PP 037: Oops! I Burnt MYSELF Out!

Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity!

I have a secret for you. Despite the fact that this is the Positive Productivity Podcast, where I am trying to help you achieve and appreciate personal and professional success without burnout – this podcast burned me out.

Maybe I need to revise that a little bit. I allowed the podcast to burn me out.

I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying before, “Jack or Jill of all trades, master of none.” Well, I fell into that trap.

After the launch a few months ago, everything was going great. I had an editing team that was doing fantastically, and everything was flowing although I was still doing quite a bit of the work myself. Unfortunately, the editing team that I had hired had a staff change and because I was the last client in, I needed to go first. So I started editing all the episodes myself.

At the same time, I was also transcribing the episodes, creating all the social media graphics – and to say that I became overwhelmed… well, that would be an understatement. I already had a full load of client work. And all of a sudden, I had five daily shows a week to edit myself, and I was trying to do the transcribing, and it just became too much.

Right, you’ve heard me say over and over again that you need to outsource, and you need to find a team that works for you. And I am here as proof that when you don’t do that, it hurts a lot more than you may think. As a result of me trying to do it all myself, I was falling behind on client work. I wasn’t bringing in income that I really needed.

I’m going to borrow a quote right now that I heard on somebody’s podcast. Sorry to whoever you are – I don’t remember what podcast I heard it on – but the quote went something like, “Poor people spend time to save money, and wealthy people spend money to save time.”

Well, as you can imagine, my spending time and effort to save money did not help out the bank account at all. And three months into the podcast, I needed to take a break. I think in December of 2016, only one episode went out – and to all you listeners who have listened to any of my episodes and are still here listening today, thank you for still being around.

Regardless of when you are listening to this episode, whether it be in 2017, or 2020, or beyond – just remember, you cannot do everything and still want to be successful. There are tasks which, let’s just be honest, you shouldn’t be thinking about in the first place. Those are the ones that you look at later on, and you’re like, “What was I even thinking when I came up with this one?”

Now I hope to never have any type of long delay between podcast episodes ever again. But let’s just be real: Life happens. I don’t know what’s going to happen.

But in the meantime, when you’re trying to be positively productive in your personal and your professional life, just remember: There are tasks that you don’t need to be doing yourself. Outsource what you can, put off those that you don’t need to do right now, and make it the most positively productive day that you possibly can.