I recently took stock of my video tutorial archive and it turns out I have 4,5 months of fxphd videos alone (assuming I watch them eight hours a day and take weekend breaks). Add to that tons of modo tutorials, Maya, Gnomon, Lynda.com, Digital Tutors, you name it. That is a lot of accumulated knowledge. It also was a large enough number that I started to ask myself if I really need this many tutorials or if I am just addicted to collecting as many as possible. I am behind on watching them after all.
This got me thinking about the old saying that one should surround oneself with people more skilled then oneself or smarter or generally just better—depending on the source of the quote.
I work from home, so while I see the wisdom in these words, actually doing something about it tends to be tricky when you are stuck in your own four walls almost 24/7. But it occurred to me that I am surrounding myself with smarter, more skilled people all the time. They mostly come too me in the form of video tutorials. I get to see a ton of different people showing me their way of tackling problems and offering solutions I would have never thought of. And, true, open time spots to watch them fluctuate wildly depending on project load, but I am also known for watching tutorials for a whole week straight if business is running a bit slow.
I feel like this is a very valuable practice that allows me to not only keep my sanity sitting mostly alone in an office, but also fill my subconsious with tons of input that I am able to make use of at a later date.