 When you're creating content, whether you are writing an article or making a video, have you noticed that you start talking about an idea or writing about one, and then you start thinking of the connections to other related ideas, and then you're starting to wonder, oh my gosh, is this thing becoming too big? Is it even possible to create a piece of content on this topic? Because I'm seeing all these connections, and if I keep writing or keep speaking, if I keep speaking, this is going to become an eight hour video. If I keep writing, this will become a book, essentially. And so how do we deal with that dynamic in content creation? So I can certainly relate, because at this point I'm grateful that I've been able to make over a thousand content videos, and most of those have had at least a short blog post attached to it. How did I do that? And by the way, I want to just invite any of you watching this to feel free to comment below on what is your strategy for creating boundaries for your own content pieces. The way I do it, essentially, is by, well, the simplest way of saying it's by the time limit, right? So when I'm making a video, I mean even making this video, I'm aware that my gosh, how long has it been? It's been what, two minutes or whatever, three minutes? I don't want it to go to 30 minutes. So I better, because as I keep talking about content, I can start thinking about all the other connections to even this topic alone. The time itself is going to say, well, if I have another, you know, three minutes on this topic, the most important thing I can, I can tell you is this, right? Or the most important, okay, okay, I have a second most important thing to tell you. And then, and then it's that, okay, I have a third most important thing, but that's it, that's it, you know, within three minutes. I call it temporary constraints. I use temporary constraints, because the truth about knowledge is that everything is connected. And so any constraint you give, you use with knowledge is, must be an artificial and self-imposed constraint. And that's who's to say where one definition ends and another begins or one concept and then another begins and who's to say also what's important of an idea that should be included in this article and what's not what's less important and not shouldn't be included in this article or video. The creator, the creator themselves has to say, for my temporary self-imposed limitation boundary, so that I can actually put out something discreet and consumable for the audience. I'm just going to, yes, there are 30 ideas connected to this. Or there's, there's three other really important ideas connected to this, but I'm only going to focus on these two or three ideas in this time that I have. And also, this is why when it comes to articles and videos to this is why hyperlinks exist. Right, when you, you know, well, we all know we're reading an article and then this word or phrase is linked to what maybe sometimes they link to Wikipedia, or they link to another one of their own articles, or they link to someone else's article. And so that's what links are supposed to be. It's like, okay, this concept is important enough where I'm going to put a link to it. Ideally for search engine purposes you link back to your own articles but if you link to Wikipedia is also very good, or link to another authoritative source it's also very good. The time limit is really my most blunt but very useful way to constrain myself and then the second, the second boundary tool is basically the rule of three, you know, I mean as simple as like, if I could just tell you three things about this topic if I could only. This topic has 85 ideas, but if I could only tell you three most important ideas for this framing of this, this topic, what might those three things be. It's just three. Alright, okay. Now, now the final tool that I use is iteration thinking or version thinking. It's to remind myself that this is just one version of how I talk about this topic. I have the rest of my life, hopefully I live a long and healthy life where I could we'll talk about the same topic. And, you know, 30, 30 more different ways, maybe more than that. And so, just for this moment, this piece that I'm going to be publishing. What is my take on it right now. That's it. And so you could basically ask yourself what's most alive for me around this topic right now. And the other question is, alright, this is the first time I'm writing about this topic. So, given that it's the first time, like, if I could only tell people one thing about it. You know, like, if people only read one article from me about this one topic, like what's like the one most important thing. And as you start writing one. Okay, there's a second most important thing. All right, right. Okay, there's a third most important thing. Okay, that's it. Three. Right. And finally, I'd say similar to the time constraint is, you know, time constraints particularly good for, for videos I'm now seeing that I'm like five minutes into this probably good to start wrapping it up right. When it comes to articles, I use time constraint in the in that I don't give myself that much time to write it I give myself half an hour to draft. And then I sleep on it. And then the next week I give myself half an hour to polish. Okay, and then an additional 15 minutes to post it in different places so because that time constraint with writing. That's all I can do. But if you are not comfortable with time constraint with writing then I offer you word constraint. Your article probably shouldn't be more than 2000 words, 2000 words is considered quite a long article. Last time I researched the ideal length for a blog post is supposed to be about 1500 words, seven minutes of reading that came from, I think came from medium comms own research. It was a couple years ago I don't know what it is now I guess attention spans probably get keep getting shorter I don't know, or maybe people keep getting faster as reader, but I myself keep my articles to somewhere between 500 at the very low end to like 1200 on the high and I don't know that I think just because over time, as I gave myself those time constraints I found myself being able to write usually somewhere around 7 to 900 words is what I come up with with those time constraints so I'm like oh that sounds good and my audience obviously has gotten used to that so I just kind of keep myself to that so I hope this helps. And there are some other comments from the live chats I'm going to think things, things wrong is a very experienced content creator. As well and Colleen as well and thank you all for your for your chat so I will put that below so I hope this helps. Thanks. And thank you Shweta for kind of inviting me to share a couple of prompts that might be helpful for you know helping us create discrete piece of content. And I shared earlier. One prompt is, if I can only share three things about this topic right that's one prompt another prompt is what do I feel really alive about regarding this topic right now and another common prompt I use is, what's a question that I've gotten about this topic from a client or maybe what maybe it's a common question that I get about this topic from clients or friends or whatever so what's what's a common question that I want. Okay so that's another one. Another one that I'd like to say is, what, what opinion do I have about this topic that's, that's contrary to the mainstream. I love those kinds of pieces of content. I love being a contrarian being a rebel say, yeah, people say this. Well, I say this instead, you know, who knows who's right but this is this is my opinion and I, and I, it feels good to me to say this right opinion. And then another one I often say I often ask myself is, like, what I, what way of thinking about this topic isn't being understood often enough, you know, in the public or in my audience. All right, or another way of asking this is, what surprise, I'm surprised that people don't understand this about the topic. What what what is that. I'm surprised people don't I just I'm surprised a lot of people to understand this about about this topic. So what is that so those are some of my favorite ways to come up with with some content ideas and framing it. And one more is, if I were to write a letter to my younger self around this topic, what would I say, like, you know, Dear George from 10 years ago. This is something that I wish you knew, right, right, or vice versa, if I could write a letter to my myself 10 years from now about what I think about this topic right now what would I say. So for example, I'm about to write an article I'm in process of writing an article about what I think about cryptocurrency at this time. And it's going to be interesting because I wrote one in point in four years ago I wrote I wrote an article crypto. And now I'm going to write it again I'm going to go back and see what I thought about it back then I'm going to write it now and I'm sure 510 years from now it's going to change so much I'm going to be very interested in seeing what I thought about it now so that's another interesting one. And thank you faith to you for offering this one. What is one thing that your ideal audience needs to hear today. Yes, really good one. Yeah. So, and Shay Nichols says what lights you up right now that makes you feel most alive. Yeah, that's a that's a good one. And another one for me is like what really bothers me right now about my industry. You know, I often have those kinds of ideas. Anyway, this video has certainly gone long enough. I hope this is helpful. Thank you.