Plant the Seeds for Future Streams

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 206 - Plant the Seeds for Future Streams

It’s easy to think that large, singular ideas are what make the most important changes for a Twitch streamer. This new feature on the show, that new game you’re playing, or a new schedule you announced to your followers. But gimmicks like this only act as a shot in the arm for a Twitch channel. They don’t actually make you any better of a streamer. In reality, like planting a seed and continuing to water it over time, great changes on a Twitch channel are effected by making continuous small efforts each day. In this entry, we’ll talk about planting the seeds for future streams. 

➢ STICKING TO YOUR WORD

Let’s say you’ve just announced to your followers that you’re going to start streaming on a new schedule. Mondays are for horror games, Thursdays are for sidescrollers and Saturdays are when you play competitive shooters with your community. This is great, and it might even get a positive boost in attention from your community, but this announcement, while exciting, doesn’t represent any actual progress. Not yet at least. What will really decide the excellence of your plan is whether you’re disciplined enough to stick to this schedule you’ve committed yourself to. If you start missing your Thursday shows because you continuously have to work late, your promises for Thursday content don’t really count for much. 

Your plan for playing spooky games only 
matters if you can stick to it.

These kinds of things usually come back to your general discipline. Can you stick to habits once you start them? This is a difficult but necessary skill for anyone who wants to grow as a streamer, or even to keep streaming in general. Once you have built a solid foundation of discipline however, it usually carries over from one thing to another. For example, following your pre-stream setup routine consistently might make you more likely to stick to your live schedule a year from now, and that might make you better at consistently posting your content on TikTok the year after that. These are all different activities, but they all involve the same mindset. You make a habit and you stick to it. In the entry Solidify Your Streaming Habits I spoke about how I obey the systems I’ve built without question, and this has helped me to improve several aspects of my content, and keep my shows coming out no matter what. 

➢ BUILDING MOMENTUM

The book Good to Great by Jim Collins is primarily about business, but many of its teachings apply to pretty much any field. One of the anecdotes that stuck with me (at the risk of now mixing the metaphors of this entry) was his idea of the ‘Flywheel Effect.’ Here’s how he describes this concept on his website: 

“No matter how dramatic the end result, good-to-great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant, heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough, and beyond.”

Pirate ships also have big, heavy wheels.

At first, the massive wheel (which, in his example, is 30 feet in diameter and weighs 5,000 pounds) is so huge that it takes hours of pushing just to make it turn once on its axis. But as you keep going, the momentum you’ve built up with the wheel makes it easier and easier to push. Eventually, if you don’t give up the momentum, the wheel begins spinning with such force that it’s nearly unstoppable. Collins goes on to say, “Now suppose someone came along and asked, “What was the one big push that caused this thing to go so fast?” You wouldn’t be able to answer; it’s just a nonsensical question. Was it the first push? The second? The fifth? The hundredth? No! It was all of them added together in an overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction. Some pushes may have been bigger than others, but any single heave—no matter how large—reflects a small fraction of the entire cumulative effect upon the flywheel.”

When you stream on Twitch, you’re pushing your own massive flywheel. Yes, the first push is important in a symbolic sense, but that push won’t create much actual movement in the wheel itself. It’s only once you’ve stuck to your regimen and kept up the momentum that you can truly begin to see results. 

➢ INDIVIDUAL PARTS

And while your stream as a whole is churning along under the sway of this massive wheel, the individual parts are also influenced by what you do each day, sort of like a garden. There are dozens or even hundreds of little things that get done on a stream each time you go live. Are you committing to good habits when doing these things, or are you taking the easy way out? Even if your work gets done and looks good today, doing it with a bad technique may be planting the seed for negative results to show themselves later. The entry I referenced above, Solidify Your Streaming Habits, talked about something which has helped me a lot on my streams. If I skip a step in my pre-stream setup process, even if it’s not a necessary step for the stream I’m about to do at that moment, I’ll start the whole process over from the beginning. In the past I’ve had habits turn sour, and I realized that it was moment-to-moment leniency which allowed the bad seeds to take root. Like with a garden, you can’t see the results of your work on the same day that you , but they will show themselves eventually. Make sure that on your own streams you’re nurturing only the habits that will yield strong growth. 

Streaming from Japan

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 204 - Streaming from Japan

A few days ago, I arrived back in the US from Tokyo. Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Nick, weren’t you just in Japan?” You’d be right! I took a short trip two months ago, and then came back again last month for another 18-day stay. Once you’ve been there, it’s a hard place to stay away from! I’ve been to Japan five times now. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on the country by any means, but I’ve been there often enough to have a general idea of what’s right and wrong, and I can speak the language well enough at this point to avoid most major snafus. On top of that, I have the somewhat specialized distinction of having livestreamed regularly from Japan on three different trips. In this entry, I’m going to share some of my thoughts and experiences as an American in Japan, both as a Twitch streamer and as a traveler in general. If you’re planning a trip of your own, hopefully this will help you to avoid some of the larger sticking points for foreigners. 

