A content creator’s guide to avoiding burnout

Written by: Daniel Groves.
Daniel is a UK-based business consultant who specializes in helping startups grow and scale.

Becoming a full-time content creator is an exciting milestone, one that often takes years of hard work, creative dedication, and consistency to achieve.   

However, now that you’ve achieved this dream, you may find that your long-time passion feels a little more like a job than something you do for the love of it.

Experiencing burnout can be a normal part of any pursuit that requires a lot of attention and effort, and taking the time to address it can help you build a healthier relationship with your work as a content creator, without sacrificing consistent publishing or productivity.

In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at how burnout can affect content creators and the best ways to manage it while remaining productive.

What is burnout?

Before we get into how you can get burnout under control, it can be helpful to refresh yourself on what exactly burnout is.

Burnout is a generalized kind of exhaustion from being overworked, occurring when you spend too long under mental, physical, or emotional stress from your responsibilities. 

Though burnout is usually associated with a person’s job, it can be caused by various other areas of our lives that require our attention.

Though burnout isn’t a formally diagnosed medical condition, some of the common symptoms often include:

• Feeling cynical or resentful about your work and other aspects of your life.
• A lack of motivation and energy.
• Difficulty focusing on individual tasks.
• Doubts about your own skills and abilities.
• In some cases, physical symptoms, such as headaches or stomach problems.

Though burnout can have different root causes and is a common issue for many full-time creatives, there are various techniques and habits you can use to mitigate its negative effects and work towards your goals with greater consistency.

Four ways to manage burnout and stay productive as a content creator

If the symptoms above sound all too familiar, you may wonder how you can regain control of your productivity as a content creator without working yourself too hard and experiencing burnout.

Here are four tips to help you maintain a healthier relationship with your work and avoid some of the worst effects of unchecked burnout.

Reduce your workload with smart solutions 

Full-time content creators are typically self-starters, but you’re only one person. It’s difficult to increase your income by piling more to-dos onto an already sizable workload. 

To avoid an unsustainable workload, consider repurposing or redistributing your existing content in new and creative ways. For example, you can take old content that was previously created for one platform, update it, and publish it on a different channel in a new format.   

Another creative idea is to take your website content and any long-form social media posts and look into printing a book and becoming a published author. As a creator, this is an excellent way to tap into a passive income stream from work you’ve already created under your brand. 

Set yourself healthy social media boundaries

We often hear that to be a successful content creator in today’s market, you need to maintain a high level of social media activity to sustain and build a relationship with your audience.  

However, this kind of pressure can lead to unhealthy, habitual overuse of social media, which is a major cause of burnout for content creators.

One way to guard against this is to set boundaries for yourself that prevent you from being chronically online. These can include:

Physical boundaries

This can involve setting rules for when and where you use social media. For example, perhaps you agree to only check and use social media when you’re at your desk.

You might instead block off a regular stretch of time during the day for some kind of physical activity that gets you away from your screens and forces you to take a break from checking or posting. 

However, the reality is, that social media is designed to be addictive, so self-imposed boundaries can be challenging to enforce. Using a productivity-oriented app blocker can also help you limit the time spent on your chosen social media apps and avoid the type of overuse that leads to burnout. 

Mental boundaries

This can look like developing the habit of not checking comments or setting rules about the types of content you will and won’t share on social media. A simple change like resolving not to share content about your familial relationships can not only prevent overuse of social media but also reduce your emotional involvement in your own online brand, removing a potential source of burnout.

Create realistic schedules

As a content creator, you may enjoy the freedom of setting your own working hours. However, without a conventional line manager holding you accountable, it can be challenging to maintain focus and stay on-task throughout the day.

If setting your own hours is making it hard to keep up the momentum and achieve your goals, it may be a good idea to schedule your day at a more granular level, breaking down projects into smaller, simpler tasks, and taking steps to make these realistic and achievable.

Some effective best practices to use when you’re managing your time as a content creator include:

• Create schedules in advance, either daily or weekly, and prioritize your most important tasks for the times when you’re most productive.
• Block off specific times for specific tasks or projects, and minimize distractions. This might mean turning off social media notifications, silencing your phone, or, better still, putting it somewhere out of sight.
• Adopt productivity tools like a content calendar or other time-management systems. This will give you a centralized place where you can get a top-down view of your upcoming projects and see how you’re keeping up with the timeframes you’ve set for yourself.

By giving yourself some firm accountability for content creation work, while making sure all your targets are realistic and achievable, you’ll be able to add more structure to your day and prevent feeling overwhelmed and burnt out from your workload.

Prioritize self-care

Being a content creator is demanding, especially when your personal brand starts picking up momentum, and you’re feeling the pressure to maintain visibility across several touch points.

While it’s true that finding success as a content creator takes a lot of hard work, remember that you’re a human being, not a machine, and taking care of your physical and mental health through proper self-care is crucial for your productivity.

Getting a healthy amount of sleep, eating a balanced diet, exercising, and engaging in activities that support your mental and emotional well-being are all crucial parts of maintaining motivation and avoiding burnout.

While you may have the inclination to put these things off to spend more hours working, this generally isn’t a sustainable way to increase productivity. If you don’t give yourself time to relax, your body and mind will eventually rebel and force you to stop working, likely in the form of burnout.

Beating burnout as a content creator

Whether you’re struggling with burnout right now or simply want to take preventative measures while your brand ramps up, we hope these content creator tips have helped you understand the issue and start working towards a healthier relationship with your work.

Check out our blog for more helpful productivity hacks or learn more about how our domains and professional email addresses can upgrade your personal brand.