How to Avoid Podcaster Burnout | Dan LeFebvre

There is pressure to always “do more” as a podcast host. Create more elaborate intros/outros, add video elements, make more short-form content, the list goes on and on. This pushes many podcasters to burnout, but it’s time to stop! In this episode, Dan LeFebvre shares how to protect your energy and only do the things that actually serve you, your podcast, and your listeners. Get ready to burnout-proof your podcast so it stays active for years to come!

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Chapters

00:00 Understanding Podfade and Burnout
04:55 The Role of Video in Podcasting
09:00 Time Tracking for Podcasters

Takeaways

Podfade is often caused by burnout from overwork.
Video is not essential for podcast success.
Time tracking can help manage podcasting workload.
Burnout can lead to podcasters quitting their shows.
Consistency in podcasting is about maintaining a schedule, not frequency.
Tracking time helps identify when to say no to new projects.
Video production requires more time than audio.
Using tools like Toggle can simplify time tracking.
Reviewing time logs weekly can improve productivity.
Deciding to add video should be based on data from time tracking.

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/390

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Transcript

Is adding video to your podcast the reason your podcast fails? I've been podcasting since 2015, and the whole concept of pod fading has been around for pretty much that whole time. What's changed was the number of episodes the average podcast would last before they faded away. Maybe it was five episodes, maybe it was 10 or seven, even though the specific numbers.

can bounce around. One of the tricky things about podfading by its very nature is if a podcaster is not interested in doing a show anymore, it's really hard to know why they stopped. But over the years that I started with the company, Brandon Podcasts, and then my own podcast has become my full-time job now, the most consistent thing that I've seen as the cause for podfade is the same thing. Burnout. Creating podcasts is just a lot of work. And recently, I've seen more more podcasters feeling the pressure

to create video. Some people even go so far as to say, you have to have a video podcast. To which I'll say right off the bat, you do not have to have a video podcast to be successful. For example, a study published in June of 2025 from Signal Hill Insight says, the majority of podcast consumers are still using an audio first platform most often. And even most YouTube primaries are using audio apps, end quote. So do you have to do a video podcast? No.

You do not have to do video to have a successful podcast. With that said, video can be a great addition to the audio version of your podcast for the folks out there who prefer to watch podcasts instead of listen to them. Think of it like a music video. Do you watch music videos or do you just listen to music? Most people listen to music more than they watch music videos, but there's still definitely an audience for music videos as well. So I'm not here to tell you that adding video to your podcast is bad.

Obviously, I do video for my podcast as well. I just think that you should always start with a trial run that has a built-in ending because here's the thing, video takes a lot more time than audio. Before I was a podcaster, I used to teach creative software to artists at companies like Pixar. So here's a fun fact that is relevant for today's topic. Did you know that each frame of a Pixar movie takes an average of 24 hours to render?

If you're not familiar with what rendering is, think of it basically like compiling or it's the time that it takes for you to export your podcast from whatever app you're using. Except with movies, there are 24 frames per second. So 24 hours per frame is, do the math on that, about 576 hours per second. Basically, if you tried to render a Pixar movie on your computer at home, it would easily take well over 400 years to complete.

And while technology has gotten better and faster since Pixar started in the 1980s, the graphics have also gotten a lot better as well. So that time of 24 hours per frame has actually stayed pretty consistent from the first Toy Story in 1995 to their latest movie. That time hasn't changed very much because as computers get faster and graphics gets better as well. So really what they're doing is they're basically rolling that time that they're saving with faster technology right back into making their content better.

Another example I like to use for this is a simple phone call. Remember rotary dial phones? Or maybe you remember that Nokia phone we used to play Snake on all the time? Or the Razor Flip phone? Okay, I'm showing my age here, but my point is that the technology of a phone call has advanced to let us see crystal clear 4K video for our family and friends around the world. But you know what hasn't changed? The time it takes to make those calls.

That same concept can be applied to podcasting because we've all seen the marketing from whatever the latest AI tool is that's going to claim it'll do things like, this will save you five hours a week. The technology we're using as podcasters is increasing too, but I'm sure I'm not the only podcaster who basically does what Pixar does. And instead of saving those five hours using a new AI tool, really we're just rolling that time back into the podcast to do something like improving the audio quality or

If we're doing video, maybe making better graphics or maybe posting to TikTok or Instagram more often, things like that. And guess what? With better graphics, now you'll feel the pressure to spend those extra hours that you saved on each and every episode. You can offset that by building templates or finding other time-saving tools. And that does work for a while until you roll that time that you saved back into improving your podcast and right back to spending the same amount of time and that same 24 hours that we all have on the podcast.

