Over this summer I’ve been trying to build up some content for my website and let people know I’m open for business. I say I’ve been trying. I’m sure you well know that you can have good intentions to get things done and you get a good start, but then you poke your head out of your creative cubby hole and notice that there’s housework that needs to be done, and there are errands to run, and then someone needs you to do something else, and so on. So you do all of that and get back to the cubby hole only to find it’s 9 pm, and you wonder how in the hell did all that time get sucked away from you? So you wind down and try to get a good night’s sleep so you can get a good start tomorrow, and you know what happens. Rinse, Lather, Repeat.

If you’re a creative that wants to go pro, the outside world trying to barge in is a real problem because your family members and friends may not realize that this is your job now, and it’s also possible that you may not realize this is your job now. It’s also possible you might feel guilty doing your creative things when you look around and see there’s so much to be done. I can tell you that I’ve dealt with all three of these issues, and in this time of isolation because of the pandemic when every day seems almost identical in a way, I find myself wondering if there’s a point to it. It’s easy to get discouraged. It’s tempting to quit. We mustn’t quit.

If we want to be professional creatives, we have to show up. We have to do the work if we want the reward, and we need to gently but firmly tell the outside world to step off while we work. I would bet good money that the people in your life would get very upset if you came to their job and interrupted what they were doing, yet that is exactly what they are doing to you. If you’re like me, you hate saying no, but the simple fact is we need to say it more often. It’s the only way our to-do list will be a priority over someone else’s.

The other person who needs to hear that being a creative is your job is you. In the book “The War of Art”, Stephen Pressfield talks about The Resistance, which is the excuses your brain gives you as to why you shouldn’t be doing the work. We’ve all heard them. The voice tells you that you’re not good enough, that someone else is doing it, that you should be something else with your time, that you’re missing the game, and so on. The Resistance wants you to give up, and we just can’t let it win.  Who’s the judge of who is good enough? Not the Resistance. Who cares if someone else is doing it? This creative work is the best use of my time; it’s time someone else learns to do the laundry. I can DVR the game. It’s not that important anyway.

This is our job now. We need to schedule it as such. Block out time every day to do your job. Right now, I’m working from 9 am to 12 on writing, I take a lunch break, and I work from 1–5 on the project I’m shipping. I don’t answer the phone, I try to avoid picking it up to scroll through Twitter or Instagram but I have to tell you, sometimes I fail at that. I wear noise-canceling headphones because I don’t want to get distracted, and I have some instrumental music on. I found some albums by Tycho a few years back, and I think they’re just about perfect for my work time.

I have made two rules about working in the studio: I only work in the studio, and I only work in the studio if I know what I’m going to be doing. Especially right now, it’s very important to separate work and life. I have not been very good at this in the past because the studio is where my Mac is. I bought some new living room furniture over the summer, and it would be a shame not to use it. At the end of the day, I leave the office, and I don’t go back in. Regarding the second rule, in the last part of my night I write down what I did today and where I left off. Then I write down what the next steps are on anything I’m working on. Sometimes, I’ve made a checklist for big projects, and I check off what I’ve done. I check my calendar for anything I have to do the next day, and then on the next page, I write down tomorrow’s plan. That plan is my ticket into the office the next day, and yes, I do think of the door as a checkpoint.

Other self-described ‘gurus’ say there should be some accountability built into your process. I agree to the extent that there ought to be some factor like a deadline to indicate some kind of measurement, but other than that I say we are grown-ass people who know what we should be doing. I’m not really a big fan of life coaches, mentorships, or accountability partners, so I don’t use them. If you feel you need a person in your process to hold you accountable or give you direction, go for it. My accountability is my ticket into the office, I have a deadline for the content I’m creating, and my reward for getting the job done is I go play on Instagram and Twitter for a block of time.

So, to recap, we’re creatives now. This is our job. We must tell everyone, including ourselves, that we have work to do. We need to schedule that time and not break it. We need to have a plan for the day. We need to separate work and life. We need to recognize we’re adults who have a job to do, and we need to do it.

You’ve decided to take the leap and step out on your own in this new iteration of the New Normal. Fantastic. You’re creating, posting, and wondering why nobody’s coming to see it. You built it, but they’re not coming. Why?