➢ FILM RESPONSIBLY

Japan is one of the tech capitals of the world. When you’re there, you’ll see things that westerners could only dream about. But just because the country in general is responsible for much of the modern world of electronics and video games doesn’t mean that everyone there is comfortable with technology being in their face. As a Twitch streamer creating IRL content in a foreign country, it’s always important to be extra-sensitive to what may or may not be appropriate. Of the kinds of places I’d frequent, there are three locations that are off-limits for filming: bars, arcades and trains. The idea of not filming in bars you can probably understand without me explaining it to you. Arcades however, are probably a bit more of a surprise. Or at least they were to me. I’m not entirely sure about the cultural paradigm here, but it’s generally considered very bad form to film (or even take photos sometimes) in a Japanese arcade. Trains are a pretty obvious one as well. Someone else doesn’t want to be face-to-face with a random livestreamer while trapped in close-quarters on a train. It’s also useful to keep in mind that you’re not really supposed to talk at all on a Japanese train. So depending on what kind of stream you do, you probably wouldn’t want to stream on a train anyway. Having said all this, I’ve filmed in all three locations at different times, keeping in mind basic manners. It helps to know the language in this regard. I’ve gotten permission on entering an empty bar to film myself, I’ve asked arcade employees about shooting video of the game I was playing, and I’ve gotten onto mostly empty trains to point my camera out the window the whole trip. Use common sense and you’ll probably be fine. 

Try to stick out as little as possible.

Like with any IRL streaming setup, the quality of your final video isn’t the only important thing to consider. Your crazy camera rig with numerous massive accessories may create a brilliant looking broadcast, but it’s also likely cumbersome to carry around, and hard to blend in with. People are going to stay away from you, shops will turn you away, and you’ll get exhausted faster lugging everything around. Put simply, the larger your streaming rig, the fewer authentic experiences you’ll be able to have. If you’re planning to build a streaming backpack from scratch, or if you’re thinking of paring down an existing setup, I’d recommend sacrificing small amounts of quality for large amounts of convenience. The less intrusive you can be, the better. In the entry Travel with an IRL Streaming Backpack, I spoke about the various options you have in that department. 

Finally, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll even be able to stream from the room you’re staying in. The walls in an average Japanese residence are very thin. I’ve stayed in Japanese AirBnBs where you could hear the person sneeze in the room next to you. This meant I had to adjust the way I did my daily morning Duolingo shows, so I wouldn’t disturb everyone around me. If some part of your content requires streaming from your room, keep in mind that you may need to adjust your shows as well. 

➢ NUTS AND BOLTS

On the tech side, there are a few things to be aware of. You thankfully don’t need an adapter to plug your electronics into the wall sockets in Japan like you would in Europe, but they don’t use grounded (three-pronged) power cables over there. Make sure you’re using a two-pronged cable for whatever you use. I personally recommend getting a two-prong power strip with several ports in it. Then you can plug in whatever electronics you have without having to worry. 

One very specific technical thing I’ve noticed is that you might get a strange flickering effect while filming IRL video content in Japan. It took me a while to realize what this was, but I eventually found out it was because the fluorescent bulbs in Japan operate at a different frequency than in the USA. For anyone old enough to have been filming video in the era of CRT tube televisions, this is similar to the effect you’d get when trying to shoot video of a TV screen. Unless your shutter speed was at an exact setting, you’d get a very undesirable-looking static effect. The solution for Japan, as I found out, was to set the shutter speed in my camera to 50, rather than 60. This may already be the default depending on where you live, but it’s useful to keep in mind either way. 

➢ TRAVEL WELL

I have a few general travel tips for Japan as well, which have helped me to have progressively more interesting experiences during my time there. First, give yourself chances to explore. Instead of booking a whirlwind trip where you only see the most popular checklist items every day, build a few days into your vacation when you can simply get lost. I grew to like those parts of my stays so much that I’ve recently ended up doing entire trips that way. For my two Japan visits this year, I spent over three combined weeks just in Tokyo, by myself, without a single plan for where to go, what to do, or having looked up anything at all. I’d just pick a direction to walk every day and find places, people and food along the way. Like when playing an open-world game, sometimes the most interesting experiences on a foreign vacation are what you do between your big plans. 

Every street and alley has amazing 
places just waiting to be found.