So you're not really saving time as much as you're reinvesting time, which can be great. But if we're not careful, it can be a slippery slope to burnout. I believe a majority of the podcasters who let their show fade away are because they get into this cycle of always trying to do more and more and more and more. And each of those mores takes up more time. And that's how we get burned out. It can happen to anyone. Fortunately, the solution is not as hard as you might think. It's just not a quick fix or a fancy AI tool to do it for you.

It requires some work that only you can do. Here's the solution. Track your time so you know when you can say not now. The key to tracking your time is to form a habit around it. maybe take some time to get into that habit. Just like the habit of creating podcast episodes, you have to get started and keep going. Here's a practical way to get started.

Go download a time tracker app on your phone. There are a lot of free ones out there. Personally, my favorite one is called Toggle, T-O-G-G-L, because I actually track my time 24-7. So it syncs between my phone and my computer. So wherever I'm at, I can always track my time. And every app is different. But using Toggle as an example, they let you create projects to organize your time entries, maybe a work project, a personal project. Don't worry about overcomplicating it too much to start with. But here are three projects for you to track with your podcast. Pre-production.

production and post-production. Again, this goes back to my video production days, but for podcasting, basically everything you do for your podcast before you hit record is pre-production. The recording process itself is production. Then after you stop recording, the editing, publishing, posting on social, all of that is post-production. This next step is vital to building the new habit. You have to remember to do this every time you work on your podcast. If pen and paper or maybe even sticky notes on your computer works for you,

to remember that's great. Whatever works for you, do that. Personally, again, I prefer something digital. So when I was getting in this habit, actually one of the reasons that I picked Toggle is the app itself actually has a feature that reminds you to start a timer on your computer. The final step of this is to review your time tracking logs. I would recommend starting at once a week.

Personally, I do this on Monday morning, so I'll do a little retrospective on the past week to see where my time went. So that way I know if there's any high priority items that I can tackle this week that I might need to shift my time around. So I'd like to wrap up with some practical examples of how this all works and how you can use your time tracking to know when to say not now. Let's say you're doing a one hour podcast. Track your time setting up the video. Track your time in another entry setting up the audio. Those can be different time entries in the same pre-production project.

Don't forget, if you're doing video, to also include the time it takes for you to get camera ready too. Hit record, and then track that time in the production project with your time tracker. When you're done recording, track your editing time and whatever time it takes you to publish to Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you publish your show to the post-production project. And then review your time in each of those projects at the end of the week. And you'll start to see a picture emerging of how much time it takes for you to prepare for recording.

the video and audio separately as you're tracking those entries differently, and the editing time of all of it as well. But of course, the time tracking from a single episode isn't really helpful to get the overall picture for your entire podcast, because we all have multiple episodes. So I would recommend repeating the process for at least five or six episodes. This is that trial run on whether or not you should keep doing video. You'll notice I didn't mention a month or two because some of us release weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, daily, or in...

when we're focused on tracking time for how long it takes to create the audio video of our episodes, not necessarily the time itself overall, like monthly. So to do that, we'll have to do the trial run of actually doing the work, tracking the time for our episodes. So pick a number of episodes to get those data points. And then you can start to make those decisions about whether or not you want to keep doing video. Think of it just like tracking your expenses to know whether or not you can afford that fancy new podcasting gear. I'm sure we've all wanted something new for our podcast and then

We review our finances and we're like, maybe I should hold off on this for now. And the same is true when it comes to whether or not now is the best time to add video to your podcast. And remember, even if you decide not now, that doesn't mean never. It just means not now. As you build your habit of time tracking and reviewing where your time is actually going in your podcasting journey, you'll be able to make smarter decisions that help you keep podcasting instead of getting burned out.

From my own experience, I track my time for the first podcast, the company Brandon podcast that I did. And so when I started the show that I have now, I already knew that even though I wanted it to be a weekly podcast, on top of setting all the things up you have to do when you set up, when you start publishing to different platforms, creating the logo, the website and so on. Since I didn't really have the time to do a weekly audio only podcast, there was no chance for me to tackle a video podcast. So I started biweekly every other week.

And then as I reviewed my time, I knew when it was the right time to go to a weekly schedule. That lasted for a few years until a family emergency required more of my time. And thanks to my time tracking, I knew that I wouldn't be able to handle that on top of a weekly audio podcast. So my release schedule shifted again for years until I had the time to add a video component to my podcast. Because consistency is key in podcasting. But in my opinion, that consistency has a lot less to do with making sure you publish an episode every single week at the exact same time and more

to make sure that you keep recording. If you take on too much with the time that you don't really have, you'll get burned out and then you won't want to publish at all. So keep an eye on your time so you can keep on podcasting.