What Happened to James Jani?
Perfectionism, Burning Out, and Creativity...
💡 The Realisation
TL;DR - I've burnt out from making videos on the main channel and have taken a temporary pause on production to experiment and work on other projects. This means content is coming, just not on the main channel (right now). You can follow that journey and find more content on my second channel and Instagram.
Towards the end of 2024, I was coming to a realisation: I'm burnt out.
Our most recent project, a 2-hour long docu series that took 12 months to make, had just released.
Yet there was a creeping feeling that I had been pushing away for a while…
I wasn't enjoying myself.
There were certainly moments of enjoyment, but something essential was missing.
On paper, I'm doing things I should love. Storytelling: love it. Researching topics: love it. Sharing these videos with an audience: amazing. So... why did I feel this way?
The same thing happened in 2021, and despite the progress I had made since then, I was somehow back in this spot.
What's going on?
Over the years, I've come to a few personal realisations that I think answer that question and will inform a new approach I'm taking with my work and, to be quite frank, my life.
The following is a collection of those understandings, which I hope to tie together by the end of this post in a way that should click.
If you've pursued any creative endeavour, or have found yourself struggling with perfectionism and its second-order consequences like impostor syndrome and chronic procrastination, I imagine quite a lot of this will connect.
For those who don't care and just want to know when there will be new content, check the TL;DR above, or scroll down to the section titled "The New Approach & Direction"!
You can also watch my latest video discussing everything below.
🎭 The 'Perfectionist'
An Archetype.
I believe there's a personality archetype prevalent in creative people, though by no means exclusive to them.
It's a cluster of traits: perfectionism, imposter-syndrome, self-criticism, low self-esteem, anxiety, and procrastination — perfectionism being the seed from which the rest grow.
Its manifestation might look like the following:
Starting a project with excitement.
Setting high standards and expectations for the outcome.
Feeling unable to meet those standards ("oh god, I'm really bad at this").
Losing confidence in yourself as a result.
Procrastinating, then feeling guilty for procrastinating.
Losing enjoyment in the project.
Either quitting or continuing to work on it endlessly, but never finishing ("it just needs one more thing").
The brave ones who do finish end up loathing the result: "it's just bad", "I could do so much better", "this is the worst thing I've made" — and tragically, never let their work see the light of day.
Most, however, don't even begin.
As you read this, there are likely millions trapped inside this funnel. Countless creative and talented individuals who never even began putting pen to paper, fingers to a keyboard, or ideas to a screen.
The Perfectionist.
Even The Perfectionist who sees success may feel like a complete imposter: "how did I end up here?", "I'm nowhere near as good as [insert a litany of comparisons]", "what happens when people realise I'm not as good as they think I am?", "I'm a fraud".
The Perfectionist will find themselves drifting away from the work, and into the sweet clutches of procrastination.
Who can blame them?
The Perfectionist has made their creative pursuits, the very thing they should love, a battlefield in which they must fight high expectations whilst navigating an unrelenting self-critical voice that attacks at each stage.
For the braver Perfectionist, the one that chooses to fight this battle, refusing to give up during the first wave of attacks, who summons discipline and an 'I can push through this' attitude; they are woefully naïve to the fact that their enemy is an entity that doesn't quit, continues to attack, and eventually... always wins.
Until The Perfectionist, exhausted in the trenches of a never-ending fight, burns out, abandons their passion, or takes time to rest before returning to the same battlefield...
Repeating the cycle once more.
A Butterfly Effect.
At 19 years old, I decided to make my first video on YouTube.
I remember staring down the lens of my iPhone camera, propped up on a cheap tripod, feeling more nervous for this than any previous acting audition or performance.
I kept my voice quiet enough to avoid being heard by my parents; I didn't want them listening in and wondering what I was up to.
My thoughts were a mess.
As I tried to deliver words to a camera, guided only by a page with loosely scribbled bullet-points in front of me, my thoughts rang with a voice that refused to quiet:
"This is shit", "Nobody will watch this", "I'm so nervous", "This is so much harder than I thought", "This is terrible".
I was The Perfectionist, though I didn't know it at the time.
The moment I stopped recording, all tension dropped from my shoulders; my body was in a sweat, and the room felt several degrees hotter than it had just an hour ago.
But you did it, I told myself.
