I was publishing a video almost every day, and then I settled down: one video a week. Mostly on location, near windswept infrastructure, although there’s computer science and linguistics in there too, and occasional green-screen animated videos.

I experimented with other formats on other days, but the rule I set myself was: Monday, 4pm, something interesting. I never got to space. I never got to the ocean depths. And I never got to fly harnessed underneath a helicopter, I couldn’t find an excuse to do that one. But I never missed a week.

There’s been a few guest videos, of course, and occasionally some blatant filler. One time I just uploaded two and a half hours of unedited footage of garlic bread flying to the edge of space, and that turned into one of the most viewed videos I’ve ever had.

Sometimes a video would be a day or two early or late for one reason or another. But to my own satisfaction, which is ultimately the only thing that I’m counting, there’s been a video a week for ten years. I never broke the streak. I don’t know when I decided to try for ten years.

[...]
I was collaborating with and competing with, as this became my life – I decided that my goal was ten years. And that is today, as this is published. 4pm, January 1st, 2024. So now it’s time to take a breather. I can’t keep this up. This is my dream job, and I have a lot of fun doing it. I know I’m incredibly lucky. But a dream job is still a job. And it’s a job that keeps getting bigger and more complicated and I am so tired! There’s nothing in my life right now except work. I did get close to burning out, but fortunately I always knew when to step back from the brink.

I always liked the videos from Tom Scott but I have huge respect for him deciding that he needs to decrease his commitment since that's what will probably make him happier in life in the long run. He had a plan - to do this for 10 years - and he sticked to it. Not many people are able to stick to a plan for so long.