Friday, March 29, 2019

How to Stay Motivated About Twitch Streaming

Maybe there's a day when you wake up and just feel bad. You might feel sick, or have a lot on your mind, or have a bad hair day. Maybe your morning drive is fraught with traffic, your workday was long, or your lunch was disappointing. Whatever the factor, by the time you get home and come up to your usual streaming time, you're just not feeling it. You decide to send out a Tweet, or an Instagram post, or a Facebook message about whatever is troubling you and cancel the stream. Yes it might feel better to give yourself the 'day off' and pick the streaming back up tomorrow, but this is a slippery slope. You shouldn't give yourself the luxury of a 'day off' unless it's absolutely critical. When in doubt, you should always Go Live.

I can speak on livestreams, but sometimes my brain
tells me I can't. The only cure for this is to
get out there and do it anyway.
Let me tell you about me: I'm a terrible public speaker- I can't speak on stage to save my life and talking to large audiences scares me. Many mornings I think I look terrible or wake up sore. Sometimes I oversleep and get a significantly late start, demotivating me from starting my show. For no reason at all, software or hardware on my PC malfunctions and causes me major problems. Sometimes I'm so wounded by something said in Twitch chat that it consumes me for days. Like everybody, I get struck by bouts of 'impostor syndrome,' feeling like I'm a fraud and don't deserve any recognition. And for one or multiple of these reasons, I'll often feel a clutching anxiety about hitting the Go Live button. In those instances, I feel like everything would be OK if I just stopped for one single day.

And what do I do after thinking that? I go live anyway. 

I'm not a masochist, and I'm not superhuman. But I've done this long enough to know that streaming isn't what causes those problems and insecurities to crop up- it's not streaming. Specifically, the mental block that we all have, the one that says we're not good enough or that we can't do it. Letting that evil force win, proving it right, is what causes problems. It will try to trick you, it will give you what seem like very legitimate reasons not to pursue your goals, but you should never believe it. You have to power through the self-doubt and excuses.

Since going full-time on Twitch, I've had to travel to roughly a dozen different US states on business, my internet has had chronic outages, my PC has broken multiple times, and I've been sick enough to vomit. All things that would cause major logistical problems to a video game streamer, and all more than sufficient excuses to call things off for a day. But through every single one of these, I never missed a single stream. I've streamed a minimum of three separate times per day, seven days per week, with no days off, for nine months. That's more than 800 streams, two thousand hours of content, without ever missing a single show. I'm not trying to brag, and I'm not saying you have to stream as often as I do. What I'm saying is you shouldn't deviate from your routine for anything but the most extreme circumstances.


The problem most prospective Twitch streamers have is they don't treat streaming like work. Now, I'm not saying that streaming can't be fun or that you can't enjoy it, but if you truly want to take your Twitch channel to the next level, you will need discipline as well as passion. Too many Twitch streamers get overly precious about their channels- like they can't have it be anything less than perfect every day, and if they're not feeling 100%, then they shouldn't stream. But if you're thinking of streaming like a job, you see things differently.

What was the coolest job you ever had? Maybe it was something you loved doing, maybe you had fun coworkers, or maybe it was in a field you were passionate about. No matter how interesting or fun the work itself was though, you still had bad days. You might have felt groggy that morning, argued with your significant other before leaving, or didn't have as much time to get ready as you wanted. But you still went into the office, despite one or all of those factors. You didn't just call in sick every time you felt a general discomfort. You might have been putting in only 70% of your dedication that day, counting the seconds until you could go home, but you went to work and you did your job. 

Now think about any days you've taken off from Twitch streaming. This includes missed scheduled days, or days when you wanted to stream but decided not to at the last minute. What was the factor that stopped you from streaming that day? Would you have taken off work for the same reason?

If a giant planet-sized statue was going to poke the Earth, I'd probably
take a day off. 


The important thing on Twitch is not to have a perfect stream every time you go live- it's to be there. With people. On the internet. I always feel better when I go live because I get to talk to people who are excited to see me. Or even if there's no one in chat, I get to relax and do something I love rather than sit and stew over the negative emotions that were consuming me moments earlier. It's not that I don't feel insecure or sick or upset while I'm streaming, but knowing that I didn't let those feelings get the better of me is incredibly empowering. And like taking a day off work, it would take a lot for me to actually take a day off from streaming. That might mean putting in only 70% of my energy on a bad day, but I always show up.

"But Nick," you might be saying, "If you're only giving it 70% on some days, isn't that unfair to your audience?" 

Absolutely not. If you're lucky enough to have an audience, they understand that you're a person just like them. There will be good days and bad days. And if they care about you, you can bet they'd rather you talk to them about it, or at least be able to take your mind off your problems, than sit and brood in the dark. That's what a community is about- you are there to help your viewers through problems and they are there to help you. You're not a burden on them, you're letting them in.

And what about entertainment value? Yes, there are days when my show is only 70% as entertaining as a perfect day, but the way I look at it, that's 70% more entertaining than I would have been if I'd decided not to go live at all. Again, the fact that you're there spending time with your audience is always the most important thing. They want to get to know you, and the way they do that is by seeing you not just when you're at your absolute best. You may not even realize how important your being there is for someone on a certain day- maybe someone in chat, or even lurking without chatting, had a bad day as well. Maybe they spent all day looking forward to seeing your stream. Some will watch with rapt attention, but others will tune in and out while studying, or leave your stream on in the background- they may not even notice you aren't your usual self. You never know what's happening on the other side of the computer screen, somewhere else in the world.
You're not a wooden statue. You're a person. Your viewers
know that. Don't be afraid to show up when
you're not at your best. 

Now, if you truly need to take a day for 'mental health' reasons, that's fine. I don't pretend to be an expert on the subject, and I can't advise you one way or the other about whether you should power through it. All I know is, you can't let it become a habit. The world won't stop turning if you take a day off. People will understand. They'll even encourage you. But if you let that become the norm, we start getting into the tricky territory I mentioned in previous entries about the encouragement feeling better than doing the actual work. Don't let yourself fall into a rut. Only take a day off if you would have taken off for the same reason at your 9-5 job.

Now that I'm a full-time streamer, treating Twitch like my job is no longer optional. But even when I had a salary and went to an office, I treated my personal after hours Twitch streaming this same way. It's the only way I've found to truly keep myself accountable, and be able to track my own progress, both in channel metrics and in mental efficiency. By keeping myself to a rigid work regimen even while doing the thing I love, I've been able to get more than double the streaming done in the same amount of hours. That means I get to do twice as much of the thing that makes me happiest in the world- who wouldn't want that? Many new streamers who see my insane Twitch schedule ask me how I stay motivated- this is the best answer I've been able to come up with: treat Twitch like it's your job. Because someday, if you work hard enough, it just might be!

No comments:

Post a Comment