The Best Weapon Against Mediocrity Nobody Uses

Gen Z now spends over 9 hours a day staring at screens. It's more time than they sleep, but it's not just about the time we're losing. Over 70 studies revealed that heavy short-form consumption is associated with poorer cognitive and mental health. Now, the popular solution is to get a hobby, touch some grass, go read a book, guys. But 5 years from now, if you just do those things, you could still be the same person. And if I sound like a grumpy old man, it's because I was that person. I studied hard, I became a doctor, but still I felt like I wasn't reaching my full potential. But during my journey, there was one thing that completely changed everything. And as you can probably guess from the title of this video, it was starting a YouTube channel. I want to show you why building a YouTube channel can save you from a life of brain rot and mediocrity. And why it's never too late to start, no matter how old you are. But first, we

need to define mediocre so we're on the same page. If you've been on social media, you've probably heard someone call something mid, right? Marvel movies, pretty mid lately. Marvel TV shows, also pretty mid. Somehow being mid became like the worst thing you could be, which is funny because the word mid literally means middle of the road, which tells you a lot about human nature. We don't want to live mediocre lives. We want to be extraordinary. I spent most of my early 20s building my life around medicine. It's a demanding career, right? I spent a lot of time studying, took out loans, I really sacrificed everything else. And when I got into med school, I was like, now my life begins. — This is going to be everything. I'm no longer failure, I'm on my path to become a doctor. But something felt empty at the same time. After class, I found myself just — playing video games or watching anime or going out to the bars and drinking with friends and stuff. Somewhere in the middle of my second year of med school, I started feeling really burnt out. I

started feeling like I wanted to quit. Mediocre doesn't mean lazy, it means disconnected. You could be the hardest working person in the room and still feel nothing if you're not doing what actually belongs to you. But then something unexpected happened. COVID-19. Not doing everything he can do. pitting against one another. tell you how frustrating it is. Amid the escalating crisis between the president and the states over the coronavirus pandemic. — I know a lot of people have bad memories of it, but for me it was actually — a huge turning point. Everything got shut down. And so, I used that opportunity to move back to California, and it was the first time in like 7 years or so that my brother and I were finally back together. And we'd always been talking about starting a YouTube channel together. We just never had the time or the bandwidth to do it, and now just seemed like the perfect time. So, we started posting. And within a couple weeks, — I was obsessed. I was going down rabbit holes, I was studying cameras, I was trying to figure out content strategy and how to make viral videos. I was waking up at 4:00 in the morning before classes just to do this stuff. Before that, I can't remember the last time that I like voluntarily woke up at 4:00 in the morning to do anything. I think I started to understand around that time why some people like — Haruki Murakami, very famous author, would wake up at 4:00 a. m. and go to the gym and then work on writing for 5 hours a day. Or Stephen King, who writes every single day including Christmas and holidays. I always thought these people were psychos and that they were wired differently. They were just obsessed with escaping mediocrity. I didn't have anything from YouTube. We had less than 200 subscribers — at that time. I was a nobody, but I felt like a completely different person. You're not living a mediocre life because you're not trying hard enough. You've built your life around something that's not calling up who you actually

