Hi!

Getting back to creating video content after burnout can feel overwhelming. You know very well that you need to stay consistent and commit to it, which is exactly what gets your inner alarm going and why you put it off.

What if there was a way to ease yourself back to creating without burning out again?

I did a 12-week YouTube experiment where my only mission was to have fun and play. 😊

No grandiose goal. No big mission to achieve. No pressure to live up to any stats.

Just pure old fun. Like when we were kids and creativity was just an activity, not a performance.

The result? In 12 weeks, I found that creative spark again. I'm having as much fun creating as ever and I'm feeling inspired and motivated to tell stories. I thought all of that was gone and I won't ever be that ambitious, driven, and passionate person again. Hello, there she is! All I needed was a meaningful project and allow myself to drop all the rules. 💪🏻

So here is the summary and all the lessons learned:

Having an end date helped with consistency

Consistency. Everyone says how important it is, but we all know how difficult it is. A few issues back, I talked about the concept of Projects (TL;DR: creating a series of content pieces within a set time frame).

And I’m gonna stress it again how this has been incredibly beneficial for my post-burnout brain. It turned the whole content creation into a game where I get to complete a level each week and get closer to the finish. Completing each video felt like a reward, not a chore.

The video, the experiment

I believe your potential of building success on social media is directly tied to your willingness to experiment all the time. So I challenged myself to do a little experiment with every single video.

If you are thinking of doing that too, here is the list of my experiments for your inspiration:

• ​Week 1 – Can I vlog? I’ve never made a proper long-form vlog in my life. Filming talking-head educational videos, yeah, sure, plenty! Publishing this video was nerve-wracking, but the sweet comments made it worth it and encouraged me to continue.
• ​Week 2 – Can I “fix it in the post”? It happens to everyone, you pour your heart into filming footage and then it looks like 💩. I tried learning some new editing skills but failed miserably. I ended up having to re-do the video edit and feeling like I wanted to throw my computer out of the window.
• ​Week 3 – Can I talk about a taboo topic? Now this video is a flop when it comes to the views, which can be expected given I talk about periods. However, as a creator, I make it a point to talk about things that matter to me even if it doesn’t land with my current audience.
• ​Week 4 – Can I pull off a longer video? As a new YouTuber, making people to be willing to spend more than a few minutes with you might feel like a big ask. The result? Not great, not terrible. It doesn’t have that many views, but they keep on coming.
• ​Week 5 – Can I change the format of my vlogs now after publishing 4 videos already? This changed everything for me. So far it amassed over 1.2K views and is my most-watched video at the moment. And turned 9 viewers into subscribers, most of all my videos so far.
• ​Week 6 – Can I get away with changing locations? I know that in the future I won't be just covering Prague, so I took the viewers to my hometown and also tried making a visually interesting transition between the locations.
• ​Week 7 – Can I afford to be vulnerable? I wanted to push myself to go outside of my comfort zone and publicly admit to some of the mistakes I’ve made as a runner. Turns out, people don’t laugh at your stupidity, they love how relatable your video is.
• ​Week 8 – Can I use music to help me tell a story? I tried editing this vlog in a dreamy, fantasy-like-feeling way and used film soundtrack music to support that. And people seemed to like the vibe!
• ​Week 9 – Can I hold people’s attention just with talking and without all the fancy shots? The sound sometimes sucked, but so far my second best-performing video.
• ​Week 10 – Can I pull off a little bit of comedy in the running niche? I poked fun at myself and went on imaginary altitude training. The feedback was to dare to do it more!
• ​Week 11 – Can I narrate (almost) the whole video just with VoiceOver? I wanted to see if improved sound quality would affect retention.
• ​Week 12 – Can I make an interesting video about a race without a lot of filming? I knew I wanted to be present in the moment and try to do my best racing, which doesn’t really go hand in hand with filming. So I challenged myself to tell an interesting retrospective story afterwards and people tell me they cried watching it. 🥹

Figuring out what posting frequency is right for me

Social media is full of advice on ideal posting frequencies for the algorithm. In my opinion, the ideal frequency is the one that you can manage without burnout. As a creator, you are the golden goose, so your well-being is in the first place. Not the algorithms.

As for me, updating weekly for a limited period of time is doable. It kickstarted my channel, helped me get to 222 subscribers, 16,122 views, and 200 watch time hours so far. Not a bad start, lemme tell ya! It absolutely exceeded my expectations and proved to me that you don’t have to turn into a content machine to get traction on your channel.

I don’t have it all

Doing weekly vlog content is incredibly time-consuming, so I had to make short-term sacrifices for long-term gains. On social media, it can often seem like creators manage to have it all, but that’s not true.

What did I sacrifice?

• I usually fill my work time at full capacity with done-for-you content creation services, mentoring, and consultations. I only worked for clients 2/3 of my overall capacity during this time, which meant taking a pay cut. However, I believe that making this early investment in my future income streams will come back to me with interest. Can anyone guarantee that? Of course not, but betting on yourself is the best way to figure out what you are made of.
• I also sacrificed some personal time, fun, and some hobbies. 💁🏻‍♀️

If you ever tried YouTube and felt like you are the only one who can’t have it all, then I hope this reality check gave you some relief. Now that the project is over, I’ll take a little breather and take the posting easy, to bring back more balance.

Personal content is the future

A lot of content has become transactional. I show you this, you learn this, thank you and goodbye. Bless tutorials, we all love them and rely on them for skill-building. But how often do you remember who taught you that? Or would you say “I saw this tutorial and…”. That’s what I’m talking about and this type of video can be easily replaced by AI. I don't think tutorials are dead, we just may evolve our behavior and how we work with information in the future.

This brings me to personal content, human stories, and videos that move us and help us take action. It’s the sitting around a fire telling stories, but taken into the online space that is inherently human. And in a world soon to be saturated with AI, human-ness will be a hot commodity. At least in my wild imagination and that’s why I’m betting on that with my content as a creator and it’s the last lesson that I’m going to share with you today.

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What did you think? I know it was a longer read, but I hope it was saturated with ‘aha’ moments and it left you thinking about making videos. I’d like to hear your thoughts!

Stay creative,

Lenka

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