Being Realistic About Content Creation

I've recently come to the conclusion that I needed to stretch out my content creation schedule--I was too ambitious and did not leave room for other things I want to do. I had to make some changes.

Creating Content Take Time and Effort

Yes, it does! I have four other main websites I am writing for, including a tabletop gaming site, a food/travel site, a fake cult site and even one about cabooses/Oklahoma. All of that takes a lot of thought and time for content creation.

Now, yes--reposting older, evergreen content to social media can be done fairly quickly and easily. However, rewriting content to bring it up to date or creating new content to reference older articles definitely does take time.

On top of that, I am learning more about blogging technologies in general, and working to improve my websites with what I learn. Making those kinds of changes is very time-consuming as well.

Even in the best of worlds, I was being far too ambitious in what I wanted to create and publish...

Other Hobbies and Commitments

And that brings me to the biggest reason why I was too ambitious: life itself. I have a number of other commitments and things I want to do, and sitting at the laptop and writing was getting in the way.

One of those commitments is a charity job as the secretary of my Freemason lodge. That is really a part-time gig, and takes up a lot of cycles on my attention. Another commitment, obviously, is my family and friends--my wife, sister, friends and just other parts of life.

Another thing that takes up my time is my main hobby--tabletop roleplaying and wargaming. This is what feeds one of my sites, so besides just writing about the hobby, there times I need to take the time to actually play!

My other hobbies blend into the rest of my life as well--cooking, travel with my wife and just looking for cabooses in Oklahoma (yes, it's a thing...) All of these take time and attention from the act of writing...

Here's My Solution

So what do I plan to do to solve this problem? Well, the first thing I did was really just take a break. I spent most of December and early January just gaming, spending time with the family and generally getting through the holidays.

This really seemed to help me quite a bit. It really helped me kind of clear my head, and regain my focus on what I wanted to do with my writing this year.

And what did this teach me? I needed to be more realistic in my writing and posting. MUCH more realistic! I want to be more deliberate with my writing and site improvements, making sure that I am more focused on value, not just quantity.

The way I plan to do this is twofold: First, I am going to stretch out my posting schedule. I had already planned to change two of my sites to post every other month, not both each month. I also decided to scale back how much I posted to my primary site, my gaming site. Just taking the pressure off to post every week is really defusing the stress of always producing.

Second, I am going to shorten my planning horizon. I the past, I would map out my content for at least 3 month periods, and sometimes up to 12 months. What I found is that being this organized was really stressing me out--it is like having a HUGE to-do list that you never seem to clear. It was just too much.

So what I am doing is planning for 30 days at the most. I am keeping my list of ideas, but I am not putting those on my content calendar, setting them up for articles in my writing app or setting them up as tasks. This is helping my stress level, too.

We'll see how these changes work out. Hopefully it helps me be able to actually produce content without getting burned out, while still making improvements to my sites and processes. Like I said--we'll see. Wish me luck!

Marc