It can be really hard to make stuff – but once you’ve got started, how can you assess your own creative work? Is it any good?

We all want to make meaningful art, so in this video I explain how I work out which songs to share, and when it’s time to go back to the drawing board…via a storytime segment about my solo career so far. I bet you don’t know the full story contained within!!!

Scroll down for the video transcript, and subscribe to my channel for more!

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BUT is it any good? | How to assess your own creative work
TRANSCRIPT

It can be really hard to make the thing you want to make  – whether that’s a song, a painting, a film, a handmade mandolin, a carved sculpture of a bear or your very own clothing line.

But once you *have* made some stuff, how do you know if it’s any good?

I’m Penfriend, but my pen friends call me Laura. This video was inspired by a question I received last week from Stephen, who asked me: “How can we properly assess our own work?”

This is such a great question, and it really got me thinking back to my earliest days of gathering together my own songs and starting to share them on the internet.

South London, 2009. I’m renting a draughty maisonette in Herne Hill, a short walk from Brockwell Park. I’ve lived here for a year now with my Miniature Schnauzer puppy Mister Benji, and every morning we look for sticks in the grass. The house is ok…the windows don’t close and I can hear mice scurrying about under the floorboards, but the big draw is the cheap rent and the extra space – I’ve got a dedicated studio room for the first time ever. It’s cramped, it’s messy, but it’s mine, and the walls are painted turquoise – my favourite colour.

I started writing my own songs aged 15, as part of my GCSE music course. They were well-meant, but categorically terrible. It’s fine, we all have to start somewhere.

At the time, I’m just excited to have written something…anything! I love Sheryl Crow, Belly, Blur, Radiohead, Alanis Morrisette and Garbage. Soon I’ll get into Lush, Elastica, The Wonder Stuff, Sleeper, Longpigs and Echobelly. I soak in all the music, savouring it, excited to strike out on my own one day soon and live an exciting, glamorous life like the people in those songs.

I form a band at school, and I join another when that one ends, but it takes me a few more years to start trying to write my own material again. I decide I don’t want to live out that Elastica lyric : “I’ve got a lot of songs, but they’re all in my head”. I’m bored of talking about doing stuff – I want to actually do stuff!

It’s a slow process, but I start capturing my ideas. I fill notebooks with words that mostly make me cringe, and highlight any words or passages that don’t. I fill Minidiscs and teeny Dictaphone cassette tapes with roughly played guitar ideas, most of which I never listen to again.

In 2005, I hear Cat Power’s album “What Would The Community Think” and Carina Round’s album “The Disconnection” on the same day and my mind is blown. I start writing songs in earnest, and learning to demo them in my shared flat above a cafe. During the day, music blasts up through my bedroom floor, making the wood laminate vibrate. In the evenings, I can work as late as I want.

I’m writing things, and sometimes I like what I write, but something’s missing. I don’t know exactly where I’m trying to go, but I know I’m not there yet.

Later that year, heartbroken, I write and record two songs back to back – “ghostsandshadows” and “I Am”. They’re the first songs I’ve written about real events, and there’s something different about them: a resonance, a feeling, a punch in the gut. I don’t play them to anybody else, but I can feel it. I realise what’s been missing.

Back in 2009, I’ve been invited to take part in a community art project called The Apollo Project. Some local artists take over an old video rental shop and turn it into a welcoming space, putting on a programme of events from storytelling performances to writing workshops to gigs to crazy golf.

I’m the “Musician In Shop”, and it’s the push I need to create my first ever musical release. I pick three songs from my burgeoning ideas library, and I finish them. I record them in my messy turquoise room, burn CD-Rs sitting crosslegged on the floor of the shop and package them in DVD cases to fit the video rental theme.

Apart from sticking a couple of old demos on MySpace, this is the first time I’ve shared my recorded music with the world. My first, incredibly DIY, official release.

I’m so proud to have something to hold in my hands, to send in the post to the strangers who buy it from my brand new Bandcamp page. I name it “Three…Two…One…”, but I can’t possibly know where this lift-off is going to take me.

