Speaker 1: Being a creator can often feel like you're on a treadmill that you can't get off. There's always more content you could be making, more comments to respond to, and more brands that you could be pitching. It's easy for it all to feel very stressful, disorganized, and overwhelming, especially because most creators are balancing this alongside another job or building a business or just life. I personally spent the last five years as a full-time content creator seeking a work-life balance and trying to discover if it's truly possible for somebody in this field. And I've been learning a few lessons recently that have been helping me to feel less stressed and find more balance in my life, and I wanted to share them with you today. Step number one, build a routine. Okay, so for me, I often feel that the origin of my stress comes down to two main things. It's either, one, there's this thing I need to do and I don't really know how or it seems really difficult, or two, there's things that I need to do and I just don't feel like I have the time to get them done. Normally, for me, it is the second because I'm the kind of delusional person that thinks I can teach myself how to do anything. And I'll be honest, I do think that optimism has served me well in life, but usually I'm stressed out of my mind because my to-do list is about twice as long as the hours that I have in the day. For me, the antidote to this type of stress is actually a mantra that my mom has said to me many times over the years, and that is to plan your work and then work your plan. We just need to take some time to pause, take a breath, and think strategically about when you're going to get done everything that needs to get done. You make a realistic plan for when it's going to happen, and then you follow that plan. I don't know about you, but when I have a massive to-do list, I have a tendency to feel like I need to get it all done today and I can't rest until it's finished. But by planning your work, you can actually distribute those tasks over a reasonable amount of time and find a little bit more balance in your life. Okay, so the first step in planning your work before you work your plan is to actually identify everything that needs to get done. Basically, we're going to make just one really long list of everything that you want to do. For content creators, this is usually going to mean coming up with a list of the content that you want to make, like essentially what your posting deliverables are going to be in, say, a week. You can start with the big sort of top-line things like make a YouTube video or post three reels or post a story every day. Once you have that stuff sorted out, you can start to get more specific with it. So say for a YouTube video, you might want to break that down into scripting, filming, editing, publishing. I'll be honest, this step here is probably going to increase your stress in the short term because it's going to remind you of all of the stuff that you're trying to get done. But I promise it's all going to work out, but we just need to organize it first. Step two, we're going to create a weekly routine that incorporates all of those tasks as well as time for self-care. Basically, it's time to start blocking all of this out in your calendar. Start by adding any blocks that you absolutely can't move around. So if that's shifts at work or certain times where you're caring for your kids or family members, get that all on there. We know that's non-negotiable. It has to happen. We're going to fit all of our content creation stuff around that. I also recommend at this stage scheduling in some self-care time because it's also important that not all of your free time gets poured into your YouTube channel or your Instagram because you still need some time to take care of you. That's going to look different for everyone, but I just wanted to remind you, don't forget about that because otherwise you're going to be headed straight for burnout. Okay, finally, we're going to take that task list that we did in the previous step and start slotting it in to the open spaces in this calendar. Finally, step three, we want to set this up to make it recurring. Once you figure it out what your most productive and balanced weekly routine can look like, you want to make sure that you can repeat that going forward. You could set this up with recurring events in your Google Calendar, or if you want to do it the way I do, I have these template buttons in Notion and kind of like a weekly planner dashboard. So I'll just click those buttons when I'm planning a new week and it automatically will populate my to-do list for that day. Personally, I find a Google Calendar that is completely blocked up with events so stressful. So I just reserve my Google Calendar for meetings or stuff that is specifically timely and other things like say editing my YouTube video. I'd rather see that as a to-do list item because then I kind of feel more like, well, I can do it when I'm ready to, but I'll still associate it with a specific day. So this is kind of up to personal preference, but the point is now that you've designed an optimal productive week, you want to make it easy to do it again and again. Okay, this next one, you're not going to want to hear this, but trust me, you need to hear it. Another major thing that has been helping to reduce my stress recently is imposing more strict screen time limits. You've got to just spend less time scrolling. I know this might sound cliche and I know we're all out here like, yeah, I need to spend less time on my phone, but especially for content creators, that is hard. I know because we do kind of need to stay up to date on trends, look for new inspiration and monitor how our audience is responding to our content. So with that in mind, here are three quick tips that I think will help content creators in particular, limit the time we spend on our phones and just like have a little bit more peace in the old brain. Tip number one, actually set screen time limits on your phone. Like go into your phone settings, search for screen time and then go into app limits and set some timers on like how long you could spend on Instagram and TikTok or wherever you find yourself scrolling a lot. Yes, I know this doesn't work perfectly. I tap the like 15 more minutes or ignore for today all the time, but at least it's like a very visible reminder of how much time you have spent on an app because that's kind of the dangerous thing. It's very easy for time to get away from you and you don't even realize how long it's been. So this is kind of like your first line of defense. Second tip for you, stop looking at your analytics and your metrics on your phone. This is probably one of the most stressful time sucks for content creators is we're always monitoring like how did that latest reel do? How many views are on my story? How many views did my latest YouTube upload get? Not only does this take up a lot of your time, but it also really takes up your mental space because like you check, you see the number, if it's not as high as you want it to be, which is typically the case because a lot of us have high expectations for ourselves. Then you end up wasting time feeling disappointed or getting down on yourself. So my personal solution to this has been using Dash Hudson to check my insights. They're an all in one social metrics platform that allows you to track your analytics across like YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. Like you can see all of your stats all in one place and it's in a very calm and chill place where you're not going to get sucked into the scroll trap. Dash Hudson is also the sponsor of today's video and I'm really excited to let you know that they've just released their latest social media benchmarks report, which is totally free for you to download. It's full of interesting insights for social media managers and content creators. For example, did you know that Tik Tok