Document > Create
I’ve always documented my life.
It all started with my mom, who was a Creative Memories stan back in the mid-oughts. She used to collect all sorts of ephemera when she was working on my childhood scrapbooks: report cards, sports stat sheets, school projects (yes, I have the stats of my middle school basketball season).
I caught the collecting bug early (I have stuff in my possession that dates back to my middle school).
I’ve kept every movie ticket, sporting event, and attraction ticket I’ve come across (RIP to physical tickets).
All of that needed a home other than a box in my closet, so I started to document it in journals (I junk journaled before it became cool to junk journal and I have 30+ books to prove it).
Every moment, every memory, every piece kept creates the fabric of our lives. It’s cool to look back at our memories to see who we were. We end up making a personal archive for ourselves.
When you document, you do not create something new from scratch. Instead, you take something already existing and create a narrative around it.
Whenever I work on documenting, I ask myself, “What story can I tell here?” This question informs other storytelling elements I incorporate, such as my color scheme, paper, washi tape, collage elements, etc.
In a less creative and more practical sense, the same can apply to content creation.
We (myself included) overthink creating content. We think every idea has to be new, novel, and original.
The pressure of the new and novel prevents us from creating content. We get too caught up in whether the algorithm will like it, whether it’s targeting the right keywords, or whether it’s a topic that our audience cares about.
The reason why content creators have been so successful is because they document versus create.
“Get Ready With Me,” “What I Eat in a Day,” and “Day in the Life.” None of these content formats involves creating anything new but rather documenting what’s already being done.
Social media like TikTok and Instagram have made documenting so easy, and as business owners, we gravitate towards these platforms for documentation.
We can apply the same principles to the long-form content we create for our business.
Our blog, newsletter, YouTube channel, etc. don’t just have to be vehicles for optimized content. They can act as scrapbooks for our business, a place where we can share our processes, inspiration, and experiences as they happen in real time.
Our first-hand experiences are something no one else can take credit for, hence becoming new, novel, and original in and of themselves.
And this content ends up resonating more with our audience.
Case in point: I published a blog post last week about my rebrand. It’s neither new nor novel, but my approach, experience, and documentation made it unique and original. The response was great.
Instead of approaching content with the mentality of creating something new, consider what in your business you can document instead. It’s a much smaller lift but makes a much greater impact.
