Increased Productivity & Burnout

Let’s talk about productivity. More specifically, the insatiable demand of being an entrepreneur on social media, establishing sanity limits, how to increase productivity without paying for it with your health, and, finally, having a healthy understanding of our ever present adversary, burnout. This is Bill Strand, I am the host of this Reptile Entrepreneur Podcast and I admit to frequent close calls with burnout and challenges in implementing some of the very good advice I am about to share.

Setting the Stage

Social media is overwhelming. Not can be or may be, but is. How may social media platforms are you on? Or, more accurately, how many outreach efforts do you have?  Email list? That counts. Amazon Live store front? That counts. You are making content for it, right? A blog for your website? Oh, we are going to get to that later. But you may already be doing that. So far, on this podcast, we have gone over Instagram and TikTok. Ahead of us is YouTube, Podcast, email list, Live storefronts, and website. And, before you know it, 2023 will be upon us and bring all sorts of other opportunities to suck your time away.

We have available to us the most amazing outreach capabilities in the entire history of our species on Earth. Anyone with an internet connection has free access to up to four billion people around the globe. Just consider that mind-blowing fact. And so now, single person entrepreneurs can run a whole company from our phones! We have the unprecedented opportunity to make something happen ourselves along with the increased burden of doing everything a company with 20 employees was doing before. So it is no surprise that we have entrepreneurs breaking out of every corner as well as people flaming out because of having no boundaries for themselves. Though it seems a strange concept to have boundaries with something we, ourselves, want, the fact is that we are using tools, and by that I mean social media, that have a life of their own.

Perspective & Real Talk about the grind

 How exciting! And, how overwhelming. But enough of high level. Let’s bring it down to what we have just been talking about. Even just Instagram or TikTok can take so much from you that it will burn you to a crisp. Try and do both and you are doubly in danger. This is because you are literally never done. Instagram , TikTok, or any other platform is there for you to post content 24/7 and once you do the next questions is what is next. These platforms are a black hole that will suck up all you can offer.  With Instagram and TikTok in their race to be biggest they are both recommending that we all post three short form videos a day and that will get us growth. Who, in the world, can do this? Well, people serious about growth on their platform. If they are an Instagram or TikTok coach then you can bet their reputation depends on their follower number. So, their income depends on their size and growth. What does your income depend on? Make sure you are not caught up in a race that is not really to your benefit.

And here is the bottom line. If your competitors post more than you then they will probably be growing faster than you. Right now we are at a stage where quantity has overtaken quality as the priority. This is why you have seen so much inane content thrown against the digital wall. It is like buying lottery tickets trying to find the random combination of content and timing that amuses the most amount of people for 15 seconds. And since success is very often not tied to how much effort you put into the actual content, you will be doubly frustrated to see people with content of lower quality than yours growing faster. I will circle back to making sure we serve our followers later in this very strange world we find ourselves in, but there is no way to sugar coat the fact we all know, the more you can post the more you will grow. And people use all their unfair advantages they can to do it. So, yes, if you slow down for a mental health day and go and do something healthy with your spouse in the natural unfiltered sunlight then you will come back behind whomever didn’t take a break. How important that really is is a discussion we need to have soon, but, right now, we need to acknowledge that the formula for growth is harshly simple. Do more to get more. Take a break, and lose momentum. So, we understand this, yes? I will make the argument that we should take a high level, long term view on things though and hopefully we can find an acceptable and reasonable time budget that works for you. So, we need to go into this discussion with the following understanding

• Our social media platforms are insatiable for content and there is never a point where you are done until you unglue yourself from them.
• If you take a break, for whatever reason, you will lose momentum and take a hit on growth.
• If growth is not your measure of success, then make sure you do not get caught up in the addictive game of just getting more followers.
• Grinding every day doesn’t help you one bit if you flare out. Success will be for the person that can keep going. So, it is imperative that you determine what your sustainable rate of content production is and not expect more from yourself unless you get help
• Your sustainable rate of content production will rise and fall depending on your life situations

Your directive here is to establish a sustainable rate of content creation and then you maintain that while we work on efficiencies and, eventually, getting you help to increase your output. And, yes, you getting better at content creation, getting proficient at repurposing content, and getting better with your tools will increase your productivity.