Well, let’s start with a hard truth. The only place “If you build it, they will come” works is in that movie. I don’t know how that got translated from a film about a baseball field into creative work or entrepreneurialism. Still, it’s the worst fantasy anyone can have when they begin this journey. Think about it; If that saying were true, we’d live in a world without billboards, commercials, print ads, and infomercials. I’m a child of the Eighties, and to say that my generation was a target demo is like saying a hurricane leaves things a little damp. They made damn sure we knew they built it. They went so far as to tell us they built it that companies made several cartoons solely because there was a toy they wanted to sell. That’s what I call effort.

I get it. I’m just like a lot of creatives. I love the creating part; I hate the promoting part. Partly because the social media people have convinced me there are magic beans involved, and I don’t have them, and partly because I hate being THAT GUY.

I was at a Christmas party for my wife’s place of work about ten years ago. While the party itself was just fine, I have very little memory of it that didn’t involve a person who was just there to hand out business cards and practically projectile vomit his resume at people. Once someone mentioned that I was a podcaster, I had a friend for the rest of the night. He was enough of a bad example that I swore that I wouldn’t be THAT GUY, ever. Instead, I think I’ve gone too far in the other direction, and if it’s happened to me, it must be happening to somebody else who is nervous about self-promotion.

So how do we, the nervous promoter, tell people we built something for them? Here are a few things that helped me get over some of the anxiety.

First, to get to the point that you can sell yourself, you need to have a good product. In the creative person’s case, that’s your writing, photos, video, graphics, crafts, or whatever you are shipping. There’s a school of thought in creative work that amounts to “The heck with it, ship it.”, and I don’t think that serves you as well as you might think. We lived in a world where “Good Enough” was good enough. I don’t think we live there anymore, and all the promotion in the world isn’t going to help if your product sucks.

Second, it’s helpful if you don’t consider it a sale. Unless you have a product or a service ready to go, you’re not selling anything, and even then, I wouldn’t think of it as a sale. I don’t think I have ever sold anything, and I never will. What I have done is educate someone to the point that they have decided to buy something of mine, and that process has lessened my anxiety quite a bit.

Third, how you educate someone is just as important. I’m a storyteller, so when I promote something of mine, I decided to take a prospect on a little journey. I’m not just telling them what I made, I’m telling them what led me to make it, and if they’re interested, I might even tell them how I did it. I’m not going to read War and Peace to them, and if I get the feeling they’re just polite for my sake, I’ll cut it short. It’s vital to get a good read on who you’re talking to because if you bore them to tears, you’ve lost them.

Third, don’t go low on competitors you might have, people you’ve dealt with personally or professionally, and not on yourself. I have witnessed a person promoting their podcast, and when another podcast name came up, the promoter went negative and lost that person immediately. Why? They were related to the other podcaster. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, keep it civil. Regarding self-deprecating, that can be funny at the right time. But if it’s all you do, you’re just going to sound depressing, and that’s a turnoff in any scenario.

Promoting your creative work can be nerve-wracking. I know. If you remember to make something you can be proud of, educate people about it by telling a story, and not going negative, you might find promoting that work a little less frightening.

As a creative, I get a lot of satisfaction from making things. I’m lucky enough to have a job that allows me to do it for a living. At home, I get a lot of satisfaction out of writing articles like this and producing a podcast. There’s nothing like that little shot of happy juice in the brain that you get when you accomplish something you enjoy doing. However, every once in a while, that shot of happy juice isn’t enough to counteract the cyclical nature and occasional frustration that comes along with making a weekly podcast. When your job is to create something on a regular schedule and you start thinking that the work doesn’t end, or when you don’t feel like you’re getting any feedback on what you’re creating, that’s when burnout sets in. I don’t know the percentage of dead podcasts out there that just faded because the producer got bored or burned out, but I’m sure it’s significant. Many podcasts ‘podfade’ or stop making new content before they reach ten episodes, and that’s the most generous of the stats I could find. This leads to a hard truth: producing a podcast is easy, but producing a quality podcast on a regular schedule is not.

