Why Procrastination is a Blessing for the Easily Inspired
Content creators can slip into the rabbit hole of attempting to dominate every platform out there. Holding our energy back, investing it wisely is the best use case for procrastination.
Content creators are action-oriented. We are positive, and we want to create content for the world to see!
We secretly think of dominating the digital world as well. Bit by bit, bits by bits. We focus on the performance metric of our social media accounts more than our day jobs.
Impressions, likes, comments, subscribe-now, have-I-gone-viral, are thoughts that circle above our heads daily. We deny thinking about it in front of others and rush to the toilet cubicle to check how our latest content is performing.
For the easily inspired, this is rarely enough. We look around and feel unaccomplished because the person beside us is crushing 5 content platforms while we struggle with one.
For the easily inspired newbie, it is time to take action, action, action. I have to tweet, post, stream, write, video, talk-to-my-laptop-podcast, take high-resolution images on the way to the grocers!
We start behaving like a crazy bunch of lemurs in the Madagascar movie.
Remember their theme song?
“I like to move it move it. I like to move it move it. I like to. MOVE IT!”
That’s good if you are a lemur in Madagascar.
But we are humans. We have other real-life commitments that require time and energy. And honestly, it takes a lot of effort over time to figure out 1 platform.
So, if you happen to be easily inspired, this story is for you.
Have You Heard of the Oil Drilling Story?
“Time is an equal opportunity employer. Each human being has exactly the same number of hours and minutes every day. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. Even so, time is amazingly fair and forgiving.”
Hear me out.
Imagine that you are drilling for crude oil. You scan the ground using geophones to scout for potential black gold. You move around with zest, hoping to hear the positive feedback.
And then.
Beep, Beep, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
It gets louder and louder as you narrow down the spot. There it is!
And then, you make a marking and start setting up the equipment to drill for 100x returns. Finally! The machine is put to work, and since you only have one deep drilling equipment (they are expensive!), you sit around and wait for it to deliver the black gold.
The first day went by. Then the second. And the next.
You walk around kicking pebbles, wondering what you are doing with your life.
Then you notice the idling geophone. You start talking to yourself.
“Maybe I will start scouting for the next site.”
You walk around searching for beeps. Only this time, you hit one spot where the beeps are louder than the first.
Beep, Beep, Beep, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP!
You start thinking, oh my gosh, the crude at this site must be closer to the ground surface!
And so, you do what many content creators do. You remove the equipment from the original site and plug it into this new one, thinking you will strike black gold one month ahead of schedule.
One month goes past, and the story repeats.
You are still searching for beeps. The deep drill is still drilling newly identified spots.
The only thing that is different?
There are many more damaged holes at the ground surface due to abandonment.
Does it sound familiar?
One Platform at a Time, Drill Deep, and Attempt to Hit the Jackpot First.
When we try to get onto various platforms concurrently, we get killed by the futility of effort and lack of results.
For the easily inspired content creator, procrastination is a blessing. Hold it back slightly, Joe!
Every content platform has a different aura and energy level. We need time to figure it out. Instead of plunging heads in, we can use our enthusiasm to study it.
This is what I do and recommend:
- Start with 1 platform.
- Study it.
- Experiment with creating all content formats on that platform. Video, audio, text, images.
- Figure out what content format works best for you in terms of effort and results.
- Drill deep into the content format that works for you. Make it faster, better, and more professional.
- Once you understand how to score using this content format in this platform, replicate what you can on another platform.
- For example, if you are starting to get better engagement results from publishing videos on Instagram, replicate that formula on Tik Tok.
- Experiment.
- Rinse, wash, and repeat.
Drill deep first before moving on to new sites.
That is a better way to manage our time, energy, and effort. Procrastinate your enthusiasm until tomorrow.
Take time to think things through.
Summary
Procrastination is not a bad thing, especially for the easily inspired content creator.
It works not just for content creators. It applies to people from all walks of life.
That business opportunity in front of you? What about the one immediately behind? How about the other one where your neighbor is already profitable and is looking for a content creator?
If we say Yes to everything too readily, we start spreading ourselves too thin.
The time will come when we get into close contact with burnout regardless of how enthusiastic we are today.
So, take a step back. Procrastinate if we have to. Sit on it, sleep on it, think.
When we decide to invest our time and effort into one venture, go all-in.
We will transit from the easily inspired to a successful digi-preneur.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