Posting that video set in motion a chain of events that dramatically altered the course of my life, certainly my early 20s.
Four months later, the channel grew to 150,000 subscribers. Suddenly, I was earning an income several magnitudes higher than anything I thought possible, and almost instantly, YouTube became my full-time commitment.
I was young, wide-eyed, and very much a baby to the pursuit I was endeavouring to take.
In that moment, I managed to overcome the challenges that The Perfectionist might face, but I still hadn't truly grasped what this personality archetype would mean for my mental health and everything I was trying to pursue.
I was The Perfectionist that managed to fight through the first wave of attacks, ignorant to the nature of the battle I was facing.
🛠️ "Do What You Love"
The Discipline Problem.
"Discipline" is a virtue often preached in discourse around goals, ambition, and purpose.
The idea is that motivation is a fleeting feeling: one day you feel like getting things done — the next, not so much.
Discipline is seen as a remedy to this. A tool that, when applied, cares not for the presence of motivation, but simply getting the task done.
From the sensible to the biggest slop of the self-help genre, you'll find this word brandished ad nauseam. You want goal X? Then you need to WORK HARD. Be DISCIPLINED. It's going to be DIFFICULT.
There's a big issue I find with this advice, however: the centering of "goals" and "hard work" instead of "the process" and "joy".
A goal is just an 'Event'. A momentary gain or thing on a checklist to tick off. Publishing a best-selling novel, reaching a certain net worth, winning an award, getting x number of subscribers, etc.
They are singular dots on a line. Dots that are often highlighted, applauded, and externally validated.
To the person seeking those goals, however, there is one fact that becomes abundantly clear: your time is not spent in the event, it is spent in the process.
That is why the next question becomes existentially important:
Do you have Joy in the process?
— This doesn't mean you love every moment of the doing, but rather in the totality of the thing you do, are you finding Joy in it?
It's not an easy question to answer. It requires a level of brutal honesty, the kind that involves suspending ego and external pressures.
If the answer is no, then you set yourself up for a difficult set of circumstances.
I'm not suggesting you cannot achieve your goals or pursuits if you do not enjoy the process. In fact, that's part of the trap, because you can.
The question of do you enjoy it? is existential because it determines the quality of your life even if you achieve the same results on paper.
The person who enjoys what they're doing wins over the person who pushes through the work to get it done, even if they both end up with the same set of achievements.
Discipline VS Joy.
For the person who enjoys what they do, the journey is easier.
Their 'work' isn't an exercise in discipline and brute force to complete.
They're not productive because they have to be, they're productive because they genuinely enjoy the thing they're doing; the 'work' is easier to get done, ergo achieving goals becomes easier.
You'll still encounter challenges and hardship, but since they are in service to a process you enjoy, you're likely to also enjoy the difficulties.
So ultimately, in the pursuit of these goals and throughout your life, you can look back and say you enjoyed yourself and have been fulfilled, not because of 'events' that are externally validated and struck off a checklist, but because of the actual living itself.
This is not to say that discipline isn't important.
No matter how much you enjoy the thing, there will always be moments and days when you can't bring yourself to get started.
In fact, no matter how much you enjoy it, if you lack any discipline you'll never get started, or barely progress.
You need that discipline to get out of bed on the days you "don't feel like it", or grit through the more boring parts of your work. The point, however, is that discipline guides you towards the things that you enjoy.
'Discipline' is a tool — employed when you are finding it difficult to actually BEGIN the process. It should not require constant use during the process, or even worse, become the process itself.
Then you have to consider: what if you never achieve your goals?
To the person who pursued Events, they spent their time in a limbo state waiting for a destination that never arrived.
To the one who has pursued Joy, however, they enjoyed the journey, even if it did not take them to their destination.
'Winning' is not just in terms of tangible results (financial, reputational), even on an existential level, their life will likely feel far more fulfilling and joyful than the former.
Same result, different life.
🎨 Creativity, Progress, and Failure
Before starting on YouTube I had close to ZERO experience with filmmaking, video editing, motion graphics, graphic design, sound design... the usual ingredients involved in our current projects.
A month before starting the channel, I learned how to edit videos on Premiere Pro. Just the basics.
When I recorded my first video on the channel, all I could think about was how bad it was: I look ridiculous, no-one's going to watch this, I must be so boring.
