It's inevitable: you WILL feel overdone with creating your content

- no matter how many people you have on your team or how easy it is for you to create!This summer, my team realized we needed OXYGEN!

So we intentionally decided to take halt creating new content: No social media, podcasting, blogging, or email.

Today I'm pulling back the curtain on WHY this churn & burn happens to us, what to do about it - realistically - and how to trust yourself that you WILL get back on track...feeling better & more energized about what you're putting out there!

Listen to this episode if you're thinking:
"I'm so sick of creating content"
"I wish I didn't have to do this anymore"
"I have big dreams for the next few months in my business - and can't afford to take content creation time OFF"

I promise - trust yourself to know WHEN to take a break and HOW to take it so it's most useful for you!

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Full Transcript

Hey. Welcome to Content Creation Made Easy. I'm your host, Jen Liddy, and today I want to talk about when is it time to take a break with your content. Now let me back up a little bit. This summer, my team and knew we needed some time off from creating content.

We weren't going completely off the grid. We knew we just needed some time from the creation. We have so much content we really could, like, repurpose. And I could never probably create new content again if I didn't want to. But we needed some time to do some other things.

I'll talk about that in another podcast. But we really knew that there was some downtime needed. Why do you need downtime? Well, first of all, you know that if you're creating content regularly, you can feel a little burned out. It can feel a little exhausting, especially if you're not somebody who's a planner.

And this is the truth. You will get a little bit bored with your content before your audience will. I want to tell you a little bit of story here. Back when I was teaching college, this is probably like December 2012. I'm at the end of the semester.

I've been teaching my heart out all semester, teaching writing. I'm teaching literature, and I'm teaching students how to write essays. And I'm still talking about thesis statements on December 4. Now we are heading into finals. They're going to be writing their final piece, and I'm still talking about thesis statements, which is a foundational piece of writing a formal essay, and they still weren't learning it.

And I was up there. I had been tapped dancing and doing gymnastics and making it fun and engaging. And I just finally lost my mind on that December 4 day because I was like, look, I have two master's degrees. I know how to write this stuff. I can't teach you if you don't want to learn.

I had just reached kind of a breaking point of being so bored with trying to teach the same thing to people who didn't care. Now, the thing is, your audience still cares about the thing that you're teaching. You don't need to, like, leave your whole I wound up leaving my teaching profession because I just couldn't be in the room with people who didn't care anymore. The same thing will happen when you create your content, but that doesn't mean your audience doesn't care. So it's very important for you to know your audience still cares.

They still need to be wooed by you. They still need to learn from you. But you might get a little tired of saying the same things all the time and lose your mind in front of 27 college students like I did. So it's really important that you build in time to take a break from creating content. That could mean repurposing something old.

That could mean just announcing to your audience, I'm going to take a three week break or I'll be back next month, or look, for me at this date, it's okay. It's not that people will forget you, but you will worry that it is. You'll be worried that people are going to forget you, and you'll also be worried, if you're anything like me, that you'll never want to start up again. What if I love sitting on the couch so much that I never want to get up again? And if you've ever taken a break from anything, you know that there is a level of inertia that you need.

You need that rest, you need that replenishment, that nurturing, that oxygen coming back in. You need the space, you need the energy, you need the time. But eventually you're going to feel the itch to get back to it, because you're a creative person, and you have a lot to share, and your audience needs you. And so I promise that the worry that people will forget about you, the worry that you won't be able to get motivated again, I hope you can put those aside. I had those worries too.

So what my team and I did was we established a three week time to take a break from creating any new content. I told myself that I would get back to it on this day, and I put that day on my calendar and the day of the get back to it day, I opened my laptop, and I felt really excited to write again. I felt really excited to have something to say in a fresh way. I felt rejuvenated. I was getting a return of my energy, and it felt so good.

I wanted to encourage you to think about, do you need a break from creating, and what does that look like for you? Does that look like I'm taking a break from a certain platform, or does that mean completely, I don't want to be on this platform anymore? Like, I've been doing a YouTube channel for five years, and it never gets me anywhere, so I'm going to just stop that, right? What is it that you need a break from? And I would love for you to ask yourself, how long of a break do you actually need?

Because you think you need two months, you think you need five months, you think you need a year. But if you give yourself some space, it's kind of interesting how the break fills you up, and you don't need it as long as you think you do. And in fact, I've definitely had that thing where I'm like, I need a month off, and then within day five, I'm kind of antsy to get back to it because I start to feel creatively replenished again. Now, depending on where you are, how burned out you are, how tired you are, you might need more than you think. And so I would say, put this on the calendar, tell your team, tell your audience, if you need to, but where is it that you need a break so that you can have some creative replenishment?