Second, for food I recommend trying to go to small shops rather than restaurants. Get a feel for what’s popular in whichever part of the country you’re in, and try not to lean too hard into your own preconceived notions of what Japanese food looks like. For example, many friends and relatives are surprised that I almost never eat sushi in Japan, but in the parts of Tokyo I frequent that’s not such a common food. Many dishes that westerners think of as Japanese are not as popular over there as you might expect. Ask waiters what they’d recommend, try going outside your comfort zone, and experiment. You’ll find plenty of amazing foods you’ve probably never heard of that are hugely popular among Japanese locals. Not many Americans would think of barbecue skewers or fried chicken as Japanese specialties, but in my experience these are more prevalent than any other type of food I’ve seen in the major parts of Tokyo. 

Finally, and most importantly, don’t impose your own values on the country you’re traveling to. This applies to Twitch streaming as well as general traveling. Americans tend to do a lot of complaining, and we’ve built a reputation in Japan especially for causing scenes. The cultural difference plus the language barrier essentially makes Americans into ticking time bombs of cultural faux-pas, and many Japanese businesses aren’t equipped to deal with it. Unless you speak the language, you might even get an instant refusal upon stepping through the door. I can’t say I blame them either. As an American myself, I can attest that we’re pretty annoying. I’ve watched with embarrassment as other Americans drunkenly stumbled into a peaceful little Japanese bar, or argued with a small shop’s owner-operator about something wrong with their order. If you’re going to Japan, try to let the culture sink into you, without forcing your own culture onto them. My personal trick before I could understand the language was to simply assume I was wrong in every scenario, and never complain. Even asking questions often makes Japanese people flustered, because they’ll typically assume you’re complaining in a way they can’t understand. Just try to internalize whatever happened and not do it next time. Travel like that and you’ll have a much smoother experience.

Japan is an incredible country, and if you’re planning a trip there you’re going to have an amazing time. There’s so much to see and do, I’m sure you’ll feel the same itch I always do upon getting home, that you need to go back. As an American however, I’ve done my best to respect the cultural differences and avoid becoming a nuisance. And that goes double as a Twitch streamer. Despite making some embarrassing blunders at first, I’ve since carved out a pretty solid set of guiding principles while streaming in Japan. If you’re hoping to stream during your time as well, or even just to enhance your travel experience, I hope these tips can help your trip go that much smoother. 

Solidify Your Streaming Habits

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 203 - Solidify Your Streaming Habits

Streaming is all about forming habits. In order to become consistent in your live schedule, regularly fix behind-the-scenes problems, interact with your community, or become better at speaking on camera, you need strong habits which keep you on track. I cover this subject a lot, because I’ve personally struggled with it in the past. Forming a habit, whether for streaming or for anything else, is an elusive pursuit. Oftentimes as soon as you think you have a grip on a certain habit, it slips right out of your hands. Today, we’ll go into a few more of my thoughts about forming habits, and how to stick to them once you start. 

➢ OBEY WITHOUT QUESTION

Imagine you’re driving a car on a road with no other cars or pedestrians in sight. You come to a red traffic light. Even though there’s nobody around, it’s likely you’ll still stop your car. The light turns green and you keep driving. Now you come to a stop sign. Suddenly your level of obedience might change. You look around and there’s still no person or vehicle in view at all. Maybe instead of coming to a full stop, you simply slow down and then keep going. I’m not saying that’s the right thing to do, but it’s definitely not uncommon among drivers. Your mileage with this analogy may vary, especially based on where you live, but you can see what I’m getting at. Both of these signals legally require you to stop your car, and under normal traffic circumstances most drivers will stop at both. But when put into a situation where the driver’s judgment says there’s absolutely no need to stop, they might ignore or only half-obey the stop sign, while still stopping at the red light. 

Maybe these drivers wouldn't stop at 
a red light. But you definitely should!

Twitch streamers, when they’ve built a streaming habit, will treat their streams as either a traffic light or a stop sign. Anyone can stream when they feel like streaming. But when the day gets busy, or we’re tired, or we don’t like the way we look, that’s when we really find out what kind of habit we’ve built. There are very few reasons I can think of that would ever make me want to miss a stream. And to be honest, most of those reasons are so horrible I’d rather not think of them. Like when stopping at a red light on a deserted street, I simply obey the habit I’ve built. I don’t make a value judgment, and I don’t deviate from the routine. I stop the car. And when a new day comes around, it doesn’t matter how badly I want to skip my stream that day, or how tired I’m feeling. I just do the show. 