Burnout

The reason for watching these things carefully is burnout. It is dangerously easy to let yourself get caught up in an overwhelming daily grind that requires a constant production of multi-media content. Typically, you have set the production calendar to be just a little bit beyond what we can produce when we are at maximum productivity. I mean, last week I churned out five reels. So I should be able to do that this week. And, just a little repurposing for YouTube and TikTok shouldn’t add too much more to the burden. Did you have extra video game time that you will be sacrificing for just a little more? Because, if you worked seven days last week and didn’t have any down time then you actually need to factor in a productivity decrease due to the growing burnout points you are accumulating.

When we think about burn-out we tend to think about the final crash when our brain just gives up and everything stops.  But burnout is a progression. Constant stress accumulates until you crash. And with this accumulation of stress your productivity is on the decline. So, no, you are not able to maintain your peak productivity if you keep pushing yourself. It is curious how we do not apply what we know to ourselves. Anyone watching a good Western movie knows you can’t ride your horses all day. You need to give them rest time. Most of you are reptile keepers. What happens when your husbandry is off? Will your reptile get sick? Not right away. But as the effects of bad husbandry accumulate, the immune system is increasingly compromised until it is too weak to defend against the always present bacterial invaders. It is the same with burnout. If you find yourself suddenly stuck staring at the computer screen screaming inside your head because your fingers just won’t type the words then you have burned out, but the last week or two you have had a steady decrease in productivity as the burnout grew.

The hardest things for entrepreneurs and content creators to do is take a break and refresh their creativity. Because we have a vision as to where we want to go and we know the only thing keeping us from accomplishing this new world is for us to make it happen. So we are our own driver and every moment that we are not working on it we are thinking we should get back to it. And every time we see someone else post to social media, we are reminded that we haven’t posted in the last two hours. So we are have a built in 24/7 drive to create. There are many aspects to that dynamic. We have talked about making sure you take care of your family in an emotional way to ensure they are still by your side when you succeed with your entrepreneurial goal. This is a critical part to your success and, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to listen to season 1 episode 7. It is all about Taking Care of Yourself in the way that you make sure you do not sacrifice the important things such as family and health in your campaign to create your business.

But you also need to recognize that you are the most valuable part of the business. You are the creative center and, yes, your health needs to be protected, but also your creativity. And this requires rest. You need to schedule in down time. And here is where I am glad you can’t see my every day life because I am the worst offender when it comes to down time. I schedule a day off and it will get pushed back day after day for a week and a half and then be an afternoon off. And then I pay for it. My body crashes and I can’t type a thing. In a way I suppose I would be okay with that being the natural boundary for me except that the week before that happened I was operating at 50% productivity. Sure I was doing work, but it was neither inspired nor done efficiently. So, yes, I will be listening to this episode after I release it and trying to do what I say. Unfortunately, my wife listens to this podcast and it is not uncommon for her to say to me “You know, I heard a great podcast and that guy said it was a good idea to…<insert something I know I should do, but am not>. So, don’t worry folks, I am supervised. I cannot get away with do as I say, not as I do. And the rewards are substantial. I love the ideas I come up with when  I am fresh. I get a renewed excitement.

Batching

Now, the worst thing about content creation is the regular release schedule. It is relentless. A weekly podcast, a weekly or biweekly YouTube video, a daily post or even three to four times a day posting, a weekly email, and successfully pulling that off one week give you the reward of doing it again the next week and if you just barely made it on time then you are the content creator equivalent of living paycheck to paycheck and there is no downtime. You will burn out soon and what happens when a family emergency happens? Just last week my daughter needed to go to the emergency room. This was ten minutes notice and my allotted time to complete my podcast evaporated. Sure, One would think I could have done at least the writing in the waiting room. But my brain gets fuzzy. I can’t think there. It is like being on an airplane. Theoretically you have hours to work, but my airplane productivity is lucky to be at 30%. You never realize how on the edge you are until you miss half a day and see how schedules and deadlines crumble.

