Why Being A Schizo Helped Me Make Better Content

One day I was just reflecting on where most of my content ideas came from.

Now, I’m no Dan Koe or Hamza.

I don’t get superb ideas out of thin air like one of them can.

It is a skill that takes time, and I’m hoping to get to that level at some point.

Anyway, when looking at where most of them came from, I found some sources.

Instagram, surprisingly, is one of them.

My for-you page usually has good content and I’ve trained the algorithm well.

Twitter is another place I get great ideas from too.

Reading stuff from Kieran Drew, Dan Koe, Nicolas Cole, José Rosado, etc.

Also Youtube.

YouTube is hands down the best place to get content ideas from.

Long-form content along with the amount of great Youtubers you can find randomly makes it a mine of gold.

Youtubers like Charlie Morgan, Sam Ovens, and even Hamza sometimes, make superb content.

But I noticed something, the fact I get most of my ideas from talking to imaginary people.

I know it sounds weird but let me explain.

When reflecting on those few ideas I got, I realized I would get them when I was washing dishes.

Normally when washing dishes, I talk to myself.

I’ve talked to myself for my whole life.

But now that I’ve been more into writing, my self-talk has changed a lot, in terms of the topics I “talk” about.

For example:

I wrote a letter titled “You Can’t Have Break.” (gonna upload it soon.)

I got this idea by talking to myself.

One day I felt like a bum.

I didn’t write more than 3 lines and I was coping by telling myself that it was okay, that I could take a break.

Then it happened.

I started talking in third person as if I was giving advice to another person.

That inner voice started talking. It was unacceptable.

I started thinking about how I was pussying my way out of work when there were dudes out there making the money I dream of, and they still worked as if they had nothing.

I’ve watched Hamza for a long time, and he released a video a couple of weeks ago where he was talking about how he still wakes up at 4 am to work for 4 hours straight.

Can you believe that?

A guy who makes a million times more money than me and most people, yet he is just as ambitious as if he had nothing.

He’s working harder and longer than me.

“That’s my competition, that’s the guy I’m supposed to beat,” I said to myself.

Crazy stuff.

Anyway, that’s the pattern I recognized.

First, I face a problem, whether it is mine or someone else's.

Then I put myself in the perspective of an expert in the field where that problem would fall in.

And then, I’d start talking to myself in third person, trying to help myself fix it.

If you think about it deeply, this mental process makes a lot of sense.

It is a well-known fact that we give better advice to other people than we do to ourselves.

Also known as Solomon’s Paradox (I will write about this in the future.)

Why is that?

Because we are able to see the situation from a different perspective.

Whenever you face a problem, normally there’s a level of emotion involved.

That emotion involved can blind you to the solutions and to seeing the problem clearly.

But someone that is not related to the problem at all, won’t be emotionally affected.

That’s also the reason mentors work so well.

Not only do they have more experience, but they can see the problem from multiple perspectives.

There may be 10 different solutions, but you’re only seeing one.

Tunnel vision is dangerous, that’s why having input from other people can help you make better decisions.

Or in this case, make better content.

Maybe to be a better creator you need to be a schizo.

Hope you learned something from today’s letter, and hey, maybe start talking to yourself more often, who knows what ideas you’ll get.

If you liked this letter, please let me know so I can keep making content like this.

If you didn’t, also let me know what you didn’t like so I can improve my content for you.

In both cases, thank you for reading this letter. You’re a G.

PS - If you liked this, you’ll probably like the rest of my stuff, go check it out here.

That is all from me.

Tu amigo,
- Manuel