That’s not to say I always do the show the same way. As I’ve laid out in many entries, whether you do the actual livestream should never be up for debate, but the way you do them should. If you’re tired, go live for as long as you can and then stop early. If you don’t like how you look today, turn off the camera. Instead of having ‘no stream today’ as an option on the table, imagine how you’d solve the same problem while still doing your stream. In the entry Become a Solution-Oriented Streamer, I posed one of the biggest problems a streamer can face: a lack of suitable internet to do a broadcast. And then I gave examples of three different ways I’ve solved the same problem on my own channel over the years. Each solution was chosen based on what was important to the specific stream I was doing at the time. You’ll find that when you stay solution-oriented, you can suddenly see where sacrifices are possible without hurting the core of what you’re trying to create. 

➢ PUTTING HABITS INTO PRACTICE

Now, all of this is fine to think about in theory, but actually enacting a habit in reality is difficult to do. I’ve been able to keep this kind of unshakeable mindset about my streams by simultaneously building up the ability to follow my own orders. That takes time and practice. I can’t overtly make you any better at upholding your habits- that’s something you have to do yourself. What I can do is show you the kind of mindset that will help to facilitate those habits. The entry How to Get in the Habit of Streaming explored how life can (and will) throw obstacles in your way, whenever you want to try to form a new habit. Learning to stream consistently is partly about battling this unpredictability, and partly about learning to work around it. In that entry, I talked about how I use a calendar app to schedule my day. I can easily shift items around when necessary, which helps with the unpredictability of everyday life, and I can easily see what personal or stream-related plans I have coming up, so nothing takes me by surprise unnecessarily. 

Stream without obstacles!

The entry Strengthen Your Twitch Habits introduced an unexpectedly effective strategy, which has served me well for the past 10+ years. In college, I always used to forget my room key, causing me to get locked out of my dorm room quite often. To combat this, I simply shifted my habit from the mental to the physical. Instead of asking myself whether I had my key before leaving the room (which I clearly couldn’t bring myself to do consistently enough), I would instead stop the door from closing with my foot every time I left the room. No matter what, that door would be stopped before it could close. Then I’d have to look in my pocket, physically hold the key and be looking straight at it. Only then could I close the door. I haven’t been locked out a single time in the ten years since. It sounds absurd- if I couldn’t stick to the first habit, why would switching to another habit be any different? I think the physicality of this habit might reach a different part of the brain than the purely mental process used to. What do I know though? I’m no scientist. All I know is that it worked. 

I’ve since enacted this same rigid habit-forming strategy in several aspects of my Twitch streams. If I forget to do a step in my pre-stream setup process, even if it’s not necessary for that particular stream, I’ll actually start the entire setup process again from the beginning. Not because I needed that step to necessarily happen in that order to make the stream work, but because it creates a strong mental association. Like an actor on stage using their co-star’s lines to remember their own cues, doing everything in a certain order in my setup process allows me to avoid missing crucial steps when it really counts. This sounds obsessive, but don’t knock it until you try it. Habits are built on repetition, so the more repetition you can create for non-creative aspects of your stream, the better. And the better you are at executing various stream tasks, the less friction you’ll have in forming the larger habit of going live in general. 

➢ RITUAL IS KEY

The ritual of stopping my door to remember my keys, along with the stream setup routine, are both examples where I’ve turned my habits into a traffic light rather than a stop sign. No matter what, and absolutely without question, I obey these time-tested rules I’ve set for myself. Every single time. Many people are uncomfortable with this kind of robotic compliance, but I can tell you it works wonders. Take some time to build a ‘traffic light habit’ of your own, for whichever aspect of your stream’s consistency is giving you the most trouble, and see your frequency of mistakes come to a halt. 

Growth Check-In: How Are You Doing?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 202 - Growth Check-In: How Are You Doing?

I talk a lot about Twitch streaming on this podcast. One would hope so, I suppose, considering its title and theme. But there’s a critical factor in making Twitch streams which I also try to focus on: the Twitch streamer. Whether on camera, on a microphone, or pulling strings behind the scenes, a Twitch stream needs a streamer to make it go live. And optimizing your stream isn’t just about making things look better on a broadcast. Make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well. In this growth check-in entry, we’re going to focus on your stream’s greatest asset: you. 

➢ FIND HAPPINESS ON STREAM

If you’re going to spend lots of time streaming on Twitch, it’s critical that your actual streams bring you joy. In the entry One Must Imagine the Streamer Happy, I spoke about the concept of a ‘Sisyphean task,’ where an end goal can never truly be reached, because any goal you set is always replaced by another. Streaming, of course, is a Sisyphean task in itself. You’ll never really be done with it, short of giving up, and any goal that you think will bring you contentment now will only be replaced by another goal once it’s reached. This can be a great source of stress and dejection for streamers, but I personally see it as a positive thing. We have the ability to do something we love for as long as we want to do it, and we call the shots on our own channels. If you learn to love the climb, rather than looking forward to reaching the summit, you’ll be in a much better headspace for streaming.  

Embracing your passions can help you 
become happier on stream.

