A creator missed his own publishing deadline by building a new tool instead of shooting the video, then names the exact mechanism that let two years of hard work stay unpublished.
Posted
3 days ago
Duration
Format
Demo
sincere
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Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Consistent 'productive' avoidance isn't a discipline problem, it's the absence of a witness, and the fix is a scheduled, camera-on coworking session with another person.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A solo founder or creator who has been building for years with real output but nothing published or sold.
Someone who suspects their own productivity might be a form of hiding rather than progress.
A person who has tried planners, trackers, or willpower systems and watched them fail within days.
SKIP IF…
You already work inside a team or office where someone reviews your output daily, this specific gap doesn't apply to you.
You want a new productivity app to download and forget, not a structural fix to how you work.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
The creator spent two years building apps instead of publishing a single video, and on the day this one was due he built a new recording tool instead of shooting it. That's not a motivation problem, it's a named phenomenon: the Hawthorne effect, the same reason a gym trainer or a coworking cafe makes people work who'd otherwise stall alone. Without a witness, avoidance doesn't look like laziness, it looks like real, hard, visible-to-no-one work you can sustain for years. The fix costs nothing: a video call with one other person, both working in silence, camera on, for 25 or 50 minutes. He built a free tool to remove the scheduling friction that kills most attempts at this before they start.
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Cold open: the creator missed his own deadline by spending the final day building a recording tool instead of shooting the video.
00:34 – 00:57
02 · Tellman's deadline call
A friend forces a specific, public commitment: publish the first video by Tuesday, September 8th.
00:57 – 02:15
03 · Who I am, fast
Fast bio: 20 years in direct response, a nuclear engineering background, two years of AI-built apps and zero videos published.
02:15 – 03:13
04 · The mechanism: you need a witness
Names the Hawthorne effect and body doubling: gym trainers and coworking cafes raise output just by being present.
03:13 – 08:02
05 · The dangerous version: work that looks productive
Two years spent building moderncreator.app instead of publishing, driven by imposter syndrome and comparison to other creators' highlight reels.
08:02 – 18:09
06 · The free fix, then the demo
Introduces createwithfriends.com and walks through booking a session, inviting a friend, claiming a seat (including a real failed login), and the open-hallway stranger-matching option.
18:09 – 18:44
07 · Book a focus session, bring a buddy
Closing CTA: get an observer, get a body double, get to work, with a tease for video two.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Hard, technical work that nobody watches can function as avoidance, even when it looks and feels exactly like discipline.
The Hawthorne effect, working harder simply because you're observed, is why a gym trainer or a stranger in a coworking cafe changes output without doing anything active.
A two-year pattern of building impressive things nobody sees is not a motivation problem, it's an avoidance problem with a different name.
The self-test: notice whether you keep choosing the task nobody can judge you on over the task you actually committed to.
A hard deadline set by one other person did more to force a launch than two years of internal intention.
The free fix is a video call with one other person where both work in silence, camera on, for 50 minutes, no talking required.
Scheduling friction, not lack of willpower, is the biggest reason accountability calls fail to become a habit.
Comparing your unfinished work to someone else's years-long highlight reel is a reliable way to justify never starting.
Building the infrastructure around a goal, an app, a tracker, a system, can quietly replace doing the goal itself.
One free session a day is enough to test whether observed work changes your output before you pay for anything.
Takeaway
Your Busywork Might Be Avoidance
THE WITNESS EFFECT
Years of impressive, hard work that nobody sees can be avoidance wearing the costume of discipline, and the fix is being observed, not more willpower.
01The video was due at 3
Missing a self-imposed deadline by using the final hours to build a new tool exposes a pattern: replacing the actual task with adjacent, easier-to-justify work.
The excuse doesn't feel like an excuse in the moment, it feels like preparation, which is what makes it durable.
02Tellman's deadline call
A specific date set by one other person outperformed years of internal 'I should really do this' intention.
The commitment that stuck wasn't 'make a perfect video,' it was a hard, public, dated deliverable.
03Who I am, fast
High capability in one domain, like technical building, doesn't transfer automatically to a different domain, like publishing, that carries its own fear.
