Good Friend, Bad Master

This week’s topic comes from Guillaume Regaudie, a singer-songwriter and voiceover artist from near Montreal, who wrote in with the following – 

Guillaume: ’When you engage yourself as a YouTuber, or a content creator on Instagram or Facebook, do you NEED, to spend some time scrolling on these platforms, to see what's up, what are the trends, etc.? Here is my personal dilemma: I feel the need to reach my audience with other means than my music, my songs, BUT, I feel trapped when I scroll on YouTube; everything is interesting and suddenly 1 hour has passed and I lose my creativity. 

I want to be the one that feeds, not the one that is fed. 

Second question: Do you have a discipline for social media? Do you plan the moments where you feed the social medias?’ 

I think this is a very worthy topic for discussion. When thinking about my response, a phrase came to mind – ‘good friend, bad master’. It’s been applied to alcohol and money, but is equally applicable here. 

Like many of us, I can’t help but notice the time drain away on these platforms. Before I know it, my work-related viewing has shifted into gym fails, or snoring dogs, or Go-Pro footage of skydiving, and I’ve forgotten what I was there for in the first place.

That’s what they’re designed to do after all, keep your eyes on the screen. At their worst, they’re ruining our collective attention span, our appreciation of the moment, and our ability to have a nuanced discussion with one another. 

But, they’ve also been the ultimate tool for me to get my work out into the world and connect with likeminded people (like you). 

It was through watching YouTube on my lunch break at work, especially the daily vlogs of the YouTube legend Casey Neistat, that really inspired me to take it seriously and see its potential. 

So yes, I fell in love with the platform and still believe that if you want to work using a powerful tool like YouTube, you need to do your homework.

Responding to trends can be a great way of building up your audience – a few years ago, Rob Scallon set himself a challenge of writing and recording a song in an hour, so I thought I’d do the same. I was the first person to copy him, and while other people got much bigger hits, it still felt cool to be a part of the gang and show them what I could do.

So I do advocate a daily (time-limited) dose of whatever your poison is – although probably the less time spent on Twitter/X the better. That one seems to drive people a little loco. 

I can preach self-discipline of course, but given the power of these platforms, it’s not as easy as that. Johann Hari’s excellent book on social media, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, ends with the following advice, which I’ll summarise:

1.) Stop switching tasks so much. Our brains are not designed to do many things at once. If you need to focus, but find yourself reaching for your phone, then leave the phone in the next room, turn your Wi-Fi off, or install time limit plugins to your browser. If you want to change your behaviour then set yourself up to succeed by removing temptation.

2.) Change the way you respond to distraction. Rather than berating yourself that you’re lazy, and shame spiralling, ask what you can do to achieve flow state – the deepest form of focus when creating, where hours pass in seconds. Choose a task, one with meaning, that pushes you to the edge of your ability – you’ll recognise flow when it happens. 

3.) Take time off social media. Hari takes six months off a year to focus on writing. That’s easier said than done for those of us needing to promote ourselves all year round – but there are plenty of scheduling sites like later.com (not sponsored, but I use it) that mean you can set up several months’ worth of social posts in a morning, and then spend your time on other, more creative pursuits.

4.) Recognise the importance of mind wandering. Divergent thinking is where our great ideas happen, but with a constant source of distraction in your pocket, it’s never been easier to fend off boredom. Go for a walk without your phone, resist the urge to check Instagram in a queue, leave the headphones in your bag once in a while. You never know what might spring to mind. 

5.) Sleep, and dreams are vitally important. Don’t take your phone to bed, and do everything you can to prioritise good rest. ‘Yesterday’ came to Paul McCartney in a dream after all. 

Mary x

(Independent Artist of the week: Thanks to Kim Lachance for writing in with the news her acoustic alt rock duo Two Bad Bricks’ latest single Bleeding Red has won Best New Music Video at the Hollywood Blood Horror Film Festival. Congratulations! Be sure to check the video on YouTube. The band recently ran a successful crowdfunding campaign to record their debut album, so we can expect to hear more from them in the future.

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