Today, I’m sitting in a much tidier turquoise room, whose name should now make more sense to you: The Launchpad. The place where ideas are encouraged, incubated and nurtured towards lift-off.

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So, how do you know if your work is good?

Two words leap out at me from my own story: comparison and resonance.

Now, when I say comparison, I don’t mean with other people, but with yourself. I didn’t know whether my songs were good until I’d written a lot of bits of songs, and some complete songs, and could compare them to each other.  When I wrote that first song for GCSE music, I don’t remember thinking that it sucked, I was just really delighted to have written anything. But only by writing more songs could I start to journey towards where I really wanted to be.

Ira Glass from the podcast This American Life famously talked about the gap between our taste, and the work we’re able to make depending on our current capabilities: we want to make things because we have good taste, but our work disappoints us to start with, because we haven’t developed our skills yet.

He says to “Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions…It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through”.

Resonance is something I think about all the time when I’m making new work. To be something I want to share one day, a song has to make me feel something very deeply either when I’m writing it or when I’m listening back. Those two songs I wrote in the dark days after my breakup in 2005 really showed me the way forward and started me on the path towards making my first full length album “Disarm” at the end of 2009.

Again, I hadn’t shared my work online before making my first EP, and I hadn’t played very many gigs either, so I had no real audience feedback to consider, and I had to go with my gut instincts. I’m really glad of that, actually, because not caring about what someone else *might* think meant that I was free to make exactly the music I wanted, and starting my solo career that way was the best thing I could have done. If I couldn’t fully stand behind my work, I wouldn’t have been able to start trying to grow an audience for my music, and I don’t think I’d be telling you my story today.

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Only you can really know whether what you’ve made is good, because the act of making stuff is an attempt to turn ideas into reality. They’re your ideas, so it’s up to you to decide whether this particular song, painting, photograph or sculpture conveys your idea in the way you want it to. If not, make another one, and then another one. For me, the joy of creation is in the time I spend making the thing, because as soon as it’s finished…I’m excited about the next one.

Speaking of which, I’m uploading new videos about the creative process, mindful productivity and digital minimalism every Saturday – so please click subscribe to join me again in future and check out the links in the description box for some free music and special offers.

If you’re finding it hard to get started with your creative ideas at the moment, check out my video on how to slay your Inner Critic here, and I’ve got a very practical 5 steps to achieve any goal video here.

You can explore my back catalogue of albums here, and my new album “Exotic Monsters” is here.

Consistency is the habit that separates people who say “I wish I could…” from those who actually get on with it and put in the work.

It’s not glamorous and it’s not easy, but it will change your life for the better. It helps you get things done, improve your skills and achieve your goals…and I’ve got a very practical 5 step plan to help get you started today.

I recently read “The 12 Week Year” by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, and this video is partly inspired by that book. I highly recommend you read it if you’re interested in delving deeper into the ideas I’ve discussed here.

Scroll down for the video transcript, and why not subscribe to my channel for more!

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How I get things done! | 5 steps to achieve any goal
TRANSCRIPT

I want to talk to you about consistency.

Consistency is the habit that separates people who say “I wish I could…” from those who actually get on with it and put in the work.

It’s not glamorous and it’s not easy, but it will change your life for the better. It helps you get things done, improve your skills and achieve your goals…and I’ve got a very practical 5 step plan to help get you started today.

I’m Penfriend but my friends call me Laura, and I’ve been a properly full time artist since February 2019. I spend my days right here in my home studio The Launchpad writing songs, making podcasts, making videos and coming up with all sorts of other creative projects.

I am not, and never have been funded by a record label, my parents, my husband Tim or anyone else except the supporters of the things I make, so massive thanks to you.

Before taking the full time artist plunge, I was a freelance filmmaker, photographer, session musician and social media manager making music on the side and hoping to make it my full-time job “one day”. I’m telling you this because, even though I’ve been successfully working for myself for 17 years now, I’ve only very recently discovered the power of consistency, and it’s been an absolute game changer.