Two years of output with zero audience is a measurable symptom worth naming before trying to fix it.
04The mechanism: you need a witness
The Hawthorne effect explains why a gym trainer or a stranger in a coworking cafe raises output without doing any of the actual work for you.
Being observed normalizes the act of working, which quietly lowers the activation energy needed to start.
The self-test: notice which tasks you only do when nobody's watching, that list is your avoidance list.
05The dangerous version: work that looks productive
Hard, skilled, genuinely difficult work can still be avoidance if it's work nobody can judge you on.
Building infrastructure around a goal, a site, a tool, a system, can quietly become a permanent substitute for the goal itself.
Comparing your unfinished work to someone else's multi-year highlight reel is a reliable way to justify staying unpublished.
06The free fix, then the demo
The fix costs nothing: a scheduled video call with one other person, both working in silence, camera on, for 25 or 50 minutes.
Scheduling friction, not lack of willpower, is the reason most accountability-call ideas never turn into a habit.
A stranger-matching option for pairing removes the dependency on already having a willing accountability partner.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Hawthorne effect
The tendency for people to change their behavior, usually working harder or more carefully, simply because they know they're being observed.
Body doubling
Working alongside another person, in person or on a video call, purely for the focus benefit of being observed, with no requirement that the other person help or even talk.
Focusmate
A body-doubling service that pairs strangers for scheduled virtual coworking sessions, cited here as the model the creator built his own tool to imitate for creators.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
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metaphoranalogy
This video was due at 3 p .m. It's currently 8 .18, and I made a commitment seven days ago to finally launch my first YouTube video. And you know what I did all day instead?
On the day of the last 24 hours leading up to my deadline, I built a new tool to help me record it. So I built instead of created. That's what this video is about.
And if you've ever done something that looked exactly like productivity while the actual thing didn't get done, Stay for the next eight minutes. I'll show you what it is, how to test it on yourself in 30 seconds, and how to fix it for free tonight.
But it's irrelevant to actually getting the job done, which is when's it going to be done by? Like, make a commitment, dude. Like, it's September 1st.
When are you going to have this video published and live by? Like, not the perfect video. A week from today, September 8th.
Tuesday, I'm going to publish my first YouTube video. There you go. So that was seven days ago with my friend, Talman, who's been my lifelong friend since 2003 in the marketing biz.
And he made me set a deadline and he made me make a commitment. So, you know, it's not really a motivation problem. It's not.
I've got more capability than I've ever had in my life. And maybe you feel the same way with AI. Everybody is feeling empowered and it's a great feeling.
At the same time, there's a bunch of fear. But nonetheless, I produced. I produced so much stuff over the last two years that nobody's ever seen.
So I produced it for an audience of one, me, myself, and I. And that's a different problem and it has a name. I mean, think about it.
Do you do a better job at the gym when a trainer is right next to you monitoring you? Even if they're not really doing much, they're like, hey, do a lunge. Okay, pick that thing up.
What are they called? Weights?
I wouldn't know. Anyway, but like, obviously it works. Coworking cafes, total strangers working next to each other.
Everybody's in the room doing something and it normalizes it in your brain like, oh, working is OK. Other people work. I should work.
Right. Focus me.
Yeah, I already said that. So anyway, so basically what's happened is the last two years I've been wanting to create my YouTube channel and I failed and I didn't do it. And instead, instead of doing nothing.
I dug in to AI, right? As so many people are. And I got really, really good.
I became a modern builder. I became a badass builder. And I have built apps that I really think rival anything that I've seen anyone else build on X or YouTube.
And the thing is, I've been building it for, like I said, just myself. I haven't shown anyone. I've been scared, okay?
Scared shitless. So this is a combination of mental issues, productivity, focus, and just... imposter syndrome or whatever you want to call it because of my stage in life and like all these reasons in my head are like, why am I not doing it?
So anyway, I think the observation effect in body doubling is something that used to help me in the past. I kind of forgot about it for years and now I'm building a solution so that I can bring people together and other people can do the same thing inside of my modern creator network. So yeah.
