How do you stay productive during lockdown?
This is that one question that has been low-key stressing us out since this outbreak. It all started with entertainers churning out content stuck at home. We are 4 months into the lockdown and some of us haven’t done anything productive till now. We wake up watching other people create good content and go to sleep guilt-tripping ourselves for wasting time. This is because some of us still haven’t figured out what we’re good at. We were so busy with life that we didn’t get time to dig out our ‘hidden talent’. Well, now we do have a lot of time but we are being lazy and choosing the easy way. Because this craze of views and likes, we often upload something or the other just to stay in the game; be it on our stories, posts or channels. A lot of people end up trying to impress their audience and come off as “wannabe” content creators. Rather, you should try new things and experiment with yourself to see what gets your blood pumping. Your hobbies, interests can be turned into careers. Don’t be ashamed of your skills. Even if you’re good at something that may seem absurd, you can make it popular and normalise it. And once you find something that would be entertaining for your audience, don’t rush into it. Take your time understanding how talent turns into content.
How do you create good quality content?
It is good to take some inspiration from social media stars but you shouldn’t completely depend on it. If your motivation is coming just from consuming content then you would be stuck in the world of followers and likes. Your motivation should come from your hardwork itself. You should constantly try to improve your craft and your artwork will get better over time. If you’re trying something new or showing your talent to the world for the first time, make sure it’s not just presentable but also interesting enough for people to stick around. In pursuit of staying relevant, people upload more and more frequently and lose focus on the quality of the content. Don’t work hard for relevance, work hard for improvement. The only way to stay relevant is to keep improving and keep changing your style so that the audience is intrigued every time. If you keep the style and quality of the content the same, people will get bored. Try to make your content in such a way that it is the best version of itself when it’s uploaded and better than the previous one.
Stop feeling guilty of not getting results and feel proud that you’re constantly trying. The best part about creating content is enjoying the process of creation and gaining satisfaction from improvement. The reaction from the audience is just a bonus. In order to be a creator, you need to be an artist first. And once you’ve achieved that, all you have to do is be dynamic with your content. A good quality of a content creator is acknowledging disengagement from the audience; finding out why people are not happy with the content. With time, you’ll need to keep updating your content because the expectations of the audience will increase.
– Anukul Thete
Sir J.P. High School 