The solution to this is to batch episodes and content. And that means do a week’s worth of content in one day or a month’s worth of episodes in one week. It is a flurry of activity and you need time to dedicate to it, but this frees you up for the rest of the week or month to interact or work on other things without the daily pressure to produce. For podcasts and YouTube videos you can finish them ahead of time and load them up for a scheduled release.

With Instagram or TikTok it is a little more complicated. A paid third party software planner like Later or Planoly is required. Instagram has the advantage that it can be controlled with the Meta Business Suite which is free if you have a Facebook page for your Instagram. I have been using the Meta Business Suite and it is quite suitable. It isn’t that elegant in its execution, but it is functional.

One of the things your social media app loves most is consistency. And if you are, for example, struggling with figuring out Reels or you have a complication in your home life like a medical issue or whatnot, you can go into social media maintenance mode where you load up 14 images for Instagram to go out one a day and you can now take care of what you need to take care of. True, you will go down to basic growth, but you will still show engagement to the algorithm. You need to free your mind of the social media black hole and attend to your family. Don’t worry, the grind will be waiting for you to return. But there are times when you have to put it aside and deal with what is more important. TikTok is a little more tricky as you will need to batch videos. You can do this by creating a bunch and saving them to drafts or use one of those tools mentioned before. Then just set an alarm for five minutes of posting and go back to taking care of your family. And you can employ this strategy when you need a mental break to refresh. I batch content as a regularly scheduled event so that I am always ready for the unexpected schedule destroyers.

Get Help

Of course, you can always get help.  If you are at a certain level of social media output that it is taking your entire day and you feel trapped on a hamster wheel. Then it is time to either re-evaluate whether this amount of social media is truly serving your purpose or else consider hiring someone to help you. It is a crazy thought, I know, but you can find social media managers that can help you on the website Fiverr.com. You can find editors, people who will make posts for you, and social media managers. They come at a wide number of price ranges so you can try it out without a lot of risk. The old adage holds true, though, you get what you pay for. Fiverr started life with jobs for $5. But they have expanded to offer professional level services. So you could get some help for $50 or $2000. There are video editors and podcast editors. The trick is to find someone you work well with. Luckily, you can hire them on a per project basis so you can try out a number of them until you find the one that you work well with.

I know many of you will have never thought of bringing on help and are intimidated by the thought. Because it really does take a lot of work to manage someone to do the work! And it may take more time in the beginning to explain what you want and to get someone up to speed. But it should be worth it if you are in this for the long haul. Whether it is worth the money depends on how much time it saves for you and whether you are able to do valuable things with that time. So, ask yourself, what could you do with the time that is freed up. And how much is that end result going to be worth when you finish? If your help is $1000 a month and that allows you to launch and maintain your YouTube channel, what opportunities does that bring? Is it worth more than $1000 a month? That is something you alone can answer, of course.

Conclusion

So, where does this leave us? I hope it has left you with a renewed respect for yourself as the most valuable part of the business and a conviction to safeguard that most valuable part. If there was a machine that was the core of the business you would make sure that machine was serviced and maintained on a regular basis. Anyone risking that machine would be walked out of the building. So, you do have a machine that is the creative and spiritual center of your business or content creation outreach. And the time to realize that this is you and you should treat yourself exactly like you would a specialized machine is now. Take care of yourself. This means makes sure you set reasonable expectations for yourself, bring on help when the need for deliverables exceeds your reasonable output, and you take breaks to refresh yourself and to deal with whatever is happening in your family. Remember that it is no good if you burnout. Our community needs people who will be around for the long haul. It is those people and businesses that form cornerstones for the community to build upon. So, let’s work on sustainable build plans.

And, with that, I think it is time for me to sign off. Every episode I close off telling you all to take care of yourself. And, yes, I plan on continuously reminding you of what that means. And, if necessary, giving you permission to do it. Because it truly is necessary for your success. So, please, take care of yourself. Take care of our Reptile community. And let’s see what we can build.