Recently I read “The 12 Week Year” by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington, and this video is partly inspired by this book.

As we go through my 5 steps, I’ll use the example of me very recently starting to make weekly YouTube videos to illustrate what I’m on about and give us a chance to get to know each other a bit better.

Step 1: Define your goal

It’s impossible to know whether you’ve reached a goal if you never define what that goal is, and if you don’t know you’ve reached a goal, you don’t get that warm glow of accomplishment that makes all the hard work feel worthwhile, and spurs you onto your next goal.

So, you need to write down what you want to do.

Be really specific with this – in my case, it wouldn’t be particularly useful to write “be successful on YouTube”, because success is something that’s different for everyone. I would never know if I ever reached that goal, because it’s not properly defined.

A good Jedi mind trick is to write about your goal as if it’s already happened, so in my example:

“I am sharing encouraging weekly videos with practical tips on creativity, mindful productivity and digital minimalism on YouTube. I’ve earned 5000 subscribers and counting, I’m having interesting discussions in the comments and I am starting to receive emails with exciting offers of collaborations around the topics I’ve been discussing on my channel. Even better, I have found my holy grail – the perfect doughnut.

I like to write things like this on Post-It notes, in my bullet journal, or on my whiteboard because then I can keep an eye on them. I used to make complicated spreadsheets to plan out all of my goals, which was fine – I do love a spreadsheet – but for me, out of sight is out of mind, and I just kept forgetting about them.

Step 2: Believe in your goal

Many people live full, happy and productive lives without ever writing down the reasons WHY they’re doing things, but if you’re interested in making more of your time, or if you’re feeling like you don’t know how to get started, or what to get started on, writing down this reason why, really defining it, is a hugely helpful tool when – not if, but when – you want to quit.

Spending a bit of time investigating the reasons why you want to reach your goal is never wasted. You might discover you don’t have a compelling enough reason why, and that might mean you realise this goal isn’t for you after all, and that’s fine!

There’s no shame whatsoever in deciding to move on from a goal, even if you’ve had it in your head for a long time. You have to do what’s right for you now, and letting go of a long held dream that just doesn’t fit where you are in your life is a brave thing to do, plus it opens you up to finding an exciting new dream to work towards.

WHY do I want to have an active YouTube channel, with a rising subscriber count?

It’s because I want to help. I think everyone has useful life experience to share, and over my years of making and releasing albums independently, freelancing and generally making it all up as I go along, I’ve learned a lot of stuff. I started thinking that if I was able to offer any practical tips or encouragement to others, then choosing not to do that would be really selfish. That’s my fundamental reason for wanting to make these videos, and the reason for wanting the subscriber count to grow is to be able to share this information more widely, and to make ongoing connections with people like you so I can keep sharing the videos, music and podcasts that I make with people who would get value from those things.

Over the last couple of years I’ve gathered so much information, advice and encouragement from watching videos by people like Matt D’Avella, Casey Neistat, Lizzy Pierce, Beckie & Chris, Thomas Frank, Ali Abdaal, Mary Spender, Wheezy Waiter, Peter McKinnon and, most recently, Laura Try, so it feels right to give something back to the community.

And I’m not going to gloss over the financial aspect of YouTube: there are so many areas where musicians are expected to contribute their work for nothing, that it’s an exciting prospect to enter a community of people where there’s a system for creators to be paid if their work is deemed to be of value by that community. BUT I know that monetising my channel isn’t a good enough goal on its own, so if I wasn’t interested in the other aspects I’ve just described then I wouldn’t be committing to sharing videos like this on an ongoing basis.

By the way, at the time of filming I have 1355 subscribers, so if you’re interested in seeing how my 12 week experiment progresses…please subscribe!

And if you do manage to find a compelling enough reason to embark upon your journey towards your goal, write that down and keep it handy – you’ll need it in step 4.

