After ten years, it's time to stop weekly videos.

0:00 This isn’t the standard YouTuber burnout-apology video.

0:03 And it’s not “oh, woe is me, I’m leaving forever”.

0:05 I’m going somewhere with this.

0:07 Literally.

0:08 I’ve been throwing stuff at the internet since 1999.

0:11 And for many, many years, that stuff went almost nowhere.

0:15 I had occasional bits of success,

0:16 but could never make any of them last long-term.

0:19 I remember thinking, so many times during all those years… will

0:23 any of this stuff I’m making ever work?

0:26 Well, this did.

0:27 I didn’t know that, back when I was filming the first videos

0:29 for the series that was then called Things You Might Not Know,

0:32 I just held out my phone at arm’s length

0:35 and talked into it for 90 seconds with almost no research!

0:38 I really don’t like those videos now.

0:41 But the first of them was published exactly ten years before this one.

0:44 To the minute.

0:46 4pm, January 1st, 2014.

0:48 For the first month of that format, I was publishing a video almost every day,

0:52 and then I settled down: one video a week.

0:54 Mostly on location, near windswept infrastructure,

0:56 although there’s computer science and linguistics in there too,

0:59 and occasional green-screen animated videos.

1:01 I experimented with other formats on other days,

1:03 but the rule I set myself was: Monday, 4pm, something interesting.

1:09 I never got to space.

1:11 I never got to the ocean depths.

1:12 And I never got to fly harnessed underneath a helicopter,

1:15 I couldn’t find an excuse to do that one.

1:17 But I never missed a week.

1:20 There’s been a few guest videos,

1:21 of course, and occasionally some blatant filler.

1:23 One time I just uploaded two and a half hours

1:26 of unedited footage of garlic bread flying to the edge of space,

1:30 and that turned into one of the most viewed videos I’ve ever had.

1:34 Sometimes a video would be a day or two early or late for one reason or another.

1:38 But to my own satisfaction,

1:39 which is ultimately the only thing that I’m counting,

1:42 there’s been a video a week for ten years.

1:45 I never broke the streak.

1:48 I don’t know when I decided to try for ten years.

1:50 It felt like a good, round number to reach.

1:52 As the YouTube game changed over the years, as the channel became bigger,

1:55 as my own standards became higher and higher

1:58 to keep pace with all the people I was

2:01 collaborating with and competing with, as this became

2:04 my life– I decided that my goal was ten years.

2:07 And that is today, as this is published.

2:10 4pm, January 1st, 2024.

2:13 So now it’s time to take a breather.

2:16 I can’t keep this up.

2:17 This is my dream job, and I have a lot of fun doing it.

2:19 I know I’m incredibly lucky.

2:21 But a dream job is still a job.

2:23 And it’s a job that keeps getting bigger and more complicated and I am so tired!

2:27 There’s nothing in my life right now except work.

2:30 I did get close to burning out,

2:31 but fortunately I always knew when to step back from the brink.

2:34 And it’s not like I can drop the quality back down?

2:36 That’s not how YouTube works these days.

2:39 Over the last year or so,

2:40 I have talked to some folks who are more successful than me,

2:43 who were in this position a few years back.

2:46 And it’s clear that I now have two possible choices.

2:49 I could keep making bigger and better things, keep climbing the ladder,

2:53 build a business, hire full-time employees… and end up as a manager.

2:58 And that would be great for someone who isn’t me,

3:00 but I know I’m bad at that, and I’d hate every second of it.

3:03 So, option 2… I could not do that, I could do less, and be happier.

3:09 So I’m taking a break for… some time.

3:11 I don’t know when or if I come back, but when I do, it won’t be weekly.

3:15 At least, not in this format, not here.

3:17 This probably isn’t goodbye-goodbye?

3:19 Like, not forever?

3:20 The podcast I host, Lateral, is still going out weekly,

3:23 my newsletter’s still going out,

3:24 the Plus channel will probably return at some point,

3:26 there’ll likely be new Technical Difficulties episodes,

3:28 there are links to all those things around here somewhere.

3:31 And there will probably be all-new projects here or somewhere else,

3:35 projects that are experimental and weird and can fail.

3:38 Because I miss doing stuff like that.

3:40 And when some fool comes along and goes “oh, you fell off,

3:43 “this new stuff isn’t getting the views is it?”… Yeah.

3:47 Okay.

3:47 That’s fine.

3:49 This project has worked, and it’s time to move on.

3:52 I’m still going to be looking for interesting things to film here,

3:54 there’ll probably still be videos here from time to time,

3:56 I really do love doing this.

3:58 There is a part of my brain that desperately,

4:01 desperately does not want this to end.

4:03 So if you’ve got an idea for a future video, you can still tell me about it.

4:05 And one day, I might make it.

4:09 But right now, I need to spend time with people I hold dear,

4:12 I need there to be things in my life that are not work,

4:15 and it’s been years since that’s been true.

4:18 I never celebrated the milestones.

4:19 Subscriber numbers weren’t ever my goal.

4:21 So I never did any big so-many-subscribers thank you videos.

4:24 But, still… thank you.

4:26 To you watching, and to everyone who’s helped along the way.

4:29 I did think that I should end this with a big, syrupy,

4:32 sentimental, self-indulgent montage and head off

4:35 into the sunset… …and you know what?

4:38 Just this once, for the first time in ten

4:42 years… that’s exactly what I’m going to do.