I’m no stranger to podcast burnout. We’re good friends. He comes along every few months and raids my refrigerator and camps out in my studio for sometimes weeks on end. He’s always a surprise, but he shouldn’t be. Burnout always announces himself before he arrives. It’s subtle, but the signs are there a long time before Burnout knocks at the door. It could be the act of sitting in front of a screen, staring at a blank document, and having no ideas at all, or it could be the preference to binge an entire season of a show instead of working on an episode. We never recognize these signs at the time, but when Burnout shows up and takes up space in your life, hindsight is clarity. What isn’t very clear is how to get rid of your unwanted guest, or better yet, how to keep him from darkening your door in the first place.

Consider these ideas to keep from getting burned out on making your podcast.

• Long before you’re starting to feel the burn, grab a notebook and start writing down topic ideas. It’s very important to not self-edit here, just dump everything out of your head onto the paper no matter how weird it might sound. Also, don’t feel bad if you can’t come up with much if you’ve never done this before. It may take a few sittings to come up with a sizable list. Later, when you’re scratching your head about what to do next, go to the list. That’s when you can prioritize the list into what’s usable and what’s not. After a set period, if there are topics you haven’t done and aren’t likely to, cross them off the list. However, ensure you add to the list as you develop new show ideas. Add them as you go, or make an appointment to sit and brain-dump regularly.
• In the past, when I reached the point of burnout, it was because — as an independent podcaster — I am an army of one. It’s nice to be the Chief Cook and Bottle Washer in this outfit, but the downside is that I write, record, produce, distribute, and promote the show myself. I will be the first to admit that when you do everything, something may not get done. For me, it was usually podcast promotion because I’m not a very good salesman. Of course, when you don’t promote, you don’t attract new listeners, which becomes a negative loop. I got discouraged, and that led to burnout. Take a look at your process and identify what you can either delegate to someone else provided you have someone, outsource to a third party for a fee, or optimize it, so it happens automatically without your intervention. In my example, I created graphics and pull quotes for an episode in advance, and once I had uploaded and scheduled the episode, I created posts in Buffer to all my social channels at various points during the week. Later, I would ‘Rebuffer’ some of those same posts over the next 30 days, 90 days, and six months on Twitter and Facebook. With that done, I could get back to producing shows, which I find much more pleasurable. One last thing: when you do a deep dive into your process, if you identify something that just doesn’t make sense or it’s a redundant step, get rid of it. You have enough to get a podcast out the door without doing unnecessary work for yourself.
• A periodic listener survey may help you determine what direction to take the show. This could be as informal as a Twitter chat, a post on your Facebook page, a mailbag episode dedicated to this topic, or something more formal like a listener survey form on a tool like Google Forms, for example. There are many ways to do this, and the more detailed, the more you can use the data for potential sponsors down the road. I’ll cover that in a future article. The basics you should be thinking about for this purpose aren’t very complicated at all. Ask them why they listen to your show, what they like about it, what they don’t like about it, what they think should be added, and what should be deleted. As a bonus, announcing the results of this survey and your conclusions is a built-in show topic. That episode is important because if you’re going to ask your listeners for their input, please give them the courtesy of giving them the input results.
• One of the biggest causes of burnout stems from its cyclical nature. Putting out an episode weekly can sometimes feel like a Sisyphean task, especially if you’re a solo podcaster. Does your podcast lend itself to a seasonal release instead of a weekly release? Can you batch produce a season of shows, release them all at once or schedule them to drop weekly as you take a little break and then get back to producing the next season? This may work better for scripted shows, but I see no reason why a weekly podcast couldn’t run for a set number of weeks and then announce a short hiatus. Anecdotally, it’s been my experience that breaks usually happen over the Summer or during the Holidays. That’s usually when people are doing other things, and listener downloads might be lower over that time. Use that time to take a break and prepare for the next season.
• Lastly, it’s possible that you just need a break. It’s OK. Even Cal Ripken Jr. had to stop eventually, but before the Orioles took the field that day, it was already announced that Cal wasn’t starting that day. Everyone knew what was coming, and the audience in the stadium that day more than understood. They gave him one of the greatest standing ovations Baseball has ever seen. Your audience will understand if you have to stop for a little while. Make sure you talk with your listeners about what’s happening. You don’t need to tell them why if it’s personal, but what I think you should do is give them a return date when a new episode will drop. In the interim, you might consider scheduling ‘best of’ episodes or just make sure the audience knows nothing will be dropping in the meantime. As long as you communicate with your listeners clearly, they’ll understand. If you do announce a return date, treat that as a promise, and don’t break your word. If your listeners can’t trust you, they may leave and not come back.