And so guys, so like basically what I figured out is that, you know, If you're not going to do the thing that you know you need to do because you have mental hurdles that you haven't overcame, you know, all I can say is like at least do something. And I think that most people do.
We don't just become lazy. We basically just choose to work on stuff that nobody sees. Like I said, it feels like discipline.
It feels like doing something and it is doing something. I developed a skill and it's even something that you can do in the dark for years. But it.
it's still avoiding the one thing that you know is what you really need to do to move everything forward. So I wasn't just procrastinating. I was doing hard technical work every single day.
I just picked the work that nobody could judge me on. So it's avoidance, right? Every creator worth studying in my site, which you're seeing right on the screen right here, this is moderncreator .app.
I built this because I named my company one year ago, August 25th, 2025, I started Modern Creator LLC. Modern Creator Network and Modern Creator App. Well, the LLC came first.
And every creator in here is awesome. They're world class and the top of their game. And these are the people that I am inspired by.
And I felt like I was falling behind. And so I built this app for myself. I was like, if I can't create, I'm going to build the best fucking site for people that are in the same boat and they want to learn fast from other top creators.
and learn the best things going on in AI and not fall behind. And so I built this site and I pick a video of the day and I showcase and I feature the best content out there. And this is also part of my problem because I'm comparing myself to all these people when I'm seeing their highlight reel after probably years of dedication and commitment and skill building to something that I'm scared to do the first video.
But here I am doing it now, okay? It all comes full circle, you know? So anyway, this site I built and I built a really high quality site and I learned exactly all about tech stacks and, and AI and how to build this with cloud code.
This is not a one -shot prompt. I've literally put hundreds of hours into this to making it perfect. And I've obsessed on the UI and the UX.
I mean, just take a look at it. I mean, I mean, come on guys. Let's watch this.
I'm going to stop playing this. But we can do read -along mode. I'm going to pause it.
Big idea. Who's this for? TLDR.
Chapters. Atomic insights. Takeaways.
Glossary. Resources.
And I built a rock solid automation process to power this site, like a pipeline from taking the best stuff on YouTube. And I built it in a way where it's like I was already doing something. So I attached the entire core of this site onto an action that I was already doing daily, which is why I've been able to be consistent.
So I'm not incapable of being consistent. I'm incapable of doing certain things because I haven't done them before and I've been avoiding them. But I've been very consistent on watching content every day, learning about AI.
I'm on YouTube. And so I built a whole system around my YouTube playlist. So every time I'm watching a video, I'm scrolling my feed and I go, oh, that's a good start watching that.
I add it to a playlist and then I select that playlist through an automation and then I download all those videos. So as soon as an app, as soon as I add a video inside of my actual YouTube app, I'm scrolling on YouTube, right? and I add a video, it's instantly available to my skill locally, and my skill will find that video, it'll download the video, it'll transcribe the video, and it'll create all these different sections and SEO optimize everything.
And so this site is a long -term play. It's like... I basically was like justifying the fact that I'm not a creator.
I can't create, but I have a company called Modern Creator and I fucking love this site now. And guess what, guys? I want to be featured on my own site, but I can't be featured because I'm not going to break the rules.
I'm not on YouTube, so I don't qualify to be on the site. And so I built a site that I want to be featured on. And the only way for me to be featured on my own site is to become a creator.
And so that's why I'm creating this video right now. I'm not saying that this video is worthy of being featured at a VOD. I'm still going to curate at a high level.
But this is the first video that's going to lead to another video that will be good enough for me to feature it. And so that's kind of where we're at. And that's basically what I want to show you in this video.
And then I want to show you what I've built and what might be useful to you to help you do deep work. And so let me introduce you guys to createwithfriends .com. This is a platform that is part of Modern Creator Network.
And what it does is it's like Focusmate for Creators plus, plus, plus, meaning there's a bunch of other stuff that I'm not going to cover in depth in this video that allow you to do deep work. And it tracks your streaks and it helps you set your goals and it helps you figure out what is the thing that you should be working on today?
What is the thing you should be working on? for this next one hour block, 50 minute block? What is the thing that you should be working on this week?
