I can't afford not to have a system

I postponed my first TikTok video for months. I was afraid of looking stupid. I felt like I didn't have anything worth saying, that I wasn't good enough, that I hadn't achieved enough to talk about these things. English isn't my first language, so I worried about how I'd sound. And I was uncomfortable imagining people I know seeing me on camera.

One day I got angry enough to just do it. I thought: you've been thinking about this forever. Just try it. Worst case, you'll be embarrassed. But you see people living the life you want. You want influence, a user base, people who care about what you build and actually use your products. I felt internally that it needed to happen. So I jumped in.

The first obstacles

The second and third videos came quickly. I shot them on my phone, still figuring things out. Should I use a script? Should I add music? I had no idea.

But every time something was painful or took too long, I tried to simplify it or automate it.

One example: I couldn't keep the lighting consistent. Every shoot looked different. Even now my videos aren't identical, but before I couldn't maintain any consistency at all. So I started writing things down. Camera settings, light brightness, everything. Now I have checklist.

Building the systems

The teleprompter was killing me. I use Elgato Prompter because I'm not fully fluent in English. I could load the script from a text file, but I kept updating my scripts constantly. Copy-pasting every single time was slowing me down so much. So I wrote a script with AI that automatically updates the prompter file when I make changes. Behind the scenes it just finds the JSON file in the app's data folder and updates it.

Another thing: I tried mobile teleprompter apps first, but they had voice recognition issues. They couldn't always understand my English. So I bought foot pedals to control it manually instead.

And CapCut templates. For the first 20 videos, I had different captions every time. Different size, different font, sometimes different colors. I was using CapCut and I knew there were templates, but I couldn't figure out how to save my own. When I didn't initialize it through a template, the text showed up static, it didn't animate nicely. When I finally discovered how to create custom templates, everything changed. Now I have a checklist. I know exactly what font size, what weight, what style. I don't have to search through that list or think about these decisions anymore.

None of these solutions are impressive. They're small, boring fixes. But each one removed friction. Each one meant I could focus on the content instead of fighting with tools.

Why systems matter

Without these systems, I'd feel burned out. Unfulfilled. Like I could be moving faster but the tools are holding me back.

With them, I can make multiple videos in one day without exhausting myself. I don't have to think about these things every time. Everything is automated, part of the workflow, part of the habit. That's the only way I can stay productive.

The point isn't to have everything smooth and perfect from the start. That's impossible. You'll keep hitting obstacles. What matters is whether you can systematically overcome them. Solve them once, build them into your workflow, and never deal with them again.

I can't afford to do manual things every time. I can't afford to think about font sizes and lighting setups and copy-pasting scripts. I need those decisions made once, documented, automated. Only then can I actually create.

This isn't just about TikTok videos. It's the same with programming, with hobby projects, with anything I build. You can't start from zero every time. You can't keep solving the same problems over and over. That's how you burn out before you build anything meaningful.