YouTube Burnout

I started the year with a new project.

In 2022 I planned on becoming a content creator, a YouTuber, and an entrepreneur.

Today is May 20th and I’m writing this after a burnout.

I burned out from doing too much all at once, not resting enough, neglecting my mental health, my physical health, and pressuring myself to know it all before I even started.

What I’ve learned from this experience is that here is such a thing as over-planning.

I thought I could only be successful if I was able to plan every minute of every day and stick to my schedule regardless of my level of exhaustion and need for self-care.

Because I thrive with a daily routine, planning my days hour by hour is great, it allows me to know what I’m doing at any moment and remain focused, but not taking time to rest and do the things I enjoy doing... not a good move.

All work and no play makes Louise a dull person.

I realised it’s best to slow down if I want to stay on track and keep moving towards my goals.

Apart from running on a crazy schedule, something else quickly exhausted me: trying to fit in a box and choose a niche too early in my journey.

In everything I do, I love being fluid and doing different things to keep it interesting.

Feeling like I had to choose a niche right at the beginning of my channel, lead only to anxiety and paralysis.

I thought I had to do it because this is what every successful YouTuber I look up to says over and over.

I picked a few people on YouTube to look up to for inspiration and goals.

But I ended up spending too much time watching their content and feeling like I could never catch up with them.

It blurred my vision of what I wanted to do with my channel and actually made it more difficult to define my niche and my target audience.

I do believe it’s important to know who you want to reach and who you want to help when you start a YouTube channel.

But now I realise that what’s even more important than sticking to the plan, is to give yourself room for trial and error, and that it’s ok to change course and adjust your plan.

I stopped watching my YouTube mentors for two months, and it took me as much time to get myself to write content again.

After this time-off, I decided that I was going to have a new approach to my YouTube channel and content creation. For now, I’m going to focus on writing, learning, and knowing myself, rather than trying to follow the formulas that made others successful.

While it’s important to have and maintain a vision, I want to focus on the excitment and joy of learning new things about myself and the business I want to create, because I believe it is the right direction to take.

So in just two months, I’ve learnt that with business, just like with every other area of my life, I need to go with the flow, leave room for change, improvement, and mistakes.

And I need to take care of myself first if I want to accomplish anything in my career and in life. I am of no use to anyone if I’m burned out.

My journey to entrepreneurship is about learning to know myself, but also learning about the world, and finding my place in it.

Creating content and putting it out there does just that for me, it opens doors to new opportunities, opportunities to help make this world a better place.