There are also ways to reinvigorate yourself by using your streams to advance your larger ambitions. In the entry Let Twitch Further Your Goals, I spoke about how I was able to utilize the various failed and discontinued ideas from my past Twitch broadcasts in order to help accomplish a major life goal: self-publishing an illustrated book! This was an instance where streaming my progress making the book on Twitch not only kept me accountable and on-track during the project, but I also gained the ability to see my work grow from its infancy to the final product. I feel immensely proud of this accomplishment, and it means even more to me that I was able to do it on my Twitch channel. The entry Create Streams You Identify With goes even deeper into this mindset. Many people never even start streaming because of a perceived flaw in their character. They feel that people won’t accept their shows because of how they talk, or how they look, or the kind of content they want to show. As I said in that entry, I won’t trivialize whatever aspect of streaming they’re scared of sharing- the fear itself is real. But pushing past that fear can bring great happiness and fulfillment. It’s often said that we’re usually afraid of doing the things we desire most. Let that feeling guide you toward your greatest ambitions. 

➢ DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY

If you’ve been streaming for a while, you may be running into a problem which new streamers will find hard to understand. The entry Your Content Should Make You Happy dealt with the idea of a project growing large enough that it begins to threaten your creative vision. This implicit pressure happens in any field, and Twitch streaming is certainly not immune. Many of us feel we need to start adding things, or changing the scope of our content, once it reaches a certain point. This occurs because we see others doing the same, because we start receiving requests from viewers (who are also watching others do the same), or just because we get antsy and feel the need to change. I’m always pro-change on a Twitch stream- I think it’s healthy and can help to jumpstart your creativity. But oftentimes these kinds of pressure-based growth changes can do more harm than good. 

Some streamers feel trapped when they reposition their whole channel around playing one game for example, as I explored in the entry The Dangers of Attaching Yourself to One Game. In the entry Know When Not to Do What the Audience Wants, I addressed the somewhat controversial opinion that the viewer isn’t always right. And in Streaming for Money, I spoke about how even monetization in general can bring unforeseen headaches. Don’t forget that it’s okay not to change. If you like your content the way it is, you don’t have any responsibility to make it larger or more complicated. Sometimes it’s even about scaling back and reversing things you’ve already added. On my own brand, I’ve removed various features over the years when I realized they brought me more headache than fulfillment: custom reactions to donations, merch, even eventually monetization altogether. This doesn’t mean that everyone should dislike these things, or even that I’ll never do them again, but they weren’t right for me at the time. So I got rid of them. And I became happier because of it. 

➢ DOWNTIME IS IMPORTANT TOO

Always schedule some time for yourself.

Finally, always make sure to schedule time not to stream. In the entry Make Sure to Rest from Streaming, I spoke about how, especially for veteran streamers, the habit of working on streams can be as hard to curb as it was to create in the first place. Our minds can easily end up ‘taking our work home with us,’ and we might be distracted during other important life events because we’re too busy thinking about our streams and how to make them better. Schedule time every once in a while to make a clean break from streaming, working on your streams, or even from thinking about streaming. You’ll thank yourself later. 

Even though this podcast mainly deals with the subject of optimizing a Twitch channel, that doesn’t mean Twitch is the only thing I think about. As we’ve explored here today, it’s very important to keep track of your own well-being while streaming. Sometimes, your Twitch streams can help you to achieve a life passion that you weren’t able, or weren’t motivated enough, to achieve before. Other times, incorporating your own general interests into your streams can help you to feel more satisfied in what you do. It’s not only about adding though- many things that may already be on your channel, or that you’re planning to add, might end up hurting more than they help. Don’t be afraid to strip features away from your channel when they bring you less happiness than headache. And finally, take some time away from Twitch at regular intervals. Throughout my own Twitch journey, these various methods have helped me greatly to feel more satisfied with what I do on the platform, and more satisfied in my everyday life. So think about your own needs as a Twitch streamer, and as a human being. Is there anywhere you can help yourself become more content with what you’re doing? Don’t forget: when you take care of yourself, you’re taking care of your Twitch streams as well. 

How's Your Streaming Consistency?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 200 - How's Your Streaming Consistency?

Life can be hard. Our days get complicated, and motivation rises or falls accordingly. We can’t really predict how our week will go any more than we can perfectly predict the weather- our calculations are accurate most of the time, but there will always be unexpected surprises. As content creators, we’re trying to swim upstream against life’s usual unpredictability, and create something consistent amid the chaos. Whether we want to go live every week, every day, or multiple times per day, keeping to our schedules is much more difficult in practice than it seems on paper. Have you been able to steadily produce your shows since starting on Twitch? Have you been able to steadily work on improvements or networking goals, or whatever else you've wanted to work on? On-camera or off, there are many ways to slip in our Twitch aspirations. How can we keep ourselves on track? 

