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Strategy v. Tactic

i started listening to a new (to me) podcast this weekend called Book Launch Show, that is hosted by a guy who has been working in independent publishing for 11 years now (eight years at the time the podcast was launched). he said something in his second episode that really stood out to me about the difference between strategy and tactic. strategy is the blueprint, and tactic is deciding which tools to use to bring the blueprint to life. until i heard him say this, it’s a distinction that i never made consciously and it feels like an epiphany.

for example, i really want to start vlogging, and i want to create a travel video series. i have strategies that i want to use laid out. i’d like a video that has a short intro, and gets straight to the point. i want a video that has talking into the camera, narrative vocals, b roll and graphic text to display numbers, names and anything else that is easier to understand when written than it is when said. that is a strategy. what i haven’t lid out specifically yet are my tactics for deploying this strategy, and that is at least a part of why i’ve failed.

last night i finally took some time to dig around in my unsorted video files and to pick out the clips that i want to include in my iceland video. i labeled them by day, location and type of shot to help organize them, and i’m hoping it will make sequence editing a lot less painful. my next step will be transferring all of my files to one computer - currently they’re half on my laptop and half on my desktop - and once that’s all set, i am going to get to work.

my plan is to build sequences of usable video in a coherent order and then once i have those, write narrative that will fit the length of those clips. my goal is to end up with a video that is no more than 10 minutes - with a preferred cap of seven to eight minutes. five minutes of that should be walking through the journey and the remaining two or three minutes can be talking about logistics of packing and cost. i’m really ok putting out a 12- to 15-minute video as long as it is well segmented, organized and paced. no fluff, no garbage, only premium content.

the point of this video is not publication, but learning. i will publish it, but again, that is not the goal. right now i want to learn from my successes and failures. what did i do right? what did i do wrong? what did i fail to include? how can i fix those problems? can i fix them? and most importantly, how long does it take me to put together a video detailing four days of travel? is it something i can feasibly do while traveling?

example and current predicament aside, the strategy v. tactic mindset is something i need to ingrain into my process so that once strategizing is done, i can consciously move to tactician mode.