The 2027 Trap: Why You Need to Start Before January
Waiting for New Year's resolutions guarantees a winter slump. Here is why launching in October creates the momentum required to survive Q1.
Posted
yesterday
Duration
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Talking Head
direct
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5.3K
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Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You have spent weeks drafting content calendars and video ideas without pressing record.
You plan to launch a YouTube channel or creative freelance business as a New Year's resolution.
You find yourself continually moving project deadlines whenever the target date gets close.
SKIP IF…
You already publish videos on a consistent weekly schedule.
You operate in an industry where client activity strictly surges in early January.
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Jordan outlines the annual pattern where people evaluate their year and defer goals to January, introducing the argument for starting immediately.
00:58 – 03:04
02 · Planning Is Not Action
Detailed exploration of why detailed planning creates comfortable daydreaming, referencing his own 2018 YouTube channel paralysis where extensive blueprints resulted in zero filmed videos.
03:04 – 03:59
03 · The Future Timeline Trap
How setting future start dates justifies coasting, which leads to falling behind and repeatedly pushing back deadlines.
03:59 – 07:24
04 · The January & February Industry Slump
Analysis of seasonality in video production and social media: high Q4 energy versus dead post-holiday months, and how launching early leverages industry momentum.
07:24 – 09:42
05 · How to Take the First Step
Practical advice to start filming the first video immediately, treating the remaining months of the year as low-pressure camera practice.
09:42 – 10:09
06 · Accountability and Outro
Final call to action asking viewers to commit in the comments and an update on the channel's push toward 100k subscribers.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Over-planning functions as comfortable daydreaming that tricks the brain into feeling productive while avoiding the risk of execution.
Setting a launch date months into the future provides psychological permission to coast until the deadline approaches.
When a distant timeline finally arrives, creators realize how far behind they are and instinctively move the goalposts rather than launching.
January and February are historically the slowest months across creative and media industries, making them the hardest time to build momentum from scratch.
Q4 carries natural momentum and high commercial output; entering creative work when the market is moving is easier than starting in a dead period.
Filming practice footage without publishing still builds critical technical comfort and speaking ability for a future launch.
Three months of disciplined output is sufficient to dramatically change channel trajectory and audience reach on social platforms.
You do not need a fully outlined content calendar to begin; executing one rough video reveals the requirements for the next three steps.
Takeaway
Replace future planning with immediate low-stakes production
CORE EXECUTION RULES
Setting January as a start date causes coasting and drops you into the deadest quarter of the year without momentum.
Treat planning as comfort seeking: drafting endless outlines often conceals fear of getting on camera.
Start when market energy is high: entering creative industries during Q4 activity is significantly easier than starting during the post-holiday freeze.
Film without publishing if necessary: logging camera hours in private eliminates hesitation before public release.
Advance one step at a time: completing the initial rough video provides more clarity than an eight-video rollout blueprint.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Planning Phase Paralysis
A state of inertia where a creator spends excessive time organizing, scripting, and scheduling to avoid the discomfort of filming.
Winter Slump
The post-holiday industry lull during January and February when commercial budgets reset and corporate decision-making slows to a crawl.
Moving the Goalpost
The habit of continually pushing back a target launch date whenever the original deadline approaches without completed work.
Quotables
Lines you could clip.
01:35
“Planning is not doing, planning is not action.”
Crisp, definitive truth that dismantles analytical procrastination.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
02:05
“To me, it felt like I was doing something by planning when what I should have been doing is just coming up with the first video I wanted to shoot”
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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metaphor
We are officially three months away from 2027. And if you have a big goal for next year of starting a YouTube channel in this video, I want to talk about why you need to start taking those actions today and not wait until January. So every year around this time is when we start thinking about how this past year was, whether it was good or bad.
And we think about this brand new blank slate of a year that we have coming up in the next few months. For a lot of people, that's when we start thinking about the goals that we want to achieve for that next year. But the problem with this, at least for me, and this is me kind of speaking to my younger self and all the times that I've done this exact thing, we think about the plan, we're in the planning phase, we think about all the great ideas, and then when the new year actually comes and it's time to execute, we're too stuck in our planning phase that it just dies out very fast.
And so this is why I think that it is incredibly important to start those actions today and get a three -month head start on the year if you're able to. So let me talk about the few reasons why I think this typically happens.