➢ A MINDSET OF CONSISTENCY

When I’ve spoken about streaming consistently throughout The Twitch Playbook, you may have found it difficult to understand where I was coming from. Many aspects of my personality may seem to clash at this nexus point. On the one hand, I often advise you to take it easy, to make whatever kind of content you prefer, and to do shows that last as long as you feel comfortable. I advise you to think outside of where most streamers operate, and create content that isn’t solely reliant on chasing metrics. Then, on the other hand, I’m constantly making vehement assertions that you should not, for almost any conceivable reason, miss your streams. No matter what you have to do, you go live. 

How do these two seemingly opposite perspectives make sense together? Did I change my mind? Am I simply contradicting my own suggestions? Or am I just trying to play both sides at the same time? 

These two warring perspectives actually 
work very well together.

Personally, I see no reason these two thought processes shouldn’t make sense together. The ‘do what you want, but just make sure you do it’ mantra is how I genuinely do conduct my own streams, and it’s led to a lot of happiness in my own streaming life. The flexibility in content and presentation allows for more creative fulfillment and personal freedom, while the rigid scheduling structure gives me a reliable routine. It can be a tough concept to grasp, but if you want to do something you love, you have to actively work to make it happen. People usually expect that their love of the thing itself is enough, but that really doesn't carry us very far in practice. In fact, it’s precisely this love for the task which often stops us from continuing to pursue our most deeply held passions. How's that for irony? We get too precious about it, and rather than do something that doesn’t live up to our standards, we’ll opt to give it up altogether. We’d rather keep a perfect image in our heads of what we would have made, rather than make something real, but less than perfect. It’s not glamorous to say, but following our dreams is often less about ‘following’ than it is about ‘dragging ourselves kicking and screaming.’

➢ JUST SHOW UP

Therefore, while I always cultivate maximum creative and personal freedom in my streams, I stay incredibly strict about one subject only: that I actually do the streams. If I’m having a bad day or a busy day, I still make sure to go live. I know that whatever problem I’m having will pass, and I know that whatever the problem is, it’s not worth breaking my streak over. Emotionally, I may feel that streaming is the last thing I want to do at that moment, but I still force myself to go live. And I always thank myself for it later. 

Even the slowest car traveling consistently 
will finish the race before a fast car 
that stands still.

There’s a concept popularized on Reddit, in which the user ryans01 suggested allowing ‘no more zero days.’ The main concept behind this thought process is that you’d simply focus on doing something in service of your aspirations every day. Whether you write 2,000 words or 20, do 50 pushups or 5, draw for 3 hours or 3 minutes, if you’re doing something then it’s better than doing nothing. Doing nothing is actually more dangerous than most of us expect. It’s habit forming, and it’s confidence-draining. When you do nothing towards your goal one day, it’s easy to fast forward and suddenly find you’ve done nothing towards that goal for a whole week, month or year. Instead, you’d avoid those ‘zero days’ in which you do nothing, by simply doing whatever you can each day. 

In Twitch Playbook entries like Streaming in the Face of Futility, I’ve talked about this as well. ‘Compromise’ isn’t a word that creative people typically like to hear, but it’s one you should be paying more attention to. Compromises will save your creative life. And that includes Twitch streaming. Long shows, high production value, going live at an exactly appointed time, and other traditional concepts be damned. These are nice-to-haves, but if you can’t do them on a certain day, then just do something different. As long as you do a stream. Don’t let arbitrarily chosen standards send you into a spiral of missed days and broken promises. Do what you can today, and do better tomorrow. No more zero days. 

➢ ASSESS YOUR STREAMS 

If you’ve been having trouble streaming consistently recently, keep this concept in mind. Do what you want, but make sure you do it. Or, in the much more eloquent words of ryans01, no more zero days. Even if you don’t have a problem with missing broadcasts, this concept can still help you. You can apply the same principle to putting in work on your show behind the scenes, seeking out creative partnerships, engaging with your Discord, or building connections with other streamers. Do something towards your goal every day. No matter what it is, it’s more than you would have done if you did nothing. Keeping this priority at the forefront of your mind will help you be much more consistent on Twitch. 

How Long Does It Take to Master Streaming?

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 198 - How Long Does It Take to Master Streaming?

As Twitch streamers, many of us aspire to reach a point where our streams no longer need to be changed or worried over- where there are no more problems occurring, and there are no more additions to make. Maybe we’re making enough money from going live to pay our bills and quit our jobs, or we’ve leveraged our streams to start a larger personal brand. The dream looks different for everyone, but the general idea is the same. It would be a point where we’ve found the ultimate final product for our content- a point where we’ve finally mastered streaming. 