actually has the highest average engagement rate for brands as compared to Instagram and YouTube? We're seeing that over the last six months, more users on social media are sharing content with each other. In general, we're seeing a shift to more conversations and more engagement happening in DMs. So when you're strategizing your content, I think it's important to consider how you can make it more shareable to optimize for that trend. There is so much more to learn from this report. I feel like I could nerd out about it for a while, but you should just read it for yourself. Like I said, it's totally free to download. You can grab it at the link in the description. And thanks again to Dash Hudson for sponsoring this part of the video. Okay, tip number three, find more positive ways to fill your free time. I feel like it's just human nature. It's always easier to have a mindset of adding things to your life rather than removing them. Like for example, instead of imposing junk food limits on yourself, it's much easier to focus on like eating more nutritious food at mealtimes. So then you're just not hungry for those unhealthy snacks later. The same can be applied to the overuse of like TikTok or Instagram. Instead of having this like scarcity mindset of like, okay, I have to remove scrolling from my day. Instead, think about stuff you want to add into your day. And you'll just naturally find yourself having less time to get sucked in by the apps. I personally recommend reading, even watching TV shows or movies. I personally have been obsessed with the ACOTAR series lately. The girls who get it, get it. I just think the most positive thing you can do for yourself as a creator is to like remove the mindless scrolling and replace it with stuff that's actually like creatively nourishing for you. My next tip for you is to start journaling. This is something that I really got into in August during my month off of social media. And it's been really amazing. It's something that I really want to incorporate into my kind of routine in the long term. I have this little Bluetooth photo printer. It's called the HP Sprocket, I think. And what's made journaling really fun for me is printing off little photo stickers of my day and putting it into my journal as part of like my little entry about what I've been up to. It's such a relaxing practice, gets you away from screens for a bit, and it just helps you to reflect on your day, what you're grateful for. And I also think it helps you to remember your life more, which is something that I've become kind of like fascinated about, especially as I get older and I realize there's things that I've done that I'm like starting to forget. And that kind of freaks me out. But that aside, I just think it's good to have like a little like relaxing creative practice that helps you focus on things that are not like work-related or related to your like content creation. For a lot of us, our brains are constantly active, thinking about what next piece of content we need to make or what strategies we should try or when are we finally going to see the view counts that we want to see. And that constant background noise, I think, really adds to that overall feeling of stress and overwhelm. And for me, journaling is something that has helped to kind of like turn the volume down on that background noise. Tip number four, find hobbies that fuel you. One of my major theories about finding mental well-being as a content creator is that it's so important to diversify your personality investments. What I mean by that is oftentimes when you become a full-time content creator or this becomes like a substantial part of your life, you end up feeling like all of your identity, like who you are, your worth as a person is wrapped up in this project. And so the metrics, the comments, everything can feel so personal because it can feel like your YouTube channel or your Instagram or whatever is like the definition of who you are, which is why I think it's so important to diversify that personality in the sense of like not having it fully invested in just being a content creator, but also maybe you have it invested in a sport that you play or a club that you're a part of, or like some like arts and crafts activity you do in your free time. That's been a big focus of mine over the past year or so of trying to figure out like, who am I outside of YouTube? Like I've been doing this for over 10 years now. And so it is a big part of who I am, but there's gotta be more to me than just that. And that kind of like insulates you as well from the ebbs and flows of like, oh, my channel's growing right now. Oh, it's pretty stagnant. Like you don't have to feel like hit so hard by those things if there's other stuff in your life that also brings you meaning. For me, one of those things has been language learning over the past like year and a bit. I was on a journey of learning Spanish before I went on a big trip to Mexico. I find this to be a great hobby because it's a way where you can kind of like see yourself progressing and getting better at something, but it's not very measurable. Like there's not any metrics that go along with it. So in that way, it kind of like defies my habit of like wanting to see numbers to tell me how good I am at something. I like, I can't do that with learning Spanish. Ironically, starting another YouTube channel has also been a really fulfilling hobby for me. And that's because I've like fully allowed myself to not care about the metrics. I have this vlog channel where I document my travels in my camper van with my husband. And it's been just a very fun, creative outlet where like I'm not really trying to grow the subscribers. I'm not trying to like get the videos to rank or anything like that. And it's so refreshing to have a place to just create for the sake of creating the way that I like used to on YouTube before it became my job. Moral of the story is it's really, really important to have stuff that is exciting and fulfilling and creative for you outside of just the stuff that you're optimizing for the market. As creators, there's always going to be a tension between our art and our business and everybody has to make the decision on like where on that spectrum that they land. But if you are like fully, fully focused on the art side, then yeah, like maybe the metrics or like the financial side is going to suffer. If you're fully focused on the finances and the metrics, then you're not going to feel as artistically fulfilled. So once you kind of know what that balance looks like for you, especially if it tips more towards the kind of strategic side, then you want to make sure that you're still finding creative fulfillment in something. And also having places where you can like find your identity that's not just in like the performance of your latest YouTube video. I know we're all content creators here, but I'm really, really curious to know what some of your hobbies are. So definitely let me know in the comments, like what do you do in your free time for fun? That's not like creating stuff for the internet. I would love to know. Cause like, I feel like I could use some hobby ideas. Like tell me what I should try. Sometimes life is just stressful in ways that we can't control, but we can try our best to control our mindsets. So beyond everything that I've already talked about in this video, if you can try your best to start every day with some positive affirmations and an optimistic outlook, I feel like that is probably going to have the biggest benefit to feeling a bigger sense of peace and calm and just being less stressed as well as remembering to take care of yourself and take that time for self-care. I think that will all go a long way in reducing your stress and ultimately making you more creative and more productive. As always, thank you so much for watching. I hope you're having adventures and following your dreams and I'll catch you in the next video. Bye.