**If you’re feeling burned out from content project overload, it’s time to make a sacrifice. Andrew Davis draws some conclusions about what to keep, and what needs to go. **
Andrew Davis “toons-up” the way marketers tackle their toughest challenges. In Drewdles, he