In my opinion however, this is an unattainable goal. Yes, we can reach the objectives we set out for ourselves, but doing those things won’t really make us masters. There will always be something more to do, something else to fix or change, and new ways to interpret our content. Streaming is a lifelong craft. Like with any long-term pursuit, whether it’s in health, education, romance, craftsmanship, or anything else, you may start with a goal in mind, but by the time you’ve reached it, you’re at risk of losing what you built if you don’t keep going.

➢ THE PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE

In George Leonard’s book Mastery, he quotes a martial arts student studying aikido. “How long will it take me to master Aikido?” a prospective student asks.“How long do you expect to live?” is, as Leonard puts it, the only respectable response. This book, which I’d recommend to anyone trying to pursue excellence in what they do, goes on to explore how true greatness requires one to remove their focus from arbitrary goals and instead simply keep exploring their craft. As he says, those with aspirations to reach a certain point typically burn themselves out before reaching them, whereas those who take pleasure in the everyday act of pursuing the craft itself surpass all expectations. 

Masters learn to make the act itself into
a habit.

I’ve noticed a similar concept while learning Japanese. Most of the time, those who try to learn the language do so with a specific objective in mind. They want to be able to watch their favorite anime shows without the subtitles turned on, or they want to be like one of those YouTubers who surprises natives by speaking perfectly. But in my experience, I’ve found that such objectives don’t take people very far. They’re such far-off goals that they aren’t even practical to consider when starting out. Typically, once these students pass the beginner stage and reach the point where they’re skilled enough to recognize how long the journey will really be, they lose interest. Personally, I’ve been lucky to avoid the demotivation of long-term goals in my language learning, though it wasn’t from careful calculation- I just sort of stumbled onto a style that worked for me. I set out merely wanting to have conversations, and as soon as I could string three words together I began talking to Japanese speakers. Whether in person or online, I forced myself out of my comfort zone and constantly made a fool of myself. Every time I could say something a little bit better, it became another motivating factor to keep going. These small victories really defined my experience in learning so far. George Leonard quotes a zen saying in the book I mentioned above: “When you’ve reached the top of the mountain, keep on climbing.” In my experience, little victories are the key. If you love what you do, then every time you engage in that activity you’ll be accomplishing your goal in some small way.

➢ CONTINUING IS MASTERING

Twitch streaming is much the same for me. I started out on my personal channel being more traditionally ambitious, planning out and projecting everything with certain growth goals in mind. But after a while, I realized that if I want to do this for the long term and be happy doing it, I had to remove myself from the rat race. In the Twitch Playbook entry One Must Imagine the Streamer Happy, I compared the act of streaming to the Greek character Sisyphus pushing his boulder up a cliff. He’s doomed to never finish his task, only keep pushing. But in that entry, I spoke about how the endless pursuit is something we need to come to terms with if we’re going to truly love streaming. Even if you’ve reached a plateau where nothing on your shows is changing anymore, there’s nothing wrong with simply continuing without improvement. You never know where your journey might take you. There’s no end point, short of giving up, so why not learn to find enjoyment in the act itself? 

Those who love the climb can also 
benefit from removing focus from 
end goals.

If you’re someone who does genuinely find joy in the climb, there’s nothing wrong with that either. I’m certainly not saying you have to conduct your streams in a particular way to be happy. Be careful not to mistake the moments when I say “I didn’t like streaming this way” for me saying “nobody should like streaming this way.” And this philosophy of learning to love the craft without focusing on goals doesn’t exclude those who love reaching for higher and higher targets. For two years before starting my current Twitch channel, I worked for a major streaming brand for a living and found genuine joy in helping to build it into an even larger network. Even during that time however, doing multiple shows each day with hundreds or thousands of live viewers per episode, I knew I’d never be finished. I had targets to hit, but I realized that none of them would ever be the finish line. I had to learn to love the pursuit itself, constantly creating and passing checkpoints, not thinking about any particular end goal. And though I later didn’t end up liking this style of creation for my own personal Twitch channel, I had a blast doing it as my 9-5 job. Essentially, all of this to say I’ve been on both sides of the fence and can sympathize with either perspective, whether you like to take it easy or push as hard as you can. 

No matter what kind of streamer you are, or what kind of content you make, your channel will always be evolving. Even if you can’t see how, there are things shifting under the surface. Allow yourself to embrace the changes and small victories, without worrying too much about where you’re going in the end. Only where you’re going right now. None of us should aspire to master our various fields in streaming, only to keep pursuing mastery. In this case, the destination lies in the journey itself. In other words: How long does it take to master streaming? How long have you got? 