Step 3: List your actions

The next step is to work backwards from your goal, and make a list of actions that will get you step by step from where you are now, closer to where you want to be. Write everything down, even if it seems silly or small. A plan is not a plan until it’s written down – before that, it’s just a bunch of ideas swirling around in your brain. You might remember to do some of the things, but probably not all of them, and there’s just such power in seeing what you’re going to do and ticking it off as you go along. That sense of forward motion really helps to keep things on track.

Here’s my list:

• Watch a lot of videos on YouTube about making videos on YouTube (but learn when to stop watching and start making!)
• Take Matt D’Avella’s Master YouTube course – which was brilliant, by the way
• Create Apple Notes folder for keeping track of video ideas
• Set up existing video equipment and see if there’s anything else I need
• Test my setup
• Tidy my studio
• Script my first video

Completing that list took me about 6 months, and that’s okay. Now I’ve finally got started, my weekly actions are:

• Research next video
• Script next video
• Outline the following two videos
• Shoot video
• Edit video
• Upload video
• Start scripting next week’s video if I have time

It’s a lot, but I only stand a chance of doing it if it’s written down.

Step 4 is the key to the castle. EXECUTE CONSISTENTLY

Once you have your list of actions, book them in. Use a paper or online diary or calendar to make appointments with yourself, that you will keep.

You’re making a commitment to yourself here. If you’ve found a compelling reason to work towards this goal, you do not need to be wasting time every day deciding whether to execute your action or not. In “The 12 week Year” they talk about “choosing greatness in the moment”. Humans will always default to choosing comfort, unless we have a strong enough vision why we should choose discomfort.

I can’t tell you how many times over the years I’ve woken up, asked myself “will I run today?” and replied “nah, can’t be arsed”. SO MANY TIMES. These days I’m so proud of being able to show up for myself when I say I’m going to. It’s such a good feeling. 

Consistency is what it’s all about. I find physical goals easier to understand, because it’s more obvious to me that if I can’t do a full pushup today, that’s not because I’m a bad, untalented person with no future, it’s because the muscles I need to be able to do a pushup aren’t strong enough yet. If I were to find a training plan to learn how to do pushups, and carry that out consistently over a number of weeks or months, I know that one day eventually  I’ll be able to do a full pushup.

It’s harder with non-physical things we wish we could do already – I’d love to be able to paint really well, for example, and if I picked up a paintbrush and had a go today I’m confident the result would be pretty disappointing. If I took a course in painting, and practised my new skills regularly, my painting would certainly improve, and so I know the only thing between me now and future painter me is consistent hard work. But, to be honest, I don’t have a strong enough reason why I should put all that work and time into improving my painting skills, so that’s something I don’t have to feel guilty or regretful about any more. I’ll let other people be great at painting, and support them instead. Hooray!

For my YouTube channel, I’ve booked in Thursdays and Fridays for making videos, with a weekly upload schedule of Saturday morning at 7am. It’s late Friday afternoon when I’m filming this, so I’m cutting it a bit fine and I’ve realised I need to get started much earlier in the week – maybe Monday or Tuesday! – BUT because my WHY is strong and my determination slash stubbornness is also very strong, I will be executing all my actions on time, uploading this video at 7am tomorrow, and learning from my mistakes for next week.

When – and I do mean when – you falter, and feel like you can’t be bothered to keep up with your plan, and what’s the point of any of this anyway, go back to your list of reasons why you’re doing this. Read through them, ponder them, read through them again, give yourself a break and then get back on it. You don’t have to give up because you missed some appointments. Just start again.

I know that working towards my goals isn’t usually going to feel like a freaking party, but because I really believe that I’m spending my time in valuable ways, and moving steadily towards my big goals in life, I’m all in.

This feels like a good moment for an inspirational quote:

“You can’t build a reputation on what you’re *going* to do…” – Henry Ford

And how about this bonus unicorn? You’re welcome.

Step 5: Track and score

Tracking your actions will make you feel good and make you want to do more things so you can tick them off. That’s just science.

I track my exercise habits in my bullet journal – I create a monthly spread with a column for each action, and I add a cross when I’ve done each thing. At the end of each week I add up how many miles I’ve run, because that makes me feel proud, and I find I really enjoy looking at the page fill up with crosses throughout the month. I get a real sense of progress from that.

