Never Enough — A Victim of America’s Productivity Fetish

I don’t hold myself accountable every day. Maybe that’s a feeling that stems from toxic productivity: the feeling that whatever you accomplish is never enough because there’s always another task waiting. Being able to somewhat keep up with the Laidback Log is surprising. If I want to point my life in the right direction, now is the time to take action. Compounding interest isn’t just a for investment, but living a rich life. That’s the hope anyway.

Variable Output: The Curse of Inconsistency

I got verbally abused in a previous role becaues of my inconsistent output. Although, from my perspective it might have been the inconscistant behavior of the boss. Plenty of creative people with ADHD struggle with variable output.

On days when I feel like I’ve channeled the Force, I’m able to punch above my weight class. I knock more items off my to-do list than expected. We’ve all hit the flow state. When the body moves with a power beyond that of our comprehension.

Oppositely psychic entropy exists as well. With so many fires to put out good luck getting any momentum in one direction. Days like yesterday leave me scratching my head.

The words and tone are still scarred into my head. My explainations were seen as excuses, valid or not I was too old and emotionally mature to have someone yell at me like that. Before I knew it, I had willingly walked away from a job for only the second time in my life.

Looking back, I’d boil it down to a difference in creative direction. I was a hard worker, but the way I had envisioned achieving results differed to that of my boss at the time. 10 years ago when my old boss had his peak in online relevance, the Social Media landscape looked different. It was still social; friends would still each other’s posts. Low-effort content would receive engagement because people would like, share, and comment just because of huma relationships. Today’s landscape is algorithim driven. The META has changed.

Modern social media is brutal. If a piece of content doesn’t grab someone’s attention or give them a reason to keep watching, they’re gone. Attempting to create for today’s landscape takes considerably more time, editing, scripting, and shots. Being creative is exhausting, and sometimes you just burn out.

Maybe Those Are Really Just Excuses

Maybe my lack of volume is a fundamental problem with me. I’ve got a quiet personality, demeanour, and only sprinkle SNS feeds. Is it volume over time, love, and care? Those AI gen videos flooding shorts make me feel that way. I cringe at some of the videos that get shown to my algorithim. Maybe life is about being loud and over the top now?

Some viral videos online are incredibly stupid, have little editing, or little educational value. I think certain things like digtial content production were better when there was a bigger barrier to entry. Now every lazy stupid asshole with a dumb idea can blast their message online. . . except for the one writing this. Everything has a blaance however, with modern tools even a talentless hack like me can have a platform and publish work.

Viral content most often target emotions, the aspect of the human experience that puzzles me. Most of the time extremely positive, that’s why the toxic positivity virus had spread so fast. What perplexes me is the rapid rate of content production. Creating with time limitations is a skill in of itself, but creating with low effort, what does that improve? Maybe it didn’t matter if you got lucky and got views and attention. But I realized that wouldn’t create the metrics that matter. Conversions. Was the goal to sell cars? Get engagement? Or build a long-term audience of viewers or customers? My erratic boss at the helm had a different answer everyday.

Walking Away With My Head Held High

I made the right decision to leave that small business. The owner was too emotionally unstable, manipulative, and narcissistic. Erractic behavior and creative direction only hastened my exit. If I was gaining new creative skills and knowledge, I might have stayed. But the creativity at that small business had been killed. Future advice, be skeptical of self-proclaimed creatives with a small or non-existant body of work.

When someone’s words don’t match their actions hypocracy eminates off them like bad body odor. My boss gave a 20-minute lecutre about the problem with instant gratification. But judge a man for his actions and not his words. His whole life was built around instant gratification. Even sales, the profession he built his identity around, rewarded the quick hit: close the deal, get the commission, move on to the next one.

Creative Work Exposed Him

Creatively, it was the same story. He once suggested that he could teach anyone guitar in a matter of minutes. I always wondered where his creative body of work was. Where were the reciepts of sketches, videos, sculptures? Even the thing he tuated the most, was made by a ghost producer.

Maybe that’s what bothered me most. Creative thinking has no real shortcut. You can’t buy, automate, or workshop your way into being creative. It’s something you have to live daily. Hiring someone else can outsource the process. But that doesn’t build your creative muscle. The only way I know how to get better creatively is through repetition: making bad things, learning why they’re bad, and making slightly better things the next time.

It’s always rich getting editing advice from someone who can’t figure out how to open non-linear editing software. CapCut is about as intuitive as editing software gets, and yet I had to walk the person replacing me through how to use it in a matter of days. There’s only one real way to learn this stuff: put in the time.

