’t comprehend.
Mr. Beast is a 24-year-old YouTuber with over 100 million subs. He’s known for his stunts and large giveaways, like my favorite one: a 47-second short where he paid someone to go to Paris to get baguettes for him.
Mr. Beast believes that people, even other YouTubers, underrate the work it takes to make a successful video. How hard is it to make a video where you give away an island?
When he tried to shoot it, he discovered that you couldn't find private islands that don't look like shit for less than $10 million (He only makes about $1 million from a great video). But then he tried to find alternatives.
Okay, well what if we just buy a $2 million island that sucks, and then spend a million dollars importing some sand. Let's build a beach. Let's import 300 trees. Let's build a little bit of canal. Let's cut some paths, Boom, now it's a really nice island, but it's actually affordable
(and this video acts as a loss leader because it generates more Mr. Beast buzz when people like me write about it)
We underestimate how much work it takes when we spectate. But this is only true for the areas where we are not training to be experts. I didn’t imagine the dedication and effort it takes to produce a $500 meal or a video with over 100M views.
But we overestimate the effort in our own arenas. That is, we’re Superheroes in training.
Superheroes in training
Mr. Beast’s advice to early YouTubers:
Make a 100 videos and improve something every time. That’s it. Maybe on your 101st video we can talk about getting views.
Today, we have direct access to some of the most successful people in the world. You can study Mr. Beast directly from his videos and his advice. You can study Elon’s Twitter mistakes as an aspiring techpreneur. The internet has given us a front seat.
From James Clear’s 3-2-1 newsletter
Deconstruct the cool things you see.
If you'd like to become a better musician and you see an amazing performance, start paying attention to how they do it. How did they promote the event? What happens in the first ten seconds of each song? How frequently are they engaging directly with the audience? Is there a progression of energy throughout the show?
When something fascinates you, pay attention to the details. The person who thinks, "That was cool" is a consumer. The person who thinks, "How did they make something that cool?" is on the path to being a creator.
Don't just taste the recipe, look for the ingredients.
If your third youtube video doesn’t get many views, you may think you’ll never become Mr. Beast. After all, we’re spoiled and don’t appreciate how much work it takes. But we forget that not only was Mr. Beast once in our position, but we also have to be patient to let compounding do its thing.
If two world-class creators (Ed Sheeran and Neil Gaiman) share the exact same creative process, I get curious.I call their approach the Creativity Faucet:
Visualize your creativity as a backed-up pipe of water. The first mile is packed with wastewater. This wastewater must be emptied before the clear water arrives.
Because your pipe has only one faucet, there's no shortcut to achieving clarity other than first emptying the wastewater. — Julian Shapiro
Yes, practice more humility and gratitude at the wonders of TikTok videos, fine dining, software applications, music videos, and even great books that we’re spoiled with.
But don’t sell yourself short in your own arena. Put in the work. Compounded over the long term, we’re Superheroes.
The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think. — Marc Andresseen
Thanks to Rebecca Jiang and Pia Singh for reading drafts of this.
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