Scarcity Is Killing Your Creativity

The new trend in the newsletter world is short form.

After the rise of short form videos, short emails are on their way to become the new way of communication with your audience.

The latest I discovered is called 8 am:

https://get8am.com/

It’s a nice little format.

Now, it’s not really my style as you may have noticed, but for once, I will follow the trend.

Why?

Because I am on holidays in the South of France and I am (painfully) typing this on my phone between two feeds for my baby girl, so not the best for a deep dive.

(Forgive me also for the lack of formatting, the Substack mobile app editor is quite limited!)

Apart from mentioning a new trend you may find interesting to try yourself, I wanted to touch on a topic I don’t see addresses often.

I want to talk briefly about scarcity. (Funny, isn’t it?)

But not the marketing trick that tell you to buy in the next 15 minutes or the website will explode (and you’ll be a loser for the rest of your life).

I mean scarcity as a creator.

Both from a consumption and production aspects.

Scarce consumption means you use a very limited number of information sources. A few Twitter accounts, YouTube channels, blogs…

It gets worse when these sources are not fully independent.

The emission from one source contains a part of the other sources you receive.

It is noticeable with certain concepts that are rehashed all other the internet with only slight variations.

The consequence of this is poor quality of inputs that feed your brain. Like a monodiet.

Imagine eating only bananas for a month. I don’t know how people can think it can be good for your body. It may lead to fat loss but I’d guess not only fat.

Same for information: you want a rich and diverse diet for your brain.

Scarce production is when you don’t create much and/or mostly the same type of content.

The quality of output will be conditioned by its variety and volume.

If you only write 280 characters texts, you will train your brain to think and produce this very short form of content.

You may then struggle to write a long piece.

The same for videos: making TikTok videos is not the same as long form YouTube videos.

If you practice both, you will improve your skills transversally. You will become more creative by expanding your thinking and freeing yourself from the constraints of a specific format.

The same for topics.

Being scarce with which topics you consume or create content about will prevent your growth.

The solution is simple although uncomfortable.

Expose yourself to new stuff regularly. Read and watch content in formats and on topics you are not used to.

Dare to create outside of your usual boundaries.

You will develop your uniqueness more than by narrowing down too much your focus.

It is useful even if you aim to become a super specialist. Masters of any craft are often open to outside disciplines.

So don’t be too scarce.

Be great,

Frank