let's play a game of have you ever, have you ever had a content idea that sounds so amazing in your head and then, as soon as you start putting it into motion, you start talking on camera or on your podcast, it just falls apart. When you hit record, it's like in your head, you can picture yourself delivering a perfect performance. You see it all. You've got the idea. It's basically already posted, maybe even hilarious jokes added in. All of a sudden you've up-leveled your content in your head Timing's perfect, flawless transitions but the second you hit record, it feels like your brain starts buffering. There's a psychological principle called the illusion of explanatory depth, and it's wild. When I found this out, I was like I got to make a quick episode on this. So in 2002, yale researchers discovered that our brains create simplified, perfect versions of things we think we understand. Have you ever confidently tried explaining how to tie your shoes, only to realize you don't really know how to explain it? I ran into this the other day with my daughter, who is not having full-on sentence conversations yet, but I found myself wanting to say things out loud when I'm doing them just to communicate to her and start to just kind of describe the world around us. And as I was tying my shoes, I'm like this is one of those things I can show you easier than I can tell you. I couldn't imagine trying to even describe how to tie shoes on a podcast episode. Maybe I should try that sometime. So back to the study.

These researchers at Yale found that our brains create the simplified, perfect versions of things we think we understand. And they found that this was a shortcut for our brain to help our cave dwelling ancestors make quick decisions without getting lost in the details. And our brains still work the same way today. So when you plan content, it skips all the nitty gritty like the words, the transitions, the tone. It's like watching a trailer instead of the whole movie. You think you have an idea of the whole movie and these days, man, I watch trailers and I'm like I don't even need to watch the movie. Almost the same thing with some content ideas in our head where we have such a good idea and it plays out so perfectly. I'm like I don't even need to create it. It's so good or it's so fleshed out. We think we have a deeper understanding than we actually do. And if you want a fun little example of this movie trailer idea. Think of your favorite movie and then try to recall every single scene in order. It's pretty fuzzy, right? So if we apply this phenomenon through the lens of content creation and our content ideas, our brain will show us a highlight reel and then tells us yeah, we got this, to save ourselves the trouble of going. You know what? This idea is falling apart and it was not nearly as good as it was. In my head.

I put together a few ways strategies, if you will, quick ones on how we can win this battle and we can actually take our ideas, and they end up being better than the initial idea. So there's four I came up with, and if you have a bonus fifth one, please let me know. Number one outline your main points. This is where you would slow down and shape your idea. I've done this a million times I come up with an idea and I just got to record it. I got to get it out. Sometimes that's really worked in my favor, especially on TikTok videos, where my quickest video that I've made has generated the most views. But if I looked at the success rate of slowing down and shaping my idea before I press record, I would say it is far slower than I would like to admit. It's interesting how, if we just outline our main points, it causes us to think out our ideas more and really go more in depth and make our content better than just hopping right in.

Second, one is part of a letting go part one and part two. Let the details flow naturally, instead of trying to force something to be as good as your initial thought when you're outlining your main points. Don't try to pressure yourself into making it something that you think it needs to be. Instead, just let it be what it's going to be. And the letting go part two of this is embracing the imperfections. Some of your best details when you're outlining your main points or during your recording will be in the imperfections. And the funny thing is we often don't notice all of our imperfections. Like, I think I have an idea about my imperfections, but there's stuff that I don't know. You don't know what you don't know, and so, instead of trying to track down your imperfections, just let them go. And the fourth tip here is keep your good takes and don't judge too soon, even if things don't seem perfect to you.

If you followed this idea of slowing down, shaping your idea and putting a little effort in the front end on the research area. Over time, I believe you'll look back and see it was exactly what you needed to do in order to make big improvements across all of your content, because, from everything I can see, the most successful creators use their mental version, that initial idea, as a storyboard, not as a script. So, to wrap this up, when your content doesn't match your mental masterpiece in your head, that's a perfect version that never actually existed. It's just your brain's highlight reel, and we want to make your actual version better than the highlight reel. And I'll end with a question have you ever had an idea that felt genius until you had to explain it? I'd love to know. Catch you in the next one.