It's really important for you, it's really important for your audience because you don't want the energy behind your content to be exhausted energy or resentful energy. That's even worse. So the one big takeaway is where do you need to give yourself a break? Also, if you have a team, does your team need a break? If they're constantly creating new graphics for you, do they need a break?

Can we reuse some of the old graphics? Can we reuse some of the old and repurpose some of the old content that you've created? And where do you need a break from? A full on break from a platform? Where are you done?

Are you thinking, I just don't really want to be on Facebook anymore? It just doesn't do anything for me. And how would it feel to let it go? And if you can sit with yourself and ask that question and you take a sigh of relief when you think about how good that might feel, that's your indication right now. It doesn't mean you can't ever go back to it.

It's always there and it's not like people are going to forget you. You may not be top of mind anymore on that platform, but it doesn't mean you can never go back. And I just want to encourage you to think about what are the absolutely not things that you're going to do anymore to go back to my first story about the teaching in that moment, it was an absolutely no more moment for me when I realized I don't want to be in front of people who don't want to hear it from me. I don't want to be in front of people who don't want to learn. And that's why when I talk about my business and invite people into my business, this is really only for you.

If you want to master your own content creation, if you're looking to hire this out or you're just like, screw content, I'm never going to do it. This podcast is not for you, right? Like, none of my content is for you. I really want to invite people in the room who want to be there. And you need to remember that if you're in the room and you feel like you don't want to be there right now, that's a good indication that something needs to change.

I was just telling the story yesterday of how I knew it was time to leave teaching fully beyond that moment at the front of the classroom. I realized that every day I would be in the shower washing my hair. It was always when I was washing my hair and I would say, I wonder if it's easier to go in and just slog through this today, or how much work it would be to get a substitute. And the pattern that I saw with that, I knew there was something that needed to change for me. So if you're constantly feeling like, I hate this platform, I'm burned out from doing this kind of content, you need a break, and it is absolutely okay to take one.

So I would love to hear, what is the break you're going to give yourself? Is it a week? Is it five days? Is it two weeks? Is it a month?

Is it just getting off a platform completely? I no longer want to do X-Y-Z-I no longer want to write my blog. I no longer want to, whatever it is, interview people for your podcast. Whatever it is, fill in the blank. I would love to know what that is for you.

Why is this important right now? Well, when I'm recording this, it's the end of August, and coming up is fall, which for me, as a teacher, maybe for you, you were a student at some point in your life, maybe you feel like fall is like the new January. It's a great time to reset after the summer season. And if this is a time where you feel like. I really want to get back to it.

I have a goal I want to achieve. And I really need to grow my audience or engage my audience or nurture my audience or convert my audience. And you need to do that in the fall. Then maybe this is a good time to take a little bit of a break so you can prepare for it. And what I do know is that you can create content in a way that works for you, with a system that works for you, and it doesn't have to be one size fits all.

And if you're going into that season where you want kind of a big push in Q four, but you need the energy to do that, I actually am setting up a training that's coming this October. There's nothing to sign up for now. I wanted to let you know that it's coming because you can get to be part of this training where I'm going to take you through a five step framework that gets you off the dreadmill and shows you how to create a process that is personalized for you so that this content creation does not feel energetically, depleting anymore, or sucks the time out of your week. And I will be telling you more about that in the next few weeks. So come back and listen as I will have a place for you to sign up.

But in the meantime, one of the things you can do to make your life a hell of a lot easier is download my content planner. Just go to https://www.jenliddy.com/contentplanner . And this is not one of those big empty squares or something that says, just bust a myth in your industry today. No, no, no.

I'm going to teach you how to take your ideas and actually do something with them. And people have been telling me that they've done the most creative things once they download this thing, it's really useful. So just go to Genly. Comcontentplanner. I promise you will get at least one little nugget to make your life easier.

But before we sign off, I would love for you to think about answering two questions do I need a break? Yes or no? And two, if you do need a break, how much time do you need? Go put that on the calendar. And actually, I would love for you to even take a day or an afternoon off and get yourself some replenishment.

I hope this is helpful for you. I would love to hear from you. You can always email me at [email protected]. I would love to hear from you. And if you can, leave a review to let other people know that this is a helpful podcast.

If you're interested in learning how to create your own content, I would so appreciate that. Thanks for coming and listening because I know there are bajillion podcasts out there and I really appreciate your ears online. Talk to you next week. Bye.