Another of my favourite parts of “The 12 Week Year” is the idea of tracking actions and results, but only scoring yourself on the execution of your actions.

In my YouTube example, I have two actions per week, each worth 50% of my total score:

Action 1 – work on videos 2 days a week

Action 2 – upload a new video every Saturday

Scoring the actions not the results is another new thing for me, and I love it. Just because I write down a random number of subscribers I’d like to have in 12 weeks time doesn’t mean that will happen based off the actions I’m taking. If I don’t reach 5000 subscribers in 12 weeks, but I do spend my two days a week working on videos and I upload every Saturday as planned, I haven’t failed just because I guessed a number wrong. I’ve achieved a lot more than I would have done if I didn’t have a plan, and I didn’t stick to the plan.

I know it’s addictive – numbers are everywhere online and it can feel like the world is judging us poorly if those numbers are smaller – or bigger – than we want them to be, but we’re human beings, not robots, and numbers are meaningless without context.

Bonus step 6: tell a friend

We’ve talked about accountability to yourself being a wonderful thing to work towards, but telling someone else what you’re doing is a very powerful tool. Tell a trusted person about your plan, someone you know won’t tell you it’s stupid or pointless – choose wisely, because you don’t need that sort of energy when you’re working hard to change your life.

You can do this!

Speaking of telling supportive people about your plans, that’s what I’ve just done in this video, haven’t I – so please do check back next Saturday and feel free to have a go at me if I haven’t uploaded my next one.

Step by step, slow and steady wins the race.

Now, where’s that doughnut?

Your inner critic is the annoying voice inside your head that whispers mean things to you. It’s holding you back from trying new things, putting yourself out there and living the creative life you dream of – so I made this video to help.

Scroll down for the transcript, and subscribe to my channel for more!

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How to stop your inner critic from holding you back
TRANSCRIPT

Have you ever thought you were good enough?

The Inner Critic is a name for the voice we all have inside. You know, the one that says you don’t deserve this, or you can’t do that…you’re no good, you’re bad, wrong, inadequate, worthless.

Inner Critic: “Ughhhh, who do you think you are anyway?”

Laura: “Yeah ok, but I was just talking to this person about -“

Inner Critic: “And what do you know about popular psychology? You’re supposed to be a musician aren’t you?”

Laura: “Well yes, but I want to help this person here with -“

Inner Critic: “And not a very good musician either, are you HAHAHA…”

Laura: “Come on now, that’s just mean…”

Inner Critic: “And you’ve got funny teeth and your hair is rubbish and your nose is too small and -“

Laura: “Enough! Enough! Okay, okay. I won’t do it, I give up. You win. Again.”

Inner Critic: “HAHA I knew you didn’t have the guts to try something new.

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I think I tricked it…it’s gone for now, but I’d better be quick before it gets back and starts up again.

Let’s be frank here: your inner critic, your inner voice, your ego, Steve – whatever you want to call it – can be a nasty little monster – and like opinions, everyone’s got one.

It can really get in the way – increasing our feelings of anxiety, lowering our self worth, even making us hate ourselves. It can stop us from feeling brave enough to try new things, and tell us all sorts of lies about ourselves.

I’m not saying that every single person watching this video isn’t an awful human being – statistically speaking, there have to be some arseholes tuning in, but you’re obviously not one of those, so I’m here to help.

What are we going to do about this gross, intrusive little creature? We’re going to slay it. Not in the modern sense of the phrase “to slay”…but in the medieval sense, you know? We’re going to fight back, basically.

It makes me really sad thinking about all the music, drawings, photographs, videos, books and who knows what else that might not get made because their potential creators feel unable to get started.

On Instagram Stories recently, I asked the question: “What’s currently stopping you from embarking on your next creative project?”