The ONLY reason I continued through it all, eventually editing and releasing that video, was because I gave myself permission to be "bad".
That was the first lesson I learned early on when it came to progressing creatively: permission to be bad.
You need to be willing to make "bad" things to make "good" things. The former is the bedrock that allows the learning to do the latter. You have to make things that you might not be the most proud of. Things that might make you, or those around you, cringe.
It's so easy to see work we admire and think: "I have to make something like that", then when we inevitably find this to be an impossible expectation to meet, you are left disheartened.
The work that you admire is a type of Event that hides the practice (Process) that came before it, and to practice is to be imperfect.
It is not just a freedom to let yourself fail, it is a necessity in order to make progress.
"Failure" isn't even the correct word.
Truthfully, what we are looking at is the importance of experimentation and "play". For me, that was learning new editing techniques, trying a different workflow, or filming in an unexplored format.
It's through "play" that new ideas or perspectives form and connect, allowing for progression.
🧩 Connecting the Dots
A Poison.
You might already be seeing the connection between all these ideas. Here's the gist:
The Perfectionist is a poison to both Joy in your work, and creative progression.
How can The Perfectionist enjoy their work when their self-criticism has rendered it an arduous task at almost every step?
Even more frightening: is it possible that The Perfectionist, in pursuit of their namesake, cannot even recognise what they truly enjoy?
After all, this personality archetype has a habit of obfuscating the things we genuinely love and care about, making them harder to recognise.
How could you possibly give yourself permission to be "bad" when The Perfectionist is defined by its opposition to it?
And, because of the very nature of The Perfectionist, how can you ever trust your own judgement of what is "bad"?
The Perception Gap.
The cruel twist: "bad" is not a reflection of objective reality, but your subjective projection on your work.
The very first set of seven videos I made on my channel I thought were terrible.
Never in a million years would I have guessed that those set of videos would garner millions of views, let alone praise for my storytelling abilities. They were intended to be practice rounds.
There was a large gap between what I projected onto my work, and how others perceived it.
Tragically, that very perception gap has probably caused countless pieces of work, art, and ideas to either never materialise or be locked away.
This perception gap I suspect is strongest in The Perfectionist.
But the tragedy is tenfold when you realise that to even discover my perception gap, I had to actually release my work.
The Perfectionist hates exposing their work to outside eyes because to do so is to risk confirming their biggest fear: they're not perfect — they're flawed, they're bad, 'cringe', undeserving of success, or an imposter amongst a sea of far more talented, far more creative, far more deserving.
The Result
The result of this personality archetype usually means never getting started in the first place.
The Perfectionist speaks to fears of failure and imperfection, coddling them, letting them paralyse you with inaction.
If you do get started, the process is a struggle...
You're more likely to procrastinate — and The Perfectionist will use that to further fuel their criticisms of you ("how can you ever live up to your goals when you can't even get the work done today?").
You're less likely to complete your projects — The Perfectionist ensures that the process to completion is fraught with loathing, making it easier to quit rather than finish.
You're less likely to enjoy the process — imagine training under a coach who insists you're falling short, overloads your workouts, then reminds you how ahead everyone else is. You'd hate the process not because you're weak, but because your environment is working against you.
If you do complete your work...
You're more likely to judge yourself harshly — now that you're exposed to outside judgement and failure, The Perfectionist wants to ensure that you are your harshest critic.
You're more likely to quit — only the insane would continue fighting such an uphill battle, right?
And if you do continue... the cycle repeats itself.
🖌️ The Creator
A Paradoxical Personality
Gee, that sounds rough. So, what do I do?
The opposite extreme of The Perfectionist is someone who is completely apathetic towards making "good" work.
That's not the goal.
Having a "perception gap" indicates that although you don't have the skill for it yet, you do have a good taste for what is better. This is a very good thing; it drives progress.
Without a perception gap, you plateau. After all, how can you progress if you cannot even perceive what could be better?
The goal here is not to remove your desire for improvement.
This is a very important distinction I've come to realise:
The Perfectionist is not defined by a genuine desire to make good work, but to distort reality so that good work can never be made.
When The Perfectionist makes good work, they do so in spite of being The Perfectionist, not because of it.
A paradoxical personality.
Separating yourself from The Perfectionist does not mean losing the desire to make good work, it means freeing yourself from its distortions of reality.
