MS06: Structure, structure, structure
Alternatively: "how I learned to internalize the boring bits."
It’s Friday, and that means another newsletter. Hello! Time to admit some embarrassing things about my time management skills.
Over the last couple years I’ve realized that I’m someone who can over-explain. When it comes to pitching ideas or just documenting my process, I tend to like to cover as much as I can, because I feel like it does a good job of avoiding awkward conversations and back-and-forth.
This focus on structure was drilled into me in a weird way; I didn’t used to be like this.
When I started blogging as a teenager, a lot of my writing could be categorized as ranting. I would take a news story that would inspire some kind of emotion in me, and I would write until I felt I was done. The issue with this was the lack of organization, and the lack of limits; without them, there wasn’t a glue holding the piece together. I just kept rambling, and thought it was good.
This practice is part of why I didn’t get into journalism school on my first application — I wrote half my portfolio the night before it was due, and didn’t take it too seriously. I remember one of the pieces being some cobbled-together mess about immersing electronics in rice to save them when you got them wet. Getting that rejection letter months later woke me up pretty hard.
In going to journalism school (second try’s the charm), I eventually met a teacher in my first-year class that drilled structure into me. Until she did, my feature pieces were like my blogging: free-form, rambling, and emotional. She urged me to craft the spine of my story before even writing it; each paragraph’s function would be planned ahead of time, and I would carry that plan out.
I hated this at the time. It felt stifling. It felt boring. It felt like I was kneecapping myself, and that pieces could be so much better if I just wrote how I talked. If you ask people close to me, you’ll know that I relish space to talk, vent, or ramble — in short, I needed some limits, not only for my own sake, but the sake of my work.
Mental space
Over time, I figured out a healthy balance — in fact, I’m doing it right now, with this newsletter.
In writing out a skeleton or outline, I’m both doing the mental work of content beforehand, while also defining limits. After that’s done, I’m still allowed to write off-the-cuff, or put emotion into my work; it just needs to be done in service of the creation, rather than to hamper it.
As an example, if I was to write a profile about a streamer, my primary avenue of planning would be to figure out the “big question” that I would be looking to answer with the piece. If I was interviewing Broxh, who carves wood art on Twitch, I would have a central question that all my others would be able to work off of. Regardless of where our conversation or my research shifted, it would be my aim to relate it back to that central focus.
While this can feel restrictive at first (because what if that conversation went somewhere else?) it becomes more comfortable to do as much mental work and planning as possible to avoid having to improvise it on the spot. By planning my work, purpose, and questions beforehand, I don’t have to come up with that “why” as I’m writing the piece, or (god forbid) as I’m interviewing him.
Writing
Years ago, I read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, which a lot of business types say is an incredible resource for getting productive and organized. While I still struggle with this, I think the main thing I’ve taken with me is the power of making clear, definite statements.
In the book, Allen explains that by planning out literally every step it takes to get a task or project finished, you remove the guesswork and mental load that might be involved. It also helps to take inventory of your gaps and what you might need to fill in with research. It’s basically tracking what you know, and what you need to find out.
A similar analogy might be making a recipe: if you’ve portioned and prepared all your ingredients before you start cooking, it’s easier to just follow the directions instead of doing things one step at a time. The time it takes to prepare the ingredients for the subsequent step might mean your recipe failing, so doing it all beforehand means you can focus.
When I write, I normally do a pretty straightforward “point-subpoint/proof” system, which I find pretty similar to the scientific method taught in grade school.
For example, with this newsletter:
Point: Structure makes creating content easier.
Subpoint: Structure allows you to focus on the task at hand by reducing the amount of mental work needed to be done at the time of creation.
Subpoint: Here is how structure in writing would look
Subpoint: Structure can be done with video or streaming to the same effect.
Subpoint: Structure doesn’t need to limit flexibility because it develops discipline in thought process, allowing it to become natural. The temporary restrictions allow you to create with more confidence.
This structure may look familiar to journalists or people who had to write essays, because a very rudimentary format for those are an introductory paragraph for your statement, followed by three proof paragraphs, then a conclusion.
You’ll notice that those subpoints don’t have individual proofs written out, contrary to what Getting Things Done mentioned about documenting out every step. This is because I’ve spent the time internalizing the “hows and whys” of those points, and I feel comfortable enough spending time improvising the construction as I go. I don’t recommend people starting out like this, and I’ll touch on that in the last point.
I guess I’ve spoiled the rest of the newsletter’s contents, but hey, at least I know you’re reading up until now. I post the structures for almost everything I write on Patreon, where people can support my writing by contributing as little as $1 per post.