Planning is comfortable. Planning is the best way that we can daydream about our goals. It's the way that we can...
come up with ideas and things we want to do and come up with an action plan but the problem with over planning a goal is you get so wrapped up in the planning process you think everything needs to be perfect and you have to make sure you have every step of the way lined out before you even take the first step and you get too comfortable thinking about that stuff and thinking that you are you know taking the next step to achieving those goals that you never actually take that first step for me for a long time it was this youtube channel I remember the fall of 2018.
This was when I was like really dead set on revamping this YouTube channel and actually going for it. And I just never did. And I spent so many late nights just watching other YouTubers, seeing what I wanted to do with the channel, coming up with video ideas, thinking about the timeline of, okay, I'm going to shoot this video.
I'm going to post it then. And I came up with this whole just game plan and just blueprint of what I was going to do with this channel. And when it came to actually taking action on that, I just froze and got too uncomfortable with the idea of actually taking action because I was so dead set on the planning process.
To me, it felt like I was doing something by planning when what I should have been doing is just coming up with the first video I wanted to shoot, shoot that video, go through it, whether I had to reshoot it six times, edit it, whatever it is, it would have been much more helpful if I was actually taking action on filming that video versus coming up with six, seven, eight videos, a timeline, all of that, which ultimately to this day, I never shot those videos.
Planning is not doing, planning is not action. So when you get too sucked up into, to this world of planning things, you get overwhelmed.
You start thinking of other ideas that, oh, well, if I do this, then I can bounce off and do this. And you get incredibly just overwhelmed and don't know even where to start. Going one step at a time, even if it's not finished yet, even if the idea isn't fully formed, that's going to get you a lot further than if you make sure everything is perfectly lined out before you start that first step.
Another reason why I think that the fall and New Year's resolution timeline is a trap is it gives you an excuse to wait longer. Anytime you put a timeline in place that is far in the future, it's very easy to just wait until that timeline approaches and gets closer before you do anything to start. Right now, you might be thinking, okay, it's October and I have this goal to start in December or January.
I've got two months. And then you just kind of coast and you sit back and you let time go by before you even start thinking about it. I'm guilty of this.
I've done this so many times over my career, not necessarily just with social media, but with my video production career. I put a timeline that's a little bit later in the year and I don't do anything in that time to progress and get closer to that goal until it gets closer. And then I find myself behind.
And when it actually comes, I realize, oh, I'm way far behind. I wish I started this earlier. And then you get overwhelmed and then you just kind of push that timeline further and you keep moving the goalpost.
October through December, if the holidays are a positive thing for you, typically is where you feel the most creative, the most inspired, and the most motivated to do stuff. This is how it's been for me, and I'm very blessed to have a positive association with the holiday time, but this is where I'm hanging out with family a lot, I have a little bit of time off occasionally, and I spend that time just...
getting excited for all of the stuff I want to do in the new year. The holidays are also jam packed like industry wise. So everyone's trying to do everything working in video production.
It's very busy during the holidays and then it kind of tapers off right at the end. There's a lot of motion and momentum happening at the end of the year. But one thing I have learned with working in a creative industry is most of the world just dies out after the holidays and it doesn't pick back up right away.
January and February are notoriously the slowest months of the year. Maybe not for every single industry, but for pretty much every industry that I work in, whether it's video production or social media and brand deals and all of that, they're doing everything they can to get everything they need to get done, finished before the end of the year.
And as soon as everyone goes on holiday break, it dies out and the world doesn't really pick back up until middle of February or March. things just aren't moving yet companies are still kind of recovering from the last year and q4 of last year and q1 is kind of their planning phase no matter what industry you're trying to get into you have to kind of match the energy of that industry and it's a lot easier to go into it for the first time whenever everything is already moving let me give you an example of how i implemented this this year and it's not exactly the fall it's the opposite of that but this year earlier this year i decided i was going to take this channel more seriously and really push it further than i've ever pushed it before april and may is when things are really starting to move you're out of that you know january winter slump you're into spring and early summer things are moving a lot faster the motivation is a lot higher in these months and this is exactly when i decided to start pushing this channel more so i started uploading more frequently
And I told myself I have a goal of becoming a full time YouTuber before the end of 2026. So the last thing I wanted to do was coast up until that point and then wait until the end of the year and then be like, OK, let's come up with a plan to go full time. I knew in that moment that I needed to start right now if I want to start building this channel up, posting videos, kind of getting the views back up if I wanted to create any opportunity for myself to do that.
And that's exactly what happened. I started this in April and May, and by the summertime, I was just chugging along like crazy.