And it helps you reverse engineer where you're trying to go and all the steps that you need to take, all the process actions that you need to take on a daily, weekly basis, okay? And so it's completely free for one session a day. So you guys come here, you can check it out, you can host a room, book a session with somebody, send a link to your friends.
So basically you come in, you say, hey, I wanna do this. You create a buddy link. You send the buddy link to someone.
They sign up for free. And all it takes is a Google login. And it's really fast, super easy.
And they're in. And then you guys can try out, create with friends. And you can focus together or co -work together, create together or focus together.
Okay? So you hit one button and then you're in a room together, as you can see right here. And in the video that you saw with Telman earlier, that was...
us using the room to not focus because we were talking and I was demonstrating it to him. But basically, you could still use the room however you want. But ultimately, it's made to design to be a focus room or a co -work room, right?
So you create your free account, you pick a door, you show up on camera. And everybody I've shown this to has said it's awesome, okay? So, you know, it's free.
Give it a shot. Tell me what you think. But I think that this is a way that as I...
build a network here right now we're just at the beginning stages so there's not a ton of users there but in a month from now by the time you're watching this video maybe we'll have thousands of members and it'll make it easy to pair you up with a stranger if you don't have a buddy that you want to invite right now or the buddy can't of it isn't available for every hour that you want to do it maybe you want to go ham and you want to you know focus for 10 hours a day like you can upgrade and then invite as many friends as you want but you got to time it and everything So in the future, it'll be like, hey, I'm ready to go live and focus right now.
Pair me up with somebody else that needs a match. So that's what's coming. And it's like I said, it's completely free for one deep work focus session a day, one 50 minute block.
So you can either schedule 25 minutes or 50 minutes at a time. So let me actually show you how it works. OK, let's see if this will work.
Create a free account. I'm already logged in, so it should just redirect me. There we go.
OK, so this is me logged in as admin. And these won't be here when you get here. Uh, this is one I have scheduled for next week.
And then these are other people that I've already done it with and they're asking me to lock in. But anyway, what you want to do is yours is going to be blank over here. You just come over here to the right -hand column and then you select 25 or 50 minutes.
And in the future, we'll, you'll select anyone and then I'll match you up. Or you can pick a member. If you actually know people in the network, you can search for their username and pop them in, or you can invite a friend.
This is what you're probably going to do. So you sign up, get your free account and then invite a friend and then you pick a time that you want to do it. So if it's today at 10 PM, create your invite link.
If it's tomorrow, whatever, let's say tomorrow at 1 PM, I'm going to send it to my buddy, create invite link. Okay. And now it's down here.
You can see it right here and you can just copy the entire message or copy the link. So if you copy the link, it'll go to a page like this and it'll say, you know, your name, save the focus session for you.
It'll have your logo right there. Cause when you sign up, you create, you can create a username and upload your logo or to pull it in from Google. And I recommend you getting a good username.
I have no restrictions on the username except for my name. So like Justin just got at Justin, which is a hot name. Imagine getting at Justin on Facebook, you know?
So you're here early. You might as well benefit from a good username. But yeah, then they would claim the seat and it would link you guys up.
So I will do that in a second. But I don't want to claim it in this account. So let's go.
Let's open up a new in private window.
And I'll paste it in here.
Okay. And then I'll say continue with Google and claim your seat. So it's basically saying log in.
Oh, shit. Sorry. I don't have my.
Let me log in. I think I remember my password. There we go.
Oh, come on.
Oh.
That's why. Sorry.
This is going well. No! Fucking asshole.
Sign in to Clam. There it is. I wanted to sign in with email.
Because my account is an email account. Okay.
There we go. This is going to work. So now it brings you back here.
Claim your seat with Jolie. Click it again. Okay.
And so now you and Jolie, we're good to go. What are you working on? Going to the moon with my green screen.
That's what I have to accomplish. Save intention. Back to the board.
And now you'll see tomorrow I have 1 PM tomorrow. So this is my other, a different account. This is a different email.
Right. So go back over here and now you can see it's already showing up on mine as well. Right.
