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I just wrapped up my Fresh Start 2022 program this week and had over 10,000 people participate. And during this process, I learned something really valuable. The value of Focus. Not camera focus, but focussing your attention.

NOTE: The video with some Photoshop tutorials in it is at the bottom… but I also encourage you to read through first…

Matt… You Needed More Focus?

Thankfully to many of you that follow me, and MUCH to my wife’s detriment, focus is not an issue for me – in some ways probably to a fault. I bet my wife wishes sometimes I would just chill out and lose focus a bit ?

But we all have things we’re good at and one of those silly little things I think I can do is read a room. I guess because my job has always been to stand in front of a room and present in front of people. And in reading a room, you also learn to read a “virtual” room – and I can spot a lot of trends when I see comments on a video or topic I read online.

Back to Fresh Start 2022, one of the first projects in Fresh Start was to gather your favorite photos from the last year (or 10 years if that was easier) and put them together in to a gallery. And in reading the comments (there were over 2000 of them on this particular thread), I realized that A LOT of people were not motivated. And some people, sadly, seemed flat out depressed. Over and over again, I read the same things. It was heartbreaking at one point.

But… A Transformation Happened

As Fresh Start went on, I saw the comments move from talking about what had held people back over the last two years, to being excited about doing something. More and more, people stopped writing about the negative stuff, and started getting excited… and doing things.

SO WHAT CHANGED?

I think I can sum the change up in one word… Focus. They committed to the Fresh Start program and were focussed and actually doing something. Just by focussing their efforts on these two videos each week, it helped people start moving ahead again.

And you know what happens when you do something cool, fun or interesting in some way? WE WANT MORE. Naturally you seek out how to continue that feeling because it felt good.

So What is “More”?

As I wrapped up the Fresh Start program I needed to leave people with something. I had given them a lot of ideas and tips for getting motivated in photography and shooting as well as managing their photo life. But the one thing I hadn’t given them was a game plan for moving ahead with photo editing.

Something they could really FOCUS on (there’s that word again).

And I understand it’s nearly impossible to give 10,000 people one thing to focus on. Obviously it’s different for everyone. But I’ve been doing this long enough that I did see a pattern and something that could help.

That’s where this video comes in. I hope it’ll help you focus. Remember, when you try to learn everything, you don’t get good at anything.

Remember that Perfection leads to procrastination. Perfect is the enemy of good – and good is good enough for nearly everyone reading this. Perfection can manifest itself in your desire to learn EVERY feature of EVERY program perfectly. And I don’t think that’s the right path as you’ll see in this video. Enjoy!

Quick side note here… on a somewhat coincidental and self-serving note – my Photoshop System course just went through a major overhaul to bring it up to 2022. It’s read and live on the site. I hope you’ll stop by and take a look at the course page.


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