This week, I came across an absolutely brilliant Substack post titled: Make Something Heavy by Anu Atluru. I’ll do my best to sort-of summarise the post and share my personal takeaway from it, but if any of this resonates, I’d definitely recommend reading the whole thing – it’s a 3-minute read.
The post makes the point that in the online world (much like in the physical world), we intuitively feel the “weight” of what we create.
In the real world, we value heavy, solid wood furniture more than the lightweight IKEA versions – there’s something about the heaviness of the thing that lends it some extra value.
Similarly, in the online world, there’s “light” and “heavy” stuff.
Light weight stuff = tweets, TikToks, Instagram posts, issues of this email newsletter etc
Medium weight stuff = YouTube videos, long-form blog posts etc
Heavy weight stuff = Books, feature-length movies, TV series, major symphonies etc
Anu’s key point is that we as creators crave creating the heavy stuff. This is why every creator who starts off creating lightweight stuff eventually starts to feel that’s a bit meaningless. Almost everyone then wants to work on something heavy:
- Filmmakers don’t just want to make YouTube videos about camera settings and tutorials. They also want to make their own feature film.
- Musicians don’t just want to release singles on Spotify. They dream of creating full-length concept albums.
- Educators don’t just want to keep making YouTube videos about the same topic. They want to write their own book.
Her argument is that the heavy thing feels much more meaningful compared to the lightweight things. But also, interestingly, that many lightweight things do not add up to a heavyweight thing.
No matter how many you stack, Tweets and TikToks don’t add up to something heavy. They don’t solidify. At best, they’re a pile of snowflakes, intricate yet ephemeral. Beautiful while they’re here, gone before they hit the ground
With this email newsletter for example – I’ve been writing this every week (ish) for 7 years. I started it in April 2017, and we’re now in April 2025. Absolutely bananas. But even though I’ve written like 5 books worth of text, it doesn’t at all feel like I’ve written 5 books. Writing 7 years of ephemeral email newsletter issues doesn’t add up to a “substantial” “heavy” project.
Anu’s post really resonated because recently I’ve been feeling a bit lethargic around making videos and content. The waxing and waning creative inspiration to make videos is something I’ve become very familiar with over the years. But Anu’s post gave me an idea I’d never considered before: that creating only lightweight things for too long feels a little meaningless.
No one wants to stay in light mode forever. Sooner or later, everyone gravitates toward heavy mode—toward making something with weight. Your life’s work will be heavy. Finding the balance of light and heavy is the game
I didn’t feel this while working on my book. From 2020 to 2023, while I had the Big Heavy Creative Project of Feel-Good Productivity to work on, the project had a gravitational pull that drew me in even on days where I didn’t feel particularly inspired. I was never questioning myself thinking, “Why am I writing this book in the first place?” The work I was doing always felt meaningful. It never felt pointless.
That’s what I’d love to have for my YouTube channel as well. I’m not sure what format that looks like. Maybe it looks like working towards some sort of wider series. Maybe it looks like working on the next book (more details on that coming soon). But thanks to Anu’s post, and a mini therapy session with my wife Izzy, I’ve realised that for me, having a Heavy Creative Project to work towards is really important to maintain inspiration and motivation in what can otherwise be an endless hamster wheel of “cool, this video’s done? great, onto the next one”.
Some more quotes from the piece to end:
It’s not that most people can’t make heavy things. It’s that they don’t notice they aren’t. Lightness has its virtues—it pulls us in, subtly, innocently, whispering, ‘Just do things.’ The machine rewards movement, so we keep going, collecting badges. One day, we look up and realize we’ve been running in place.
And then you feel it: a quiet, gnawing hollowness that, for all the making, nothing has truly been made. Why does it feel bad to stop posting after weeks of consistency? Because the force of your work instantly drops to zero. It was all motion, no mass—momentum without weight. 99% dopamine, near-zero serotonin, and no trace of oxytocin.This is the contemporary creator’s dilemma—the contemporary generation’s dilemma.
You don’t feel like a true creator because you haven’t made anything heavy, and deep down, you know light things don’t count. Your output is high, but your imprint is low. You ship, but you do not build. You call yourself a creator, but what have you made that could survive a month offline? A year? A decade? If you stopped posting tomorrow, would anything remain? Creating for 24-hour cycles isn’t freedom, leverage, or legacy—it’s just renting out your time.
If any of this resonates, I’d really recommend reading the post – it’s wonderful.
Have a great week!
Ali xx