If you follow this channel and if you followed this channel since around that time, then you probably saw just the increase of uploads to this channel. Everything that I was doing with this channel was really kind of starting to peak around summertime because I started three months earlier. It's absolutely insane what can happen in three months specifically on social media if you really just put your head down and start doing what you say you're going to do.
And this can translate to other industries as well. If you're watching this and you want to go freelance as a videographer or work in the filmmaking industry, whatever it is, that all translates to the same thing. I didn't have a plan.
I didn't have like a full rollout of different videos I was going to put out. I just knew I wanted to do this and I was finally going to take it serious. So I was just going to start one video at a time.
So I took that first step and then I figured out what the next step was. And then by the time you figure out that next step, you get three steps ahead and then you start moving from there.
But you don't have to have a plan just fully set out and lined up.
Now, how do you even take the first step? And I know everybody's going to be different. Everyone has different lives.
Some people are able to start today. Some people really aren't able to start until there's a specific timeline in their life. If you are able to take even the first tiny little step today, you got to start somewhere.
What I would recommend is if you're trying to start a YouTube channel, you need to just film that first video. You can watch this video here. I've talked about it in length.
If you want to get more in detail about that, be sure you watch that. But just start filming that first video. Even if you don't post it right away, maybe you need to re -film it a couple times.
If you just start practicing being on camera and filming videos and learning the process, that's going to get you a lot further because then if you have three months of filming videos and even just practicing and you haven't posted a video, by the time January and February roll around, you will have had enough practice to feel comfortable starting a video from start to finish.
And maybe you start uploading then, but you've spent three months actually filming and learning the process and doing the things that you need to do instead of just thinking about what you could do. So the intent of this video is kind of talking to my younger self, the person who always waited until the last minute to start, but also hopefully people watching this who really just have it in the back of the mind that they want to do something this next year and they're just consumed by that idea and they just need that one last push to finally get started.
I hope that that's what this video does. If there's one thing that I could just instill in your brain from watching this video is that there's no worse feeling than Being in January and February, looking back to this date here in October and realizing that you just let this time pass.
Realizing that you wanted to go after your goal, but you just spent the entire time thinking about it. It sucks. I've done that so many times.
I'm done doing that. That's why I'm posting this video today because if I don't take action, I'm never gonna see results. So just take action.
Whatever action looks like for you and whatever fits in your lifestyle, of course, take that first step and just figure it out along the way. Don't try to plan the entire thing first because it's not going to get you very far. And I know this from experience.
That's why I'm making this video. So I hope that you can take this video and apply it into your own life, your own situation and what works for you. If you actually watch to the end of this video, I want you to comment.
I'm taking that first step. That's going to be it for me. I hope you all enjoyed this video.
I hope you found it helpful. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you're not already. I hit 50 ,000 now.
I'm trying to get that silver play button. So I'm on the grind to 100 ,000. It's gonna be a long one, but I think we can all do it.
So thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video. Hope you all have a great day. I'll see you in the next one.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
Jordan opens by highlighting the three-month gap before the new year, directly challenging the conventional wisdom of waiting for January 1 to begin creative goals.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
04:22concept
The Q4 Momentum Advantage
Q4 Surge: Leverage high industry output and holiday motivation to produce content
Q1 Buffer: Avoid starting cold during the post-holiday corporate and creative lull
Spring Peak: Enter spring with 3+ months of established cadence rather than day one hesitation
A timing strategy where creators utilize the natural energy and commercial volume of late autumn to test and iterate, ensuring they possess existing momentum when industry activity drops in January.
Steal forStructuring creative sprints or launching freelance service businesses ahead of the annual corporate freeze.
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
09:40subscribe
“If you actually watch to the end of this video, I want you to comment. I'm taking that first step. That's going to be it for me. I hope you all enjoyed this video. I hope you found it helpful. Be sure to subscribe to the channel if you're not already. I hit 50,000 now. I'm trying to get that silver play button. So I'm on the grind to 100,000.”
Combined a specific comment prompt for commitment with an authentic milestone goal to motivate subscriptions.
Storyboard
Visual structure at a glance.
hookHook: 3 Months to 202700:00
problemTitle Card: Planning is Not Action00:58
story2018 Channel Overplanning Case Study01:35
mechanismTitle Card: An Excuse to Keep Waiting03:04
insightTitle Card: January and February Are Slow03:59
solutionTitle Card: How to Take the First Step07:24
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