Why You Should Do the 27 Creative Lessons by 27 Challenge

I made up the 27 Creative Lessons by 27 Challenge. My friend recently asked me, “Where’s this challenge from?” and I respond “ummm me?”

This challenge was about sharing 27 creative lessons by 27 revolving around the topics on my blog – art, travel & movement. Along the way I learned about @sydthecreative and her “75 days to a more creative life” which further motivated me to keep going. (Yes, this is your sign to click that link and check out her series too) . At the end of the day, it was focused on sharing lessons I’ve learned in the past 27 years that could challenge us to live more actively and creatively.

To be completely honest, I will probably never do this challenge again but I recommend it because it will teach you the following things I learned along the process —

1. Shifts Your Priorities From Fame to Impact Seeking

I learned that at the end of the day, I care more about deep impact than quick fame.

I would personally rather have hella slow growth producing really good, unique impactful videos & posts via storytelling rather than than quick fame doing what everyone else is doing. As I shared in the prior blog here, at some point during this challenge, I got caught up in the algorithm driving me insane. Low engagement made me question my own creativity and the value in my own videos. This led to comparison and thoughts like “Dang is my video THAT bad?”

I am glad I went through that mental turmoil then. Because it forced me to re-evaluate my priorities. Forcing myself to keep making videos even when I felt insecure about it is why I recommend this challenge. It forces you to figure out your priorities even if you are feeling discouraeged

2. Quality > Quantity

Ive always believed that less is more. For example, it is better to have less posts with good quality than sixty billion posts with poor quality. I always thought that the current format of pushing a lot of videos because it might be good for the algorithm was a trash concept for the creative process. Our brains aren’t wired that. We are meant to take things slowly and have breaks in order to produce good art out of seasons of living life.

Regardless, I wanted to do this creative lessons challenge anyways because I was curious to see the results. People online kept saying “be consistent”, “post everyday” and I wanted to see if it was true.

Overall, I learned that the whole “post everyday” is a terrible idea even for the algorithm. However, there is some truth behind the advice. I do think that the app finally got used to my presence and was pushing my work out more to non followers than at the beginning when I posted once a week. I think it simply sped up the process of the algorithm recognizing me by posting that frequently. BUT when I was looking at my analytics, I saw that posts actually did better actually if I took a few days off in between.

So I still believe that quality > quantity and will proceed to move accordingly.

3.Don't Bow Down to the Algorithm

People will say “look at your analytics to figure out what is working” so I did that. But then I tried to add similar intro/hooks to different videos and then the video would flop. At some point I had to realize – oh there is NO trend with my ideas. As in no matter what I posted I couldn’t find a common theme or “what worked” per say. So I decided that moving forward I am no longer looking at analytics.

And then I got curious and decided to make a tik tok account and start posting on youtube. This kind of blew my mind, because a video that would do well on tik tok might do terrible on youtube or instagram and vice versa.

So it made me realize none of this matters and that analytics are not a predictor of whether or not your work is good. Because on different platforms it yields different results.

This brought me peace and gave me freedom to create for fun again. Art was never supposed to be developed under the confines of an electronic algorithm anyways.

So I am getting back to my roots of creating – for fun and vibes

4. Improve your confidence

A BIG reason why I did this is because I wanted to see what I could do. A lot of times I make excuses like “Oh I don’t have time to post” or “Oh I don’t got capacity”. But I wanted to see if I could do this while working and training for a half marathon.

Now that I have done this I feel like I can do anything. I can post freely without caring about other’s opinions. (Well, to be honest that is a work in a progress/still in prayer but I am working on it). Although I said quality > quantity, getting in reps is still important because posting is like a muscle. As in, it takes time to get used to it. The more you do it, the more comfortable you become. In these 27 episodes, I developed my creative process. I realized the type of videos and images I want to post about and create – the type of things that are fun for me and give me joy.

So by posting this creative lessons for the past month or so on instagram , I realized that I can do this thing. I can commit to youtube, writing, to doing this for real seriously. Although I am still shaky, my confidence in myself, my art and creativity has grown. And I believe that if you do this challenge to, it will also grow.

You don’t gotta do 27 creative lessons by 27. You could do 10 lessons by 20 or 5 lessons by 25. Switch it up however you’d like and watch how your mindset and creativity blossoms. Will you join the creative lessons challenge?