The answers were interesting…and quite repetitive:

• I don’t have time
• I don’t have any talent
• Lack of money and equipment
• Children
• Money and time
• My day job
• A loss of confidence
• Talent and ability
• Fear of the unknown
• Lack of time
• Time
• Lack of energy from my day job – and money
• Learning how to use my equipment
• Me and my brain

Now these are mostly lies – lies and excuses. Now, I don’t blame the lovely people who wrote these to me, not one bit – they’re great people, and so are you! BUT the more I read through that list and thought about what those simple sentences were really saying, the more I realised…that bloody inner critic was speaking for them!

I really am here to help, so I worked through the list and divided the lies and excuses into four categories:

1. Lack of money / equipment
2. Lack of talent
3. Lack of technical knowledge
4. Lack of time

I get it, I really do. I’ve told myself all of these things in the past, and more, and truly meant them. Let’s take a closer look at this list:

1. Lack of money / equipment

You need equipment to do your creative thing, and you need money to get the equipment. Or, you need more money to give you the time off work to spend on your creative thing. You don’t have the money, so you can’t do the creative thing. 

Why this is your inner critic talking, and how to shut it up.

The fanciest camera, shiniest guitar or poshest pen in the universe does not have the power to make your work good. Only you have that power, and you can absolutely find a cheaper way of getting started. Could you borrow equipment from a friend, or save up gradually over time and get a second hand version off eBay? I think you could. That’s how I got started. 

We can’t always start off with the perfect set of tools, but we can start. I am so thankful to have this room to work in now, but when I started recording my own music 16 years ago, it was in this corner of my bedroom in a shared flat above a cafe in South London, and I made it work.

2. Lack of talent

“But I wasn’t born with the innate ability to write the novel of my generation, or play the trumpet, or paint a photo realistic picture of a dog wearing a crown!”

Me neither, me neither. Guess what – my first dozen songs SUCKED. Seriously. But why should they have been great?

Why this is your inner critic talking, and how to shut it up.

We see the finished versions of other peoples’ projects, and compare what we think we’re capable of to that. What we think we’re capable of is very often far below what we’re actually capable of, or could be capable of if we pushed ourselves, or studied the thing we want to get good at, or worked with a coach.

Talent is seriously overrated – what actually matters is doing stuff. Turning up consistently and doing the work. You only get better by doing stuff. So…do stuff.

3. Lack of technical knowledge

It’s overwhelming when you want to do something but you know you don’t know how to do it. Perhaps you need to learn how to use some software, or hardware, but you’re not sure which software to get and anyway if you did get it you don’t know how it works and – “Screw it, I’m not doing it! It’s too hard, and that voice in my head keeps telling me I’d be no good at it anyway”.

Why this is your inner critic talking, and how to shut it up.

There has never been a better time to not know how to do something, because it couldn’t be easier to learn how to do pretty much anything, usually for free, on the internet. 

Are you absolutely sure you could never learn how to do that new thing? But…you learned how to do that other thing, didn’t you? In fact, everything you can do now, you learned at some point in your life. You can learn. You have learned. You will learn again. And look, you’re in exactly the right place to actually do some learning – for free! Are you…learning now?!

Every time I realise I don’t know how to do something in whatever software I’m using – Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Logic, Apple Notes – whatever – I take a moment to formulate the question I would ask a tech support person, if there was one to hand, and then I type that question into YouTube. You just have to figure out what the question is, and the answer usually isn’t too far away. Someone else has learned the thing you want to learn, and has had questions about it too.

Other places you can try include online course platforms like Skillshare and Masterclass – I have a paid subscription to both of those – and of course, books and teachers and whatnot. I know your inner critic wants to catch me out and tell me I’m wrong, or I’ve forgotten one but hey, I’m just saying it’s very easy to dip your toe in the water of learning new things right here, for nought pence, or in those other places, for some very well spent pounds, if you have them.

4. Lack of time

You’re so busy – life is full. There’s so much to juggle – you need to earn money to pay for food and housing, perhaps support a family. There’s no time left to do anything that doesn’t support that – you might even feel that putting aside time for your own interests would be selfish.

Why this is your inner critic talking, and how to shut it up.