So now we're linked together and you'll get an email reminder and we're adding Google calendar notification here in a second. Um, and yeah, so like now you guys will be paired up and when you click a link to open, we'll just open it right up in here. And as admin, I'm going to start it now for the demo.
Normally, you would have to wait until the time of day. Getting crazy on YouTube video. Yeah.
Crazy T. I'm getting crazy T. Okay.
That's me. That's me without a LUT. This other camera has a LUT.
See? Which one do you like better? And then we can go over to here.
And I'll say open again. Go into the moon.
Allow. Allow. Okay, and I'll change this camera to the other one.
There we go.
So now we're on Create with Friends.
this is the wrong time because we're very early, but this will say 50 minutes or 25 minutes counting down. And we'll basically just say, Hey, so you want to go to the green, you go to the moon with the green screen. Don't you need a rocket?
And I'll be like, I know I got to focus. And then the other guy will be like, yo, Hey bro. Like, uh, are you getting cray on YouTube?
Hell yeah. I just built a whole new system just to record a YouTube video. And that's what I'm doing for the next 50 minutes.
Let's lock in bro. I'm going to mute myself and listen to some theme music. Okay, cool.
So I'll mute myself and then I would just start playing the music, which I don't know if you can hear right now, but I'll turn it back off in case. So anyway, that's create with friends. That's what I built.
And I'm trying to create a community of people that are creators that want to meet other people, collab, focus and build with.
So I'm going to turn this off or I'm going to run out of this because. The camera. And then after it'll ask you all your questions and stuff like that.
So you can keep streaks and it can keep track of your productivity levels. And then once we activate deep mode, you can like connect it to your goals and your weekly task and all this stuff. So I'm not very good at explaining it yet.
There's a lot to it. It's not the purpose of this video, but this is what I've built. And so I've been using this to meet up with people and I'm just starting now to get some focus partners so I can start benefiting from the same thing my girlfriend did 15 years ago sitting next to me.
And I hope that you will be able to take advantage of the same thing and you'll try it out and hopefully it'll work wonders for you. Some people maybe won't like it, but it works for millions of people or thousands of people, let's say, on Focusmate. And this is Focusmate for creators and it's...
Got a lot of other features. And that's just one thing in the network. You can also host your own rooms for right now.
And then we also have the Meet tab, which is, this is like Omegle for creators. So you just come in here and you start matching. And so if there's anybody else that wants to match with a human at that point in time, let me back out of here.
Let me go meet on this other one. The hallway is open. Start matching.
Boom!
Now we're matched up. And now I'm like, hey, Joe, what's up, bro? Like, oh, what's your name?
Oh, what do you do? Oh, I'm looking for clients for this. Oh, I'm trying to launch this.
OK, do you know anything about AI? Oh, yeah, I can help you. Oh, do you know anything about cloud code?
Oh, well, I'm stuck with this thing. And you guys can like help each other out or you can refer clients to each other or you could do email swaps or you can figure out a way to create content together and collab on stuff. So that's what I'm trying to do.
This is what. I built Modern Creator Network for and create with friends for. So, yeah.
That's this video. Hopefully, this video helped you get an observer, get a body double, and get some work done. Okay, bro?
I can't do it for you. You got to send a buddy and get to work. And if you want to learn about direct response, AI, and everything else that I'm going to do in my journey from...
basement dwelling 45 year old man rebuilding his life after addiction and drug use and turning in from a modern builder who's great with AI into a modern creator that can be featured on his own website, then you better subscribe and stay tuned. It's going to be good.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The video was due at three in the afternoon. By the time the creator sat down to record it, it was after eight, and the reason has nothing to do with laziness: he'd spent the day building a tool to help him record it instead of just recording it.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
09:27list
Under a Minute to Your First Session
Create a free account
Pick a door
Show up on camera
The three-step onboarding flow for Create with Friends, shown as an on-screen graphic during the product demo.
Steal forany coworking or accountability tool's onboarding screen
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
18:03product
“You got to send a buddy and get to work.”
Soft-sold throughout via a long, warts-and-all live demo of the free product (including a real failed login), then closed with a single direct line rather than a hard pitch.
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