The Voice from the Outer World

I think I was too blind to see at the time because he offered to teach me and “point the way“. I didn’t think I could be easily influenced in that way, but there I was with blinded faith. Perhaps that’s why megalomaniacs love Christianity; there’s lots of blind faith in that. Well, I stopped drinking the Kool-Aid, but I have to watch out for cults or being swept into an intergalactic jihad. Lisan al gaib!!!

One Reel

I didn’t know I had all those emotions . . . Yesterday I did produce just one reel.

It takes time to maker eels like these. The varied camera angles, color work, editing, sound mixing, and story crafting all eat away at your time.Sometimes the mountain of work after the shoot is what creatively stagnates me. The frustrating thing is that effort ≠ reward. But content on the internet lives a long time. I still get views on some old Matsumoto videos I made years ago.

Making just one good reel in the time to make five half-assed reels, isn’t putting all my eggs in one basket; if you are a short-term thinker, I could see how it looks that way. I’m in for the long-term investment strategy. It’s not one reel; it’s one piece in a larger body of work. As long as I have the right mindset, every reel I make improves the next product just by that little piece. Perhaps the next edit is faster, less editing is required, and the cuts and story flow better. Improvement is a non-linear path with endless plateaus and ceilings to overcome.

Send It

Finishing the edit isn’t even the finish line anymore; distribution is its own job. What’s posting strategy? As a one-man band, it’s not only posting the content that you have to worry about; it’s where the content will be posted. What tags should I use? Each platform demands its own strategy.

• Instagram/Facebook
  I split the reel into two separate videos. Shorter is better on this platform.
  Not sure whether it is better to post separately on Facebook itself, as I use the shared reels upload function.
• TikTok
  I use the same caption, tags, and strategy as Insta
• YouTube Shorts
  YT Shorts doesn’t punish longer vertical videos so I uploaded a whole 2:15 reel with a longer title with hashtags. I also used YouTube’s built-in SEO tools to place tags, categories, etc.
• X
  I don’t get much engagement here, so low effort using Shorts Video with IG caption and hashtags
• Bluesky
  I don’t get much engagement here, so low effort using Shorts Video with IG caption and hashtags
• LinkedIn
  For the most corporate cringe partly as a meme, IDC about this platform because it hasn’t done anything good for me to get me a job or business connections. It’s filled with all things I hate about society: titles, HR nonsense speak, and gross toxic positivity.
• Pinterest
  Trying this one out; little to no engagement yet.
• On Website
  Will make a video post when I write about the Matsuri

Day Planning

Work tasks and the plan to renovate my room occupied my brain for the rest of the day. My room is a cluttered mess of someone and an era past its prime. I need to shape the room into a more organized, clean, modern space that aligns with my current tastes. The thought of tearing everything in my room out was terrifying. It would be a lot of work to just get all of my junk out of it to start the process of renovation.

I saw a vision of a freshly painted, clean, and organized space, but there were a lot of steps, time, and money between me and the end goal. As a serial starter, I am a big fan of at least taking some steps to solve my goal. Something that would make a big difference in my immediate life would be a better computer chair and desk. That was where I spent the most time at home. My nearly 40-year-old desk and aging chair were clearly no longer cutting it.

I’m Not Chasing Perfection

One of the problems I run into is overplanning. I thought it was important to have a clear direction and visualize the end result. When I think about great leaders, thinkers, and C.E.Os the phrase”They had a vision” also bubbles up. I thought visualization was important . . .all the “Law of Attraction” new-age garbage. Perhaps it was always the follow-through that I had an issue with. At least that’s what my basketball coach told me before I got cut. When you look at a large plan, everything all together is just too much. How do I break it down into steps?

Room Redesign Plan

I used AI for the Image above forgive me*

• Measure the room to get dimensions
• Make a rough sketch on paper
• Make a Simple 3D Model via Blender
• Get Quotes for a quick peer review from an interior designer
• Consult with Builder Quotes
• Do any Labor that I am able to myself
• Buy, Build, Install Furniture/Electronics/Sound Deadening/Decorations/Lighting
• Live, Enjoy, Keep Clean
• Document the Process
• Edit Upload

You can see why it takes me forever to finish things. What started as I need a new desk and chair ended up being a whole preduction plan for a new room aesthetic.

Avoid Getting Sucked In

My ability to hyperfocus is what gives me Strength, but it’s also a double-edged sword. Project Management for me often involves stepping back and focusing on the overall picture before walking forward and working on a part. When I make art, I find the same thing happens. It’s easy to zoom in and work on the fine details of an eye before wondering if the eye makes sense in size, perspective, and form.

The Great Part About Doing Nothing in a Toxic Productivity Culture

As I document and live my life in public, the great thing about days like today is that there isn’t much to comment on. Sometimes taking your foot off the gas is exactly what you need.

Much Love,
LaidbackMarco