What it takes

Hey, it’s Bog.

Yesterday I was browsing Twitch and noticed something strange.

I decided to check out a streamer, Summit1G, who I used to watch back in the day when he used to play H1Z1 (he’s a huge streamer, by the way).

And I noticed that he looked completely drained. Super tired.

Then my eyes turned to the little number at the bottom right of the screen that shows how long he’s been streaming.

14 HOURS?!

“Surely that must be some random one-off event or a 24-hour stream,” I thought.

But I had to know for sure.

I opened another tab and went on to double-check his Twitch stats.

And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The average amount of time that he streamed over the last 30 days was 11 hours and 51 minutes.

What?

THE AVERAGE?!

That means that some days he streamed more than that. The stream I was watching wasn’t even his longest this month.

The next day, I told about this to my friend, and their immediate reaction was:

“Why would he torture himself like this?”

Strangely, my reaction was the opposite. The first thought that came to me was:

“That’s actually so inspiring. It shows how much it really takes to be at the top.”

And right after that I thought:

“Damn, what the hell am I doing? Go get to work.”

Here’s an example of how much another streamer (Jynxzi) makes per month with 2.1x more average viewers:

(Dayum).

So it’s probably safe to assume that Summit1G earns half that much. Which would amount to $225,000 per month.

And yet he still keeps working his ass off every single day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure he loves what he does, and that’s a huge part of why he’s able to stream for so long. But 11 hours and 51 minutes on average per day every day?

That’s another level. And I absolutely respect that.

Some people probably think, “Ahh, of course I would work 12 hours a day if I was making more than $7,000 a day, who wouldn’t?”

But I think that after a couple of months or a year of doing that every day with multiple millions of dollars already in your bank account, the motivation would fade.

And this is Summit1G’s airtime from the past 4 years (super-saturated purple squares are 14-15 hour streams while medium-saturated ones are 11-12 hour streams):

That’s a very purple chart.

Isn’t that absolutely wild? The amount of work he puts in.

I see this with a lot of people that reach out to me asking for advice about why their YouTube channels aren’t growing.

And the #1 most common thing is that they just haven’t made enough videos.

Haven’t tried enough.

Haven’t given it an actual attempt.

I open up their channel page and see that there are 9 videos, more than half of which are shorter than 1 minute or uploaded over 5 years ago.

And usually my unsexy, annoying advice is to do more. Fail more. A lot more.

Not 2 or 10 times more.

But a hundred, a thousand times more.

There’s very rarely a “shortcut” or a secret strategy to avoid doing the work. Especially when starting out.

Because most beginners haven’t done enough work to even know what a “shortcut” or a good opportunity looks like. Even if they do, they don’t have the skill to execute on it.

So anyway, that’s what I wanted to share. Just how much work it actually takes to be one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. I find that so eye-opening.

To summarize, if you’re someone who wants to achieve a very ambitious goal, do more. A lot more.

Thanks for reading 👋!

❤️ My Favorite Things

🖥️ Mac App:

After a bunch of YouTube comments, I finally caved in and tried Raycast. And I didn’t expect it to be such an insanely well-built and useful app. It essentially replaces the Spotlight search bar on MacOS with tons of bonus features. Like a built-in emoji picker, window management, color picker, searching and downloading SVG logos (that has to be my favorite feature because I usually search for SVG logos and later animate them using Manim for my ˙videos).

⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts:

This is super niche, but after trying out a bunch of editing softwares, I started to appreciate the keyboard shortcuts that are in Premiere Pro a lot more.

So here are some useful ones that I use for pretty much every video I edit:

• Ctrl + T → Toggle Transform Direct Manipulation. Lets you instantly transform the clip (resize, move to another place) in the Program Monitor without first having to click on “Motion” in the Effect Controls panel.

  For example, this is amazing for when you have an adjustment layer on top of a clip and you want to transform a clip that’s underneath. Because double-clicking on the Program Monitor would select the adjustment layer and not the clip under it.

• Comma (,) → Keyframe temporal interpolation - Ease Out. Lets you select a keyframe and switch it to Bezier by hitting a single key without having to right-click, go to temporal interpolation, and select ease out.

• Period (.) → Keyframe temporal interpolation - Ease In.

• Shift + Z → Toggle Projects panel

• Shift X → Toggle Effects panel

• Shift C → Toggle Effect Controls panel

• Shift V → Toggle Timelines panel

• Shift G → Toggle Properties panel (Essential Graphics).

Bonus tip: 90% of my keyboard shortcuts are on the left side of the keyboard so that I can click them using one hand (the left one). That way I never have to release my mouse and bring my right hand to the keyboard while editing. This has saved me so much time when editing. Hundreds of hours.

✍️ Quote of the Month:

When you buy skills, it's the closest approximation to buying time.

If something could take you 5 years if you did it on your own or it could take you 1 year if you paid 4 different people to help you out with each step of the process, why would you not want to pay all the money you have to get to there and then have 4 years of gain with that new baseline? You are now living 4 years into the future. It's like you skipped from being 20 to 25, and you're getting the earning power of 25+ but now you're just 21. At that point you pull the next 5 years forward. And when you're 22. It's like you have the earning capacity of when you're 30.

- Alex Hormozi

​🧪 The 3-step system I use to get 3,707,149 views per month on YouTube.