The Alternative
What you should be aiming for is a desire to improve whilst still having fun, experimenting, and getting the work done.
The healthy alternative to The Perfectionist (what we shall call "The Creator") can recognise their room for growth, they can see their flaws, their imperfections, but crucially: they do not judge themselves nor see their work as a reflection on self-worth.
It's the difference between saying "I think the pacing is off" vs "the pacing is off, because I'm bad at writing". The Perfectionist adds judgement and distortions of reality.
Furthermore, The Creator finds joy in flawed and imperfect work. They see it as a room for 'play' and experimentation. They don't see any given piece of work as a final testament to their ability or legacy, just a single star in a cosmos of other creations, ideas, and experiments that ultimately guide their progression.
Because of this, The Creator enjoys their process and, as their name suggests, they actually create.
The Perfectionist is a centrifugal force that halts creation, The Creator seeks to materialise it.
🗺️ The New Approach & Direction
None of the above is an exact science, of course. Just a helpful framework I've used to navigate my own struggles over the years, and more importantly, my new approach going forward.
After meeting so many other creators in this space I'm certain that a lot of this will hit home.
I think, for a long time, I've allowed The Perfectionist to hurt my work on the main channel. Not in a way that's necessarily seen by my audience, but more behind-the-scenes.
My struggle with The Perfectionist archetype has removed the joy I derive from making these videos, instead prioritising the 'events': video releases, viewership numbers, etc. These only come every few months partly because I've been struggling with the process itself.
This has ultimately led me to burning out.
I recovered from my first burnout in 2021 by taking a break. Over the years, however, I recreated the same processes and conditions that led me there in the first place.
So, there are two things that I want to do here:
First: take a break from the main channel to experiment, try things out, and reconnect with the Joy that I find in storytelling (more on that in a moment).
Second: change my approach to work. I want to move away from focussing on events, and instead prioritise Joy in my process. I know that this work is a lifelong pursuit, and my process needs to reflect that.
At my core I love what I do on the channel: exploring interesting worlds, ideas, and people... researching, building a story around it, then putting that out to the world.
This new approach is about freeing myself from The Perfectionist, and bringing me back to a place of excitement and exploration.
Bigger Picture
I also want to expand what "James Jani" even is.
Whilst I primarily built an audience from the documentaries on our main channel, I feel as though there are so many avenues through which I'd like to explore storytelling that haven't been fully captured yet.
Ideally, documentaries are just one spoke in the larger wheel of what I do. I want to explore other forms of storytelling: writing, music production, and video projects that aren’t necessarily long-form documentaries.
The idea is that this exploration causes a cross-pollination effect where every project helps fuel and expand the other.
In other words, for those who only care about the docs, stay tuned. I know that in time I'll return, although I cannot say for certain right now. I'll keep you posted!
I strongly believe, however, that this exploration and pursuit of Joy will mean better (and more) content in the long run.
What's Next?
With my break away from the main channel I've already begun working on my next short-term project that'll be coming soon.
For those of you who would like to follow along for the journey as well as get some new content, you can follow me on Instagram and my newly created second channel.
I expect to be uploading regular updates here and various other types of content. It doesn't exist for the purpose of views or monetisation... think of it more like a scrapbook.
Sometimes documenting what you do, in a public forum, gives you the permission to be "bad". It's like treating what you do as an experiment, where it's in service to a cause of learning rather than perfect output. Learning becomes the objective, not perfection.
I look forward to seeing where this direction will take us, and sharing that journey with you :)
📄 Quick Note on Nuance…
Almost every topic here warrants its own discussion. There's a ton of nuance to this that I won't be able to cover. I'm able to take this approach in part because I don't have huge financial or familial obligations that make it harder for me to do so. Everything I've built up to now gives me the space to proceed in this way, I understand that not everyone will have that flexibility. This article is more of a documentation on my approach going forward — time and execution will determine its effectiveness.
Wow! I just gained a new perspective on the problem I was facing. Thanks, Jani!
This is interesting, I don't know how Johnny Harris does it, crank out video after video, but to be honest I think he doesn't really care as much about the minor details. I notice with you, you're meticulous about everything and I have followed you from day 1 damn near, might want to talk with Johnny Harris about this, im sure he suffers from it at times, but may have some ways to overcome it