Alejandro Arce — home Thinking in Public
No. 83 · Life

Creating content is self development

Line illustration: a figure recording themselves on a phone propped on a stack of books, a second faint outline of the same figure standing just behind, watching.

Creating content is a self development practice. You post yourself talking, then you watch it back. Watching yourself be yourself tells you things nothing else will.

You have to get over your ego and your fear of judgment to post it. That's the hard part. The more you do it, the less you care, and the stronger you get against your own ego. It's the gym, for your emotional brain.

01
Insecure, or confident.Watch your own body language before you even listen to the words.
02
Flaws, or wins.Notice which one you lead with, every single time.
03
Scarcity, or abundance.Listen for whether you sound like you need this to work.

Watch the tape — the questions the footage answers for you

Who cares if anyone watches it. Standing there and doing it is hard enough. That's the practice, before it's ever content.

Why watching yourself feels strange

Most people dislike the first recording of their own voice. When you speak, you hear yourself partly through your skull, which adds depth. A recording carries only the sound that travels through the air, so it can sound thinner or higher. You have heard your inner voice for years and the recorded one almost never, so it sounds like a stranger. That reaction fades with repetition.

A way to start this week

Record 30 to 60 seconds of yourself talking about something you know. Watch it three times, each with one question. Once for body language, once for what you lead with, once for whether you sound like you need this to work. Write one line about each answer, then record it again.

The same speech therapy guide suggests naming one thing that works before picking one thing to change. Start there.

Post it. Then watch yourself back.

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