How to Deal with Content Burnout | Ep. #565

In episode #565, Eric and Neil explain how to deal with burnout. Tune in to hear some tips on what to do if you reach your breaking point when it comes to content creation and still be successful.

TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:

  • [00:27] Today’s Topic: How to Deal with Content Burnout
  • [00:45] The people that succeed are very consistent.
  • [01:18] If it ties in with your goals, you just have to power through it.
  • [01:35] Once you get past the breaking point, you get a second wind.
  • [02:02] When you’re burnt out, the quality of your content decreases.
  • [02:18] Take a break instead of producing content when you’re burnt out.
  • [02:50] Neil doesn’t take vacations.
  • [03:00] Eric worked two to three hours per day on vacation.
  • [03:30] When they were cranking through topics really quickly, they lost podcast listeners. They went back to the drawing board, refocused, and are now gaining listeners.
  • [04:16] Eric and Neil both create content in advance, so they can have breaks.
  • [05:00] That’s it for today!
  • [05:02] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway!

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The post How to Deal with Content Burnout | Ep. #565 appeared first on Marketing School Podcast.

Full Transcript of The Episode

Announcer: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu.

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.

Eric Siu: And today we're going to talk about how to deal with content burnout. So interestingly enough, through this podcast recording session, Neil and I have already done 13, and, part of the ... I think the human body can't deal with discomfort, right? Or doesn't like discomfort, nobody likes dealing with discomfort. But what I learned over the years is, whether it's writing blog posts or just creating content in general, like what we're doing right now, is the ones that succeed are very, very consistent.
We've talked about that over and over, and when it comes to content burnout, I remember actually Neil's partner in Crazy Egg, Hiten, said that he doesn't believe in the word burnout.
And for me I think burnout is maybe you don't want to be working on it anymore, whatever it is exactly, but here's the tactical thing that at least for me, when I feel like I don't want to do it anymore, well, guess what? I think if it ties in with my goals, if it's where I'm trying to get to, I just have to saddle up and power through it, once you kind of power through it, even when you're tired, for me I like to be in bed by 9:30 - 10 now, I'm like a grandpa, but sometimes when I'm out at events, people are staying up until 1AM, 5AM, or whatever it is.
Once you get past a certain point, you get past that breaking point, you start to get a second wind. So it's very similar, Neil and I have done well over 500 episodes now, and yeah, sometimes it's like man it's getting tough doing this over and over, but you just suck it up and you power through it. You get a second wind, and you just keep going. At least that's the case for me, and that's constantly working out, and Neil's done it for a lot longer, so I'm curious to get his thoughts.

Neil Patel: Yeah, so the problem with content, and when you end up just getting burned out, what you'll end up finding is the quality ends up going down, you end up doing more mediocre stuff, you end up regurgitating topics, and it all hurts you in the long run. But what's much more effective is just taking a break and not writing as much content, or creating as much content. Giving it a break and just go walk on the beach, or go do something else, versus just sticking in the grind and trying to produce content.
Everyone thinks when you're burned out, and you've created too much content, or you don't know what other topics to create content on, that you should just keep cranking it through. One of the best things to do is just take a break and go do something else.

Eric Siu: Yeah, and I think that actually applies to anything, so, for me, when I think about ... Neil, how many vacations do you take?

Neil Patel: Zero.

Eric Siu: So Neil doesn't take vacations, right?

Neil Patel: Do you take them?

Eric Siu: Well I took my first one in years when I went to Japan, but I still kept working.

Neil Patel: How many hours did you work?

Eric Siu: It ended up becoming, I don't know, we can say 25%.

Neil Patel: How many hours a day?

Eric Siu: I'm going to say two or three.

Neil Patel: That's not bad, you still worked.

Eric Siu: Yeah. So my point is go take a break, but if you're workaholics like Neil and I, we're still going to try to get some work done and sneak it in. So, I think part of it is, yes, we're going to power through like Neil and I have powered through in the past, I think to give you an example, there was a period of time, maybe let's say two or three or four quarters ago where Neil and I were just cranking through topics really quickly, and episodes ended up being two to three minutes or so. And we started noticing that our listeners started to drop off too, and we decided that we needed to take some action.
So we kind of went back to the drawing board, planned things out, and then now our episodes are more well thought out, they're longer as well, and we've been getting a lot more feedback, traffic is back up as well, and things are growing healthily. Well, part of the reason also is because Neil put this on his page, his homepage.

Neil Patel: Yeah, a lot of times you'll put the pressure on yourself to grow, and you'll be like "I'm going to do one a day, or two a day, or whatever it takes. I want to be the biggest and the best." You're going to get burned out, you're going to run out of ideas, and you're better off just taking a break and not writing. It's okay, your traffic won't go down that much, and you can just get back into it.
What Eric and I do is we create content in advance, so when we do get burned out and we're taking a break, we'll produce 20 episodes today, and when's the next time we'll produce more episodes? Probably in a few weeks, or a month.

Eric Siu: Two or three weeks.

Neil Patel: Yeah, so we're taking a break, that way we don't keep getting burned out. And when we started getting burned out we noticed that the quality diminishes, and when the quality diminishes the view count does. It's just not worth producing shit content.

Eric Siu: Yeah, if we did this every single day, I think we'd be burned out pretty quickly, we probably wouldn't even be doing this any more.
So just keep in mind, you've got to know your own habits. Neil and I are different people obviously, so we have our limits, and I think our threshold for pain when it comes to content burnout is relatively high. So, again, your mileage may vary.
So, before we go, just go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to get access to our marketing goodies to grow your business, and we will see you tomorrow.

Announcer: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow, right here on marketing school.

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