Content creation can be many things, but it should primarily be fun.

A note I sent to participants of the first cohort of The 6% Club, which begins this Saturday :)

A founding principle for The 6% Club is that creating content should be first & foremost fun. Something that you enjoy doing.

Yes, there may come a time when you see the potential to make money. It's inevitable that your relationship with content and your project changes at that point. But that's tomorrow's problem - it's like trying to decide your Glastonbury headliner outfit on the day you've picked up a guitar and barely learnt how to play an A minor chord. There will be other decisions along the way - do I want to scale this up? Do I spend time marketing this show? What are audiences saying?

The thing is, in order to get to a point where you have to answer questions like this, you still need to spend months - maybe years - creating. And if you're going to do that, you might as well have fun, no?

I know it sounds obvious - but I feel it's an important point to mention. We live in an age where everything is viewed from the lens of productivity and vanity metrics. Advertising and hustlefluencers preying on our baser instincts tell us that if your child learns coding, he could helm a unicorn; and if you use a few hashtags you're on your way to a YouTube gold button. What pressure - no wonder people are scared to put something out, or worry if episode 1 is up to the high standards of the episode 100 they're already dreaming about!

Alas, we believe in something more fundamental, perhaps foolish: That content creation can be a hobby. That it can be therapeutic, and that doing it can be an end in itself.

When we were kids, we did things "just because". For no reason other than it was fun to do or we wanted to explore something. We didn't keep a tab of how many games of book cricket we played, or Legos we'd redo, or scribbles on the back of notebooks... And here's the delicious irony. I believe that doing something for fun leads to more productivity, but in the long run.

During a recent interview I did for a project, a famous cricket writer said that we've lost the ability to be bored. This is not some minimalist lament, but a sombre reflection of the "moar content, moar productivity" trap that we in the modern world have somehow inveigle ourselves into. By slowing down, observing more of less, building hypotheses in your own head, making and joining dots - you may not have that much to show in the short run, but it'll all come together when the time is right.

Last week, (my fellow 6% Club mentor) Utsav Mamoria gifted me Cal Newport's Slow Productivity. It starts with a tale of a journalist who spent years pursuing a topic, immersing himself in it fully, before finally finding the insight that strung all his reporting together - something he couldn't have done if he tried to rush it. I believe personal content projects are just like that. Think of whatever you're doing as collecting bricks, ideas, dots, experiences, contacts... It will all come together. That we can promise you.

When I started a podcast with a friend back in 2015, I did it for fun and wanting an excuse to hang out with him more (We recorded using a phone, and our idea of audio engineering was to turn off the fan). I wouldn't have thought then that a few years later, IFP & Spotify would pay me to mentor budding creators, that the country's coolest fitness chain would ask me to run their podcast and least of all, that close to 75 people would pay me to teach them how to run a content project! And I'm glad I didn't - else the approach and incentives would have gone for a toss. I'm glad I did Simblified and my other projects for fun, primarily. Opportunities to monetise will present themselves when the time is right.

Of course, for those of you who DO want to become famous - we do not begrudge you that and hope you succeed, and we will certainly try to equip you with the mindset and skills to achieve that. But we also believe if you start playing cricket with the sole ambition of becoming an IPL marquee player, you lose out on some of the joy of playing... Not to mention the frustration given the immense odds. I mean, the corporate world is there if you need headaches and frustration :)

Your content creation path can take you to many places. A branded show. A book. Speaking opportunities. A cohort-based program (:P). Your own company. Who knows!

BUT. We firmly believe that when you start, you should do so for more fundamental reasons - to have fun, or explore an interest. That way, you actually give yourself the best shot of success later.

As we start the 6% club sessions this weekend - we hope your content project is successful... But more importantly, we hope you enjoy?the?process.

The 6% Club is a live, cohort-based online program designed to help working professionals sharpen and launch their personal content projects. Myself and Utsav will be running it. It starts on April 20, and both batches of Cohort 1 are sold out (thank you!). Signups for Cohort 2, starting July 7, are available here at the same reduced launch price.