A short YouTube talk by George Kao advising creators not to self-judge their content harshly. Kao argues creators should publish more and let their audience — especially the ideal audience — decide what resonates; he shares personal experience about unpredictability of which pieces perform well and requests constructive feedback from viewers.
Sometimes people tell me that they're not putting content out there. They're not writing or they're not doing videos because they're not sure that their content is good enough. And here's what I'll say if you also feel that way. By the way, there's my dog, Buddy. Oh my gosh. Okay. He's been running crazy. Here's what I'll say to you. You don't get to be the judge of your own content. I say that with a smile because you are probably being too harsh on yourself. So I'll just say this. You don't get to be the judge of your content. You know who gets to be the judge? Your audience. Your ideal audience gets to be the judge of your content. And they don't judge you harshly. They very likely they just will tell you when things are good and then when things are not as interesting for them, they just won't say anything. That's it. You are rarely going to get any criticism or yeah, I almost never get any kind of criticism. Sometimes I actually want construct. I always want constructive criticism. By the way, if you have any for me, please let me know. I actually will put a link in the notes of this video to a online form where you can put anonymous feedback for me if you want to do that instead. But that's the point I want to make to you is if you're feeling shy and nervous about making videos or about writing articles, just know that you are not the judge of your content. And here's what I mean. Those who are expert content creators will tell you that they almost never know which of their content pieces are going to do well and which of their content pieces are going to be liked a lot less and kind of forgotten pretty soon. I am continually surprised at which of my videos and articles does well and which ones don't. Now, of course, over the years I've developed a bit of a intuition about which ones will probably do well. But I still get surprised at least once a month that wow, I didn't realize that this particular piece people really needed and people really wanted at this time and they shared it forward. And this other piece that I really prepared for and I really thought a lot about and I thought that it was so helpful and important people didn't get it. Maybe it's over their head or maybe it's missing some foundational piece that I haven't explained well enough. But whatever it is, we the content creators don't get to be the judge of our content. I am not the judge of my content. You are right. As the audience, you tell me whether something is good or not. And really, if you don't like one of my videos or articles, please don't click like. That's actually my request of you because I only want the ones that you actually like for you to click like so that I know that I have a more accurate metric about what's good than that. I can take that piece if it's good and edit it and re share it, make it even better. See, that's my process. So that's my encouragement for you in this video is don't be the judge of your own content. Put more stuff out there and let your audience who is so you know they're just being themselves. Let them tell you what they resonate with. That's it. So go and put more content out there and just over time see what floats at the top.