I’m not going to try to be charmingly rude about this one, because it’s a very sensitive subject. But here’s how I look at it: I believe that I only get one shot at life, and I want to make it count. When I’m older I don’t want to regret all the things I never tried – I find that idea very depressing. This is not to say that I have no care for personal responsibilities; I have always earned all my own money and paid my own way in life, but I have made it a priority to show up consistently and put a bit of time in here and there to inch slowly – sometimes very slowly – towards my goals.

We have so much more choice than we might think about how we spend our time. Be really honest with yourself. What could you cut back on?

It might seem like we need long stretches of uninterrupted time to be creative: the perfect day where we don’t have to do anything else; where we wake up on exactly the right side of the bed after exactly the right amount of beautiful, restful sleep; where the weather is exactly as we like it, with the temperature is just so; where we have access to every single piece of shining equipment we could ever dream of, which we know exactly how to use, and is all set up and working perfectly, ready to respond to our great inspiration… But if everyone waited for these pretty weird conditions to be met, next to nothing would ever be made.

So many great novels have been written in half hour chunks before the writer went to work for the day, so many songs written in snatched moments between work time and family commitments.

Creativity is all about limitations: mediums, formats, edges. Carve out 15 minutes here, half an hour there, two hours over there, and just keep chipping away at it. It’ll feel way better than waiting for the perfect day, I promise.

How to slay your inner critic

I’ve gone through all four of your top creative barriers and neatly debunked them all, but it’s not as simple as all that, is it? Watching a woman talk at you on the internet will not fix all of your problems, though I do hope it’s helped a bit to find out that you’re not the only person dealing with this nonsense on a daily basis.

Can I tell you a secret? When I was planning this video I suddenly found lots of time to tidy my room, clean the kitchen and get the laundry done, which are the three things I probably care about the least in life. I know from experience that whenever I start fussing about in the kitchen I’m really just putting off doing something more important.

So, completing this video and uploading it will be a major achievement for me, and will really piss my Inner Critic off.

Speaking of which, it’s time to face up to that horrible creature and actually do something to…if not get rid of it, at least forcefully shush it so you can figure out what you’d like to do and actually get on with it.

It’s quite simple.

The next time you notice your inner critic saying something mean to you – take a pen and a piece of paper, and write it down. Then when it says something else – perhaps “Why are you writing this down, you weirdo?” – write that down as well. Keep adding to the list as and when you are informed by your Inner Critic that you don’t have the talent, the skills, the ability to learn new things, the time, the energy, the right gear, face, hair, teeth, shoes, or left earlobe to get going with whatever it is that you want to spend your precious, precious time on.

You’ve now reached the choose your own adventure part of this video. Only you can choose your path ahead.

Here’s the first option: rip the page or pages out of your notebook and crumple them up, while laughing derisively. You can tear the pages into shreds, you can (safely) light them on fire – you do you. Life is short! Have fun! Be careful with matches!

The second option is this: find a quiet 10 minutes to sit down in private and read through the list. Imagine that your closest friend has presented this list to you, saying it’s how they think about themselves. What would you say to them? Write that down. Be honest – no-one else is going to read this but you.

Next, imagine that someone you sort of thought you liked has presented this list to you, saying it’s what they think about you. What would you say to them? Write that down.

Then, go back to option 1 and laugh like a Bond villain.

We’re very good at telling ourselves all sorts of stories, which are usually presented as facts. But please try to remember – thoughts are not facts.

Your inner critic is a real thing to contend with, but it’s coming from inside you. The more you can identify, challenge and at least quiet down the chatter, the more you can give yourself permission to spend time on the things that really matter to you.

I hope this video helped you today. I really would love to hear about your creative goals, dreams, hopes and schemes in the comments below, and if you have any creative barriers I haven’t covered here, feel free to let me know about those.

I’ll be sharing more on creativity, mindful productivity and digital minimalism in future videos, so if you have any suggestions or questions, I’d love to read those too.

Thanks for watching, and good luck in the fight against your Inner Critic. You can do it.