Make Bad Streams to Make Good Streams

The Twitch Playbook: Tips for Twitch Streamers · 197 - Make Bad Streams to Make Good Streams

Many prospective Twitch streamers are afraid to start on their channels. And many experienced streamers are afraid to start doing something they haven’t tried before. There are any number of reasons this might occur for people, but one of the biggest ones is simple: nobody likes to be perceived as an amateur. We don’t want to put out content that doesn’t look polished, content that doesn’t command respect and admiration from those watching. And that fear of showing weakness prevents countless hopefuls from ever setting off on their journeys. 

The subject of starting is very important to me. We all have to start after all, and because I personally branch out into so many different disciplines on stream, I end up returning to the starting line quite often. For this reason, I try very hard in this resource to help others who also want to get started, whether on their thousandth broadcast but the first in a new style, or their first broadcast of all time. Every time I come up with a new way to shed light on this subject, I try to cover it again, in the hopes that this new perspective might help one more person take the plunge. After all (and be honest), have you ever ignored previous entries urging you to begin, only to keep listening to the podcast without a single stream under your belt? Whether you're a complete beginner or an expert, consider whether there’s something you want to start doing on your channel. Take this chance to promise to yourself that you’ll begin doing it today. 

➢ SOMETHING FROM NOTHING

The castle comes later.

There’s a quote which circulates around filmmaker websites attributed to the comedian-turned-Oscar-winning screenwriter Jordan Peele, about his writing process. I can’t find evidence of where he originally said it, but it’s a powerful lesson either way. It states, “When I’m writing the first draft I’m constantly reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” I think this quote is so profound, because it sheds light on a part of the creative process that we all like to glaze over. Essentially, in order to create something great, it’s necessary that we first make something lousy. It’s very rare that we hear much about the making of any project where the creator was simply putting down thoughts they knew were terrible, and wouldn’t make it to the final draft. But they wrote them down and fleshed them out anyway, because as a professional, they knew this ‘ugly stage’ was an important part of the process. 

Steven Pressfield, in his excellent book The War of Art, discusses this idea right in the opening chapter. He sits down every day to write for four hours. And about those four hours, he has this to say: “How many pages have I produced? I don’t care. Are they any good? I don’t even think about it. All that matters is that I’ve put in my time and hit it with all I’ve got.” Pressfield, like a true pro, knows that creating greatness requires diligence, not excellence. The implication in this passage is that, if he had thought too hard about what he wrote that day, he’d likely be mortified by how bad it was. Better to keep trudging on, and sort everything out once the whole draft is done. 

Many aspiring creatives become disheartened by the actual process of creating. They don’t want to go through this important stage, where everything they make is horrible and they ask themselves day in and day out whether they should just give up. Rather than building like a sand castle, many aspiring creatives would rather build their projects like an inkjet printer. A printed page, just like a sand castle, is built slowly from the bottom up, but the difference is that every mark made by a printer is perfectly representative of the final product. There’s no revision, no ugly stage, only the slow revealing of what is essentially already there. People want to create this way because they can’t bear the mental strain and embarrassment of producing something less-than-perfect, even in service to eventually making something excellent. The artist wants a sketchbook where every page looks perfectly composed and Instagram-worthy, the composer wants to write sheet music with no corrections, and the screenwriter wants a perfectly planned three-act story to pour out of their pen. Unfortunately, this is not how the creative process works. You will never create something great this way. Neither will I. Greatness requires getting one’s hands dirty, piling up wet, muddy sand, without concern for what that pile looks like, before we can start building the castle and making it look amazing. The sooner we’re able to accept that, the sooner we can truly begin. 

➢ REVISING AS YOU GO

Writers face personal demons in many 
different ways. 

Streaming on Twitch has one distinct advantage over many other creative processes: every time you make a draft, it’s broadcast live on the internet. Now, this may be a scary prospect for many beginners- after all, who wants to show their imperfections to others? But consider the alternative. The novelist could be working on drafts for years, alone with only their own thoughts and doubts as company, before ever having a version finished enough to show others. As a Twitch streamer, you may have a hard time getting yourself to go live in the first place, but after a stream is over, you can at least take comfort in having produced something. Of course, it’s not going to be everything you’d hoped for- it’ll be more akin to broadcasting the first part of a writer’s first draft. But no matter how good or bad the stream was, the simple act of finishing a stream means you will have already taken a step toward greatness. 

In the beginning, you’re merely shoveling sand onto your Twitch channel. Every broadcast you do during that time will be less-than-perfect in some way. There's no way to avoid that. But you’ll be gaining valuable experience every time you go live, and you’ll be closer to eventually shaping your channel into what it’s destined to become. So if you’re afraid to begin your streaming project, don’t think about whether it’s going to be good or bad. Just commit the time, and produce. You’re only shoveling sand, anyway. The castle comes later.