Video
It can be a bit challenging to apply this kind of structure to a video or stream, where the aim is to be a bit more freeform. You can’t exactly say that you’re planning to stream or talk about something for exactly X amount of minutes, but at the same time, there are things you can account for.
Being able to tell yourself that you’re going to aim for a certain degree of game time, breaks, introductions or conclusions means that they should happen, and they aren’t governed by feel. It also provides a good mental exercise of breaking down necessary things for a “good stream,” and how you can do your best to accomplish them.
For example:
Introduction (10 minutes) - accompanied by music as I catch up with chat and talk about previous streams, new content I’m working on, and how I’m doing that day.
Two games of Dota 2.
One bathroom/water/stretch break (5-10 minutes)
One game of Dota 2.
(Optional) One game of Dota 2.
Outro (discretionary length)
Looking at the above structure, it can seem overly restrictive, and almost too specific — after all, who plans exactly how many matches you’re playing? However, having that precision means that you’re both setting a standard that your audience can expect, while also giving yourself room to be flexible.
Instead of saying “another two games” after my break, I’m allowing myself to collect my feelings and thoughts after two potentially bad matches of Dota. I know that mentality and tilting can have an immediate effect, not only in the matches I play, but my enjoyment of streaming in general; if the activity is a slog, I’m going to associate it with a negative feeling.
After my break, I’ll play one more match. At that point, I’m giving myself the compassion to be able to cut my stream if that losing streak/bad mentality continues, and I’ve also budgeted my time effectively, just in case I feel like continuing. By being flexible with my outro length, I don’t feel pressured to stick around after being tilted; I can, in good conscience, say that I planned for a “I’m gonna go chat, have a good night” and a quick disconnect.
Being honest about your capabilities in your structure leads your mind to be more okay with the idea of taking care of itself in a creative environment. If you set up a structure that was idealized, but not practical, not being able to fulfill it would be demoralizing.
This is counter-productive to your goal of providing consistent value. It is much, much better to be honest about your limits and mental state in this way, rather than ending up beating yourself up for not being able to hit a lofty goal. It is both specific, yet forgiving in the event of uncertainty. We’re doing what we can do.
Removing the limiter
In my experiences with self-improvement, there’s value in the idea of being able to execute a vague goal successfully, rather than focus too hard on something extremely specific that’s unsustainable. For instance, with personal training, sometimes it’s just better to say “I’m going to the gym for 60 minutes” rather than be hard-locked to “I am going to lift X weight Y times, or else this session is a failure.”
That being said, going to the gym and just standing around for 60 minutes is not a valuable use of your time. Having an idea of what you’d like to do, but having the flexibility to accept uncertainty, limits, and failure means that your time is productive regardless of outcome.
In content terms, this is the equivalent to making something you’re proud of, and not needing to glue yourself to your analytics or see revenue growth to be satisfied. This satisfaction is what is going to keep you energized during your career.
But for those first few sessions, you’re going to need to do a lot of learning, and trying to do too much, without knowledge behind it will lead you to injury. Limiting yourself through structure means that once the act of creating something solid becomes second nature, you can experiment.
It’s similar to how chefs learn their craft; you need to be able to cook basic meals and understand fundamentals before you can branch out to experimentation. You earn improvisation. Structure limits your work to the fundamentals of what you know you can execute before you branch out.
Being able to internalize the process of developing structure turns it into second nature. Between first-year journalism school and now, that mental process of building relation with my points and purpose has made content creation smoother and less intensive. I no longer need to write out every point/proof because I trust myself to be able to improvise; the mental work of that skeleton is something I do reflexively.
In short, codify your process. Write things down. Don’t be afraid to follow your steps. It is much easier to flesh out a boring piece that has a solid foundation, rather than trying to make sense of something long, rambling, and without form. In most cases, you’ll end up doing that latter work from scratch to get it under control.
Housekeeping and Updates
As always, a big thanks to my patrons on Patreon who are helping to support my work. Y’all are MVPs, and I’m happy to announce better benefits for different tiers of support. This includes access to a Discord channel on my server to talk about creating.
I wrote something about a football ⚽ manga I enjoy this week. I also experimented with narrating the article as a Patreon incentive (for all you second-screen viewers and podcast fans). I put the video on my YouTube channel for free as a sample, as I’m finding that demonstrating patron incentives to be vital.
I also gave a little update vlog on my Instagram about this process. I’m hopefully going to be exploring more on IGTV soon.
Thanks again for reading. Feel free to leave a comment on this newsletter if you’d like to give feedback.
Image Credits: Pexels (1, 2). Amazon links may be affiliate links to help support Matt.