It’s a common story. You feel like you need to chase views to continue to be successful. But then, you start to lose the love for what you’re doing. The passion is gone. You watch your competition and start forcing your content into what you think it needs to be. It becomes a task, which makes you forget why you started in the first place. This is a red flag, that ultimately can lead to creator burn out.

Have you been there? Are you there? If so, this is for you.

Creator Spotlight

But first, I want to introduce you to . When he came to us, he was so frustrated that he wanted to quit. He felt like every video he posted was a gamble. He jumped into Video Labs as a last ditch effort and he learned so much. Gabe identified a way forward to find success on YouTube. He found connecting with other creators and asking their opinions on things, as well as the strategist themselves was a game changer. Now he knows how to set goals for each video and how to reach those goals. He went from wanting to quit to super excited to move forward.

If you feel like this and want to see what program we have that can help you, .

Burnout is Common

Convertkit did a poll of of 2,700 content creators on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube and asked them if they have felt burnt out in the last 12 months. 63% of the full-time creators said yes. 60% of the part-time creators said yes and even 59% of the hobby creators said that they felt burnt out. – This is a real problem, no matter how you approach YouTube.

Sources of Burnout

Every creator feels like they need more and more. If you are at 300 views, you feel like you should be getting more. If you are at 300,000, you feel like you should be getting more. “Success” is allusive. People start out defining success as one thing, but when they reach it, success looks like a bigger thing. Part of fighting burnout is figuring out what success looks like and what contentment looks like. When will you feel like what you have done is enough?

This is an issue with any job, but there is no cap on YouTube. There will always be more videos that you can make and more views that you can get. However, to truly thrive, you need to find a balance.

When I burnt out in my business, it was because of success. The business was growing, but with that came a million new challenges. I felt like I was just trying to stay on top of managing everything and the load of the responsibility just broke me.

But there are so many different causes. Maybe you are working so hard that you lose sight of why you started doing this to begin with. Maybe you haven’t defined what is success for you. Maybe you feel the pressure to post. Maybe you work alone and not having any emotional support is weighing on you. Maybe you can’t mentally disconnect so your brain never gets a break. Or maybe your play is now your work and you have no play anymore.

Perfectionism can also lead to burnout – or not even starting. Casey Neistat says, “Good is better than perfect.” Experiment with this. Try to post 10 times what is “good” and see what happens. There is ALWAYS more that can be done. Give yourself a time limit. Take breaks and come back to your content instead of just working hard without stopping before you can publish.

Solutions

The first question we ask people who are going through burn out is, “Can you take a break?” It doesn’t have to be months, but if you are posting daily, take a week off. Zoom out, step back and evaluate your channel as a whole. The person in the “danger zone,” will answer no. If that’s you, look at the road ahead of you. Do you need to sprint for the next month and then rest? That’s ok, but you HAVE to have a scheduled time for rest, or you will burn out completely.

Setting boundaries can be incredibly helpful. We love when people are in their analytics, but to be looking at them every 5 minutes and having your happiness depend on them is unhealthy and unhelpful honestly as well. How about looking at it twice a week instead?

If you are a bigger channel, ask yourself. What would it look like to scale? What are the things that take a lot of time to do? If you got someone else to do these things, what would that open up your time to do? Or you can chose to stay small! Success can be simple. Revisit why you started creating in the first place. Maybe staying small is the best way to accomplish this.

We also recommend to have short term goals as well as long term. By doing this, you see the wins along the way. And don’t forget to have fun. Schedule it, if necessary.

Power Tip

YouTube has released some for posts on your community tab. The goal is to help viewers get more deeply engaged.

The first one is quizzes! It’s in beta right now, but it will be an interactive way to engage viewers. This is great for educational channels. Keep an eye for it to come to your community tab.

The other one is new ways to edit your image for posts to make them more engaging and fun. Now can add filters, text and stickers to images in the YT app. It’s already on android and coming to IOS.