want to be. So, the real question is, why did YouTube do that? Let's break it down. So, YouTube does two things simultaneously that most people only do — separately. So, let's take a look at the first circle. Often times when people want to get into self-improvement or want to change their life, they say read more books, go learn some skills, or go learn something. And for me, I would read books and then I get really bored like halfway through chapter one of a book and then I'd put it down and add it to my huge collection of books that now sit on this wall over here. But because of YouTube, that changed completely. The reason that it changed is because now there was another person on the other side that I was learning for. This is actually something pretty well studied in science, it's called the protege effect. When you know you have to teach something, your brain processes it differently, right? It goes looking for gaps. You want to stress test your ideas and build connections that passive consumption or just, you know, reading for the sake of reading doesn't really force you to do. There's a famous saying that goes, when you teach, you get to learn it twice. Once when you learn it and once when you teach it again to help someone else learn it. So, the first piece of why YouTube is so freaking important is it really enables for better self-education. YouTube really is the ultimate facilitator of self-education. I took so many like neuroscience and psychology courses throughout college, none of that stuff really stuck. But then when I started learning about learning science and how the brain works for YouTube videos, I can remember everything. You know, I can still remember like a lot of the details from the videos that I made several years ago. This stuff just sticks when you have to make videos in order to teach somebody about it. But by itself, it doesn't get you very far. Not until we also fill in the second piece here. You know, I grew up in a first-gen Asian household, and so I was told growing up that you could never pursue a career in music, writing, or the creative arts. But that's not a real job. Ironic because now that's actually what I do. I've been playing piano since I was 5 years old. I was a self-taught music producer and a musician, and I made a whole bunch of beats and songs on my hard drive, but I never really published any of them. And I convinced myself for a long time that the reason I didn't pursue those things was because I needed to get into medical school. But even though I've been playing piano for 25 years now, I haven't really gotten better at it. Now, what does this have to do with YouTube, right? Well, let me explain. I started posting videos on YouTube in like 2020. My first, let's say like 10, 15 videos, terrible, awful, so cringe. Like I can't even watch them anymore how bad they are. But as the weeks went on, I started getting a little bit better. You get to document and visualize your transformation. This one is about documenting your work. So, now that we've laid these out on the board, why is it that YouTube allows you to move from a life of mediocrity to one that you're proud of? It has to do with this area of lab right here in the middle. One, it's public. People can judge you now, and when for things, there's stakes involved now. And so we do have pressure to make good stuff. And number two, forces you to create deadlines. If you have all the time in the world to document your work, unfinished pieces or not, you never have any urgency to get better. And a lot of people will think, — why can't I just learn on my own? document my work in my basement and not show anybody? But my question for you is this, how will you know when you've made this transition? This changes everything because you are building an audience. But your YouTube channel is the evidence, and your audience is the proof. Those are the ones who judge whether your life is going to be mediocre or not. And if you don't believe me, think right now, who are people who you admire or you view who don't live a mediocre life, who do things that are extraordinary? You can't vote yourself there. Nobody does it alone in a room and then suddenly decides, oh, I've become extraordinary. I've escaped from mediocrity. Every person that we point to as exceptional, like Kobe Bryant, Murakami, or Stephen King, they didn't just grow privately. They documented their work, they learned how to get really [ __ ] good at what they do, and then they let other people decide that for them. They had the courage to do it publicly. They built something that crossed that line from personal development and mental masturbation into genuine contribution to helping other people in service. And that recognition isn't vanity, it's confirmation that what you built actually matters beyond yourself. And YouTube is one of the best vehicles that forces you into that position. When you see someone with a million subscribers on a platform, when you see someone who's published five different books and then they're going on speaking tours and then they're blowing up on social media because of it. What does that tell you about them? The only way to rise above mediocrity is to give it your all in a something that you love and know that it [ __ ] mattered. Now, I'll also be very honest with you. When you start posting content on YouTube, people are going to start looking at you differently. You might get some weird side eyes, people won't understand why. They won't understand because they're not in pursuit of escaping a life of mediocrity. They're the ones comfortable with being in the audience, being on the sidelines, wasting hours and hours consuming other people's content, seeing other people document their work and educate themselves and build an audience. They don't want to participate in the game. But if you do want that, and I assume you do because you're still watching this video, that's the price. And so, if you are ambitious, — if you want to change your life, then you can't just learn. You can't just document. You have to do it publicly in front of other people who are watching and judging you. The question is, how do you shortcut that process? How do you save time building the skills and the knowledge to get where you want to go? Luckily for you guys, I actually made this video right here, my full YouTube masterclass to get started and build a profitable channel to learn faster and document your work. So, you probably want to check that out afterwards.