Overwhelm as a content creator is real-er than real. We have to wear all of the hats in the beginning. Unless of course, you’re one of those people who can afford to outsource everything you do. No? Yeah, me neither.
Us normals are forced to dabble in all the little gears and cogs that make an online business successful. A content creator has to be the:
- Writer
- Editor
- Photographer
- Graphic designer
- Marketer
- Market Researcher
- Social media manager
Not to mention:
- A parent
- An employee
- A partner
- A sibling
- Someone’s child, grandchild
I mean, we could go on FOREVER. An if we’re giving all of these roles the attention they deserve, any one of them is time consuming, energy draining and downright OVERWHELMING.
But it’s okay. Let’s take a deep breath, drop your shoulders back and down, open the heart center. Connect it to the coherence of the brain and let’s discuss some ways of navigating this overwhelm so that we can have our dreams and eat them, too.
Make Sure You’re Crystal Clear and Prioritizing
Are your message and goals crystal clear? If you don’t know exactly what it is that you’re trying to build and communicate, neither will your audience.
It will also leave you with a lot of non progressive busy work. You’ll feel like you’re running around like crazy and never getting anything accomplished.
Take the time to routinely create a vision of your ideal life. A paragraph or five of what you imagine would be your day to day routine once you’ve build what you’re trying to build.
- How does it feel?
- What do you do?
- What is your work routine like?
- Your out of work routine?
- What do you wear?
- What do you look like?
- How are your relationships?
Don’t forget to look at your ideal life as a whole. Often, we hone in on business goals but forget that it’s our personal life that helps us accomplish those goals. Balance is important.
Content Creator Prioritizing
Once you’re clear on what you’re trying to create, you need to actively prioritize your time and energy.
- Make list of everything you’re doing.
- What serves your goal vision?
- What is wasting / draining time and energy?
- What GIVES you energy and space?
- What can you let go of?
- What can you delegate?
There’s a concept in business of prioritizing tasks in categories of $5, $10 and $25.
- $25 tasks = Those of utmost importance. Must be done. Makes big progress on goals.
- $10 tasks = Those that need to be done but aren’t as big of a deal.
- $5 tasks = Minor, often behind the scenes things that get confused with busy work. May be able to delegate to others. Kinda need to be done / would be good if done but not make it or break it.
Make sure the majority of your time is going to the $25 and $10 tasks and if you have extra time, follow up with the $5 ones. Don’t stress over it though.
The Jar Analogy
Another analogy we like to use is: Imagine you have an empty jar. It represents your available time and energy.
- Big rocks = $25 tasks
- Pebbles = $10 tasks
- Sand = $5 tasks
To effectively fill your jar, you want to put the big rocks in first, pebbles 2nd and then fill in all the gaps with the sand. If you fill it with sand or pebbles first, you won’t have the capacity for the big rocks, and they’re the most important.
Content Creator “Done” List
I reverse engineered the to do list because to do lists in and of themselves can be overwhelming. They never end, no matter what you do or how hard you work and that can be very discouraging.
Instead, make a list of everything you’ve done that day. This way, you’re focusing not on what you didn’t get to do but on what you accomplished!
- Washed your hair? Check!
- Hung out with your grandmother? Done!
- Played with your kids? That’s work!
- Did dishes? Go you!
- Washed AND dried laundry? Awesome!
Anything you didn’t get done can simply move onto tomorrow’s list because WOW! You’ve been on it today in a lot of areas of life. That’s good balance.
Everything’s perception. Focus on the good and what you have done, no matter how small, and you’ll soon be feeling better about anything you haven’t gotten around to yet.
Set Your “To Do” Quota
Since a to do list is never, ever ever finished, how much is enough for a single day? Set yourself a daily or weekly quota for how much you need to accomplish and then allow yourself to relax once that amount is hit.
It can be whatever amount you like:
- 2 $25 tasks a day
- 1 $25 task and 2 $10 tasks
- 1 $25 task, 1 $10 task and 3 $5 tasks?
- Are you shooting for a solid $50 a day worth of tasks?
Choose what works best for you and your lifestyle. We’re all going to have various size jars of time and energy to fill. Some of our jars are smaller and get full easier. Some of us have huge jars (that amaze and astound the rest of us with average or small jars).
Do what’s best for you. Your jar may change size from time to time. Don’t judge it. Don’t compare it. Accept it as is and give yourself compassion.
Batching Negates Overwhelm as a Content Creator
If you feel as though you’re spinning your wheels as a content creator, always doing the same tasks over and over. Never having time for more important things, I cannot stress enough how important batching is.
Know everything you need to do / create / write / research to keep your business up and running and batch them.
- Draft up X blog posts in one day = a month’s worth of blog posts
- Create all of your graphics in one sitting
- Plan out all of your emails for the month
- Don’t take 2 photos for one piece of content. Take 50 photos for all of this month’s content.
Basically, if you get all the gadgets and what not out to do a task, make it worth it. Stock up. This saves time and energy because you’re not constantly going back and forth between drastically different tasks.
Also, while we’re here, allow me to stress the importance of content calendars and extensive planning. It keeps you focused, helps you get ahead of schedule and keeps you from wasting time and energy trying to figure out what you need to do next. A recipe for overwhelm as a content creator.
Ideally, you need to know EXACTLY what it is you need to do for the day when you wake up in the morning to meet your quota.
Streamline Everything You Can to Avoid Overwhelm as a Content Creator
There are ways to automate and streamline a lot of what you do as a content creator. It’s one of the best things about working online.
IFTTT is a free service you can use for this. It connects platforms and allows you to create recipes for pushing things from one place to another.
For example, you can set it up so that every time you publish a blog post it automatically shares it to twitter and Facebook. This is just one super small example of what this powerful service can do.
Creating templates on Canva can ensure that you are always staying on brand, consistent and never having to recreate the wheel from scratch every time you need a new Instagram graphic.
Always be looking for new ways to automate, but be careful not to look spammy. It’s easy to get carried away with the automations and they don’t ALWAYS translate well from one platform to the next.
Practice Self Compassion
We are our own biggest critics. It’s easy and common to beat yourself up about all the things you weren’t able to get to. Especially when you’re dealing with perfectionism, self doubt, low confidence, anxiety and a WHOLE HOST of other problems.
Sometimes there’s going to be extra pressure from the outside trying to make way into your mind. Maybe others that are over critical or non understanding of you and what you do / deal with.
Self compassion is different than self love. Self compassion is cutting yourself a break. Not being too hard on yourself when you’re not meeting your (probably unrealistically excessive) goals and deadlines.
Recognize when your jar size changes. Tell yourself it’s okay to rest and take it easy. Be as gentle and understanding with yourself as you would be with a child, your grandmother or friend that you can see is doing their best.
Ask yourself what you need and take care of it. When our emotional, physical and spiritual needs are met fully and properly, we have a bigger jar and can fill it happily and easily. Forgoing overwhelm as a content creator completely.
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Author
S.S.Blake; Spiritual Life Coach, Yoga + Meditation Teacher and Founder of Earth and Water
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