In 2019, podcasts can no longer afford to be a ‘when I feel like it’ production. Produce a show on a schedule you can keep, and keep your audience in mind for those times when you need directions or when you need to step away. If you can keep those things in mind, burnout can be minimized if not wiped out completely.

There was a time when there weren’t aisles full of self-help books at your local bookstore. I recall that there were some self-help books that your local B. Dalton or Waldenbooks wouldn’t have carried. For those, you had to go to your local crystal-wearing, chakra aligning, toad licking new age store.

Today, there are two or three aisles at Barnes and Noble, and they consistently rank higher and higher on Amazon. Not only that, but since they are no longer content just to have a bestseller, they’re all over YouTube and Instagram, and they have podcasts. I don’t know if it’s because the snake oil salespeople have gotten better, or we, as a society, believe we’ve gotten worse. Of course, believing we aren’t quite right is what self-help gurus want us to do, and millions of us have bought into that idea. I would suggest that, for the most part, we’re fine, and we need to stop believing the motivational flavor of the week.

I have a few reasons why I believe we need to see this industry as the flim-flam it is:

First, a personal note: If you have to plant doubt and possibly a small amount of fear into a person to get them to buy something from you, I just don’t think you’re a decent human being. No amount of baby-kissing, puppy rescuing, or school planting you do in Africa, I can’t escape the fact that you profit off that doubt and fear.

Second, there’s a small part of the population that suffers from a sort of self-help attention deficit disorder. They jump from method to method, and when they don’t see immediate or short-term improvement in their lives, they give up and move to the next method that hooks them. In truth, the books aren’t the help that person needs, rather recognize that the action of moving from thing to thing when one doesn’t work quickly might be the beginning of the answer to their problems.

Third, and I can’t stress this one highly enough, most of these books say the same thing. Of course, they dress it up to match their personality and voice, but the basic premise is almost always the same. I spent two years reading every self-help and productivity book I could lay my hands on while researching a character for a comedy podcast. After that many books, I concluded that it’s almost formulaic:

• These books always start with a generalization. It’s meant to describe for you the person who ‘needs’ this book. It’s almost always written generally enough that many people will recognize some trait they possess in the writer’s avatar. That plants a seed of self-doubt in your mind, and that’s by design. If you recognize yourself here, the chances of you buying the book go up.
• Next, the writer will introduce themselves and explain why they are qualified to help you. Generally, they do this by telling you they were once where you are right now through a sad and almost tragic story but for the epiphany that changed their life. Depending on the writer, they will next go into what has happened since then. They might tell you the number of accolades they’ve received. They might name-drop people that you will certainly know to suggest an association. Some writers will tell you of their abundance, while others will share their philanthropic efforts. They will tell you that you can live that same life if you follow their directions, not all of which will be in their book. More on that later.
• In every chapter of their book, they will have a quote from some deep thinker you might know. They’ll lay out a premise that will introduce the subject of that chapter and then unnecessarily remind you of who they are through a ‘personal story’ that relates to that chapter. They’ll then cut to the main idea of that chapter and give a list of x number of reasons why they think they’re right. They’ll recap and close.
• At the end of the book, they’ll offer some congratulations and tell you that if you want to get even more information, you can go to their website and get their online course, join their premium membership, or buy some product that costs more than people have the sense to pay.

When you see this formula laid out, it makes you wonder: If it’s all the same, why is this a bajillion-dollar industry? You’re not paying for the content. You’re paying for the personality, style, and voice that hooks you for whatever reason. Once on the hook, you’re part of their gravy train until you decide you want off this ride.

I believe the best way to get off this ride is to give you the common denominator. So, here are the things that every self-help book has in common:

1. Set A Goal, Make A Plan

The first thing you must recognize is that getting your life under control can’t be a scattershot thing. Start small and identify a particular area of your life you would like to improve, and define what success would look like. For example, I wanted to get up earlier and have at least an hour to myself before going to work. This would mean I needed to get up between 4:30 and 4:45 in the morning on the weekdays, much earlier than I was used to. Working backward from there, I realized that I needed to go to bed earlier, stop consuming caffeine at a certain point in the day so I could go to bed earlier, lay out clothes and pack a lunch at night before bed, and stop taking devices into the bedroom and read a book instead, and force myself not to hit a snooze button no matter how much I would like fifteen more minutes. After a month of incorporating these steps into my life, I have made that time possible. Now I can move to the next goal.

2. You Can’t Just Think About It.

This is the linchpin of everything else I will put on this list. If you’re addicted to self-help and productivity porn, and you plan and make lists and think about it and never take action, everything else is useless. For years, I would carry a notebook with me everywhere, take all kinds of notes on to-do lists, and write endless ideas and vision statements I never used. I was always ‘Fixin’ to get ready,’ which is another way of saying I wasn’t ready. Eventually, I had to recognize that the reason I wasn’t moving forward was that I wasn’t moving at all. Once I took action, things started happening. You have to make procrastination and paralysis a thing of the past. Go do the thing.

3. Progress Is A Daily Practice.

When I was a very young child, I had a problem with a bully kid punching me every day on the playground. I cried to Dad about it, and he said, “If he hits you, then hit him back”. The next day I went back crying to Dad. “Did you hit him back?” He asked. “Yes, but then he hit me again,” I said. Dad was confused by my answer. “Well, why didn’t you hit him back a second time?” I got very upset by the question. “Because I didn’t know I was allowed to him *again*!” 
You can’t just hit the bully once because they’ll hit back. Only this time, the bully is Life, and Life hits harder. Hit Life back hard every day. You may not win, but you will get stronger at dealing with the bully.

4. Your Discipline Equals Your Results

It’s this simple: If you can get your mind right, you can get your life right. The more you can incorporate the second and third points on this list into your life, the more you will be able to get your life under your control and work towards the goal you set. When my life is going the way I want it to, it’s because I have followed the systems I built for myself, and I do my best not to let other people control my day. I make time for quiet; that’s generally my drive to work in the morning. I don’t keep my email open during the day, and I don’t ever open it up first thing. I do one thing at a time because I know I can’t multitask. I find the time to hit the gym. I get a good night’s sleep. I block out time for the side gigs during the week, and I ensure that every day includes the wife and the kids because they’re the reason I do anything. When I forget to use these systems and lose my discipline, my life is not where I want it to be. So I do my best to keep to my discipline. Find what works for you, and stick with it.

5. It Won’t Happen Tomorrow

As I previously wrote, people often jump from system to system and guru to guru because they don’t see results in a short amount of time. To quote a favorite meme of mine, ‘That’s not how this works’. I started lifting weights on Memorial Day Weekend 2018. It’s a year and a half later, and I’m finally seeing some visible positive results from working out two to three times a week. I had to commit to putting in the time and the work for the long term. If I had become discouraged six months in, I wouldn’t have ever seen the progress I see now. Now that I see results, I’m more compelled to keep going. I have a simple goal. I turn 50 in July 2020, and I want to define what 50 looks like. It’s a long-term goal. This isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. Stop treating everything like a sprint.

6. You Need To Own It.

When you have minor setbacks or major failures, sometimes we look to place the blame on anything but ourselves. “It’s not my fault, the dog ate my homework. Mercury was in retrograde. The Illuminati towed my car.” Having agency over your own life means you get the wins AND the losses. You have to own it, so stop making excuses for why things don’t go well. Learn, Adapt, Overcome.

7. You Don’t Have To Be Nice But Don’t Be A Jerk.

People will understand if you’re having a bad day if you’re honest. What people don’t deserve is your sour attitude. Try to be nice, try to be positive, but on those days where it’s hard, make an effort not to be a jerk. Or, as my Nana used to say, “Be nice, or be quiet”.

It seems a bit weird to say ‘It’s that easy,” because clearly, it isn’t. But, without the fluff, it does look simpler than the motivational voice of the day makes it out to be. You don’t need to find the next voice out there that hooks you; instead, listen to your own. You’re OK. Yes, everyone can be better at something, but that does not mean you’re a failure. You don’t need self-help. What you need is self-help that works.

Where I come from, self-help that works…is help.