“Publishing is preferable to perfection.” Podcasting involves a certain percentage of cringe. We often feel like we failed because the recorded output didn’t match the perfect inner monologue we rehearsed in our heads.
However, your listener has no access to that inner monologue. They only hear what you published, and often, that is more than enough. Episodes that feel “clunky” or awkward to the creator can even perform better (because vulnerability). You must distinguish between quality control that helps you improve and perfectionism that stops you from shipping it out.
In this micro-episode:
- Why we judge our output against an impossible internal standard
- The ROI of “clunky” and imperfect stories
- How to stop your inner monologue from killing your consistency
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
WEBVTT
::Publishing the podcast is preferable to perfection. I wrote that on purpose, even with all those Ps.
Unapologetic love for alliteration right there. Podcasting, making videos, all of this work is a certain
percent of cringe. We messed up a sentence, even though we totally knew exactly what we wanted to say. We
heard that perfect version in our head. We maybe told ourselves the story is an inner
::monologue in advance, but then the version that came out felt like a fail.
::However, the listener, you, you have no idea what that was, that inner monologue or how it compared.
::You just heard what ended up being recorded and often whatever that was, was fine.
::It might not be what you intended to deliver, but it was still understandable and pretty clear.
::But we still let that what we thought was perfect inner monologue. We let that be our competitor a lot of the
times. And then we shame ourselves because our recorded version wasn't nearly as good as that inner
monologue that we said to ourselves. But actually publishing whatever it was that we said is way better
than not publishing anything at all. Because then the inner monologue actually won.
::So it's really good to stop competing with ourselves too much. Like I published episodes that I thought for
sure were going to be a disaster. I like left in things, sentences that were really cringeworthy and
stories and explanations that felt really clunky and awkward. But no one actually mentioned those
things. No one complained. Sometimes those episodes actually did a lot better than the ones that I thought
were better quality.
::because they had some honest story in them. Like one I was super unsure about because I told like a huge long
story that I thought oh for sure this is way too long. But it started an entire conversation because people
related to it. So published is usually a lot better than something waiting for it that's perfect or not
getting anything out at all because it's not perfect.
::What parts of that quality control help you out and what parts just make you feel really bad for not a good
reason? It's not helping you achieve anything. It's not helping you get better. We want to push ourselves
to learn and improve through having quality control, but not at the expense of never publishing anything
in the first place. I'm Jen DeHaan. This is a Credibility Minute. Find more episodes in
::Get in touch with me at stereoforest.com/minute