[Music] Welcome back to Digital Podcaster. My name is Dylan Schmitt. This episode is going to be a little bit different. If you aren't signed up for my newsletter, go to dylanschmitt.com. The link is in the episode description. I send out a newsletter every Tuesday and Friday. I include things like news that's going on, kind of in the content creation tech space. For example, today as I'm sending this, Apple pushed out a really important security update. So I include things like that. But I also include a little section in there that is inspiration, advice, how to, some educational kind of 250 to 300 word entry on how to improve your podcast, how to improve as a host, things like that. And you might have already heard this information that I'm about to share in this episode, but it's worth listening to. Let me set it up just a little bit. So if you have ever struggled with consistency, you might find this episode helpful. I chat with a lot of podcasters, a lot of people who want to publish content. And one of the biggest roadblocks I hear from people is they struggle with consistency. They publish either too much or too little, and then they either fade out or burn too bright. And they just then fade out because they went too hard. And it's hard. I've been reading Rick Rubin's latest book on creativity. And one of the things he talks about is how important it is for balance with creative people. I am creative. You are creative. I want to emphasize that importance of balance. So one of the things that I don't do with my email newsletter or this podcast is I never miss a publish date. I've had a lot of things go on in my life in the last couple of years, but I've never missed a publishing date. And it's not to say that I'll never miss a publishing date in the future. I'm not going to put that on me because life could get in the way. There could be some actual family emergency or something that makes it literally impossible to publish. So in that case, like, you know, I get that. But for all regular circumstances, with not some emergency that's life threatening, I don't miss a publishing date and how because I talk with so many people that struggle with this. And I don't see myself as some type of productivity wizard. I'm not more focused than the average person. I've been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. I forget which one, you know, I have not the longest attention span. And you might be thinking yourself like, yeah, but I'm different or whatever. I'm telling you this, like, you and I are sure are more similar in some ways when it comes to focus and productivity. I've got the words, I only have one tattoo on my arm. And it says stay on target. It's tattooed on my forearm. And that's to remind me to keep focused on what matters. There's a lot of people that I speak with just feel the overwhelm, they feel overwhelmed of publishing. And that leads to feelings of guilt, feelings of frustration, feelings of, you know, shame, like, I'm not good enough, I'm not getting the results enough, whatever. My way of overcoming this is simple. And this is why I wanted to share with you this point of this episode is what I do to stay productive and never miss publishing date, I pick a regular publishing date, and I stick to it. My email newsletter goes out every Tuesday and Friday, my podcast goes out every Tuesday. At first, there was no pressure to hit these dates, because there was nobody reading my newsletter. And there was nobody listening to this podcast, We all start at zero. I started at zero. I didn't come in with some popular person shouting me out that built up my audience. No, I started with zero with just starting an Instagram page. I unfollowed my friends and family when they would like my page. It popped up on their feeds because of a multitude of reasons. But I started with zero. And as soon as I started to get people noticing my Instagram, as soon as I started to get my first subscriber or for my newsletter and for my podcast, I felt pressure to make sure that I hit my deadlines and pressure can be a good thing or it can be a bad thing. I use that pressure to be a good thing. I had to show up because they were asking for me to show up by hitting the subscribe button. They were asking me to show up. I chose a day of the week that I would publish and I stuck with it. That's it. Nothing crazy. There are still plenty of times where I'm like, I have to make an episode for right now. For example, I'm in the process of moving. I've recorded two podcasts a day. I have my content agency. I have consulting clients like I have all stuff going on. But I'm recording this episode for the following week because I want to get it out. And I also don't batch record a bunch of episodes because I like going kind of with the flow and intuition of what I want to talk about. Like I want to make these special and to me, this is how I make it special. So I don't batch record a bunch in advance by design. That's me. That's just how I'm able to do it at this point in my podcasting career. Choosing a date and time that that I'm going to publish doesn't give me a lot of flexibility. Like if I just waited to do it when I felt like creative enough to make something that I thought was worthwhile, I'm never doing it. I'm never publishing because it's never good enough. Like all this stuff I put out, it's good. It's whatever. It's great. Like, cause it's published, but I have to let go of it. And it's almost like the act of just doing it and then letting go is what I want to get good at, not at making the best thing possible when it comes to podcasts in this case. So, yeah. I made it a rule, basically kind of an unspoken rule or an unwritten rule that no matter what was going on, barring any life emergencies that are like genuine life emergencies, I would always hit the publish dates. I would always press publish on the newsletter and on the podcast. And that's how writing and recording became a habit for me. What I've found is that if I pick a publish date and I consistently miss it, one of two things is to blame either the publish date is too frequent and it doesn't fit inside my current schedule, or the reward of publishing is not higher than the pain of missing a deadline. I can fix number one, making the publish date too frequent by either making my content faster, so I have to decrease the quality so I get it out, which is kind of what I see myself doing sometimes. Or I could get help keeping the quality level high. But then I have to get help and manage that or I can change my schedule so it's not as frequent. So it fits more inside my current schedule. I can fix number two, the reward of publishing not being higher than the pain of missing a deadline. I can fix that by accepting that I may need to let go of the project right now and revisit it in the future or increase the reward of completing the project. And I was just on a podcast episode as a guest and I was thinking about this like it's a skill to say no. And I think a lot of creators and this is true for people in businesses as well knowing like, hey, this is a great idea. And not right now. That's a skill that's hard because when we think of something, we're like, this is it, I got to do it in the moment. But knowing when to curb something and then revisit it later. Again, that's a skill that I think, as podcast hosts, as creators, that we need to just get skilled at that's something we need to sharpen. So having ideas pop up, pausing on it, and then revisiting it in the future. So yeah, to kind of wrap it up, by choosing committing and staying consistent on a published date, That's how I've been able to stay on target and get things done. It's worked for me. So I hope it can also work for you. Pick a publishing date. If the publishing date is not working out for you, if you can't stick to twice a week on a newsletter and a podcast every week could seem like a lot, especially for a lot of people find that you need to adjust it and kind of revisit that idea of again, maybe you're picking a publish date that's too frequent, and it just doesn't fit right now, or the reward is not greater than missing a deadline. Now if you're monetizing your content, which I know most people aren't. The reward is typically not going to be better than missing the deadline because you're like, well, I'm not getting paid for this. But if it was your job to show up, then you're going to show up, of course, right? Treat it like a job in the beginning, treat it like something you need to show up for. And that maybe you're just delaying gratification for the reward. That's all I got for you today. I hope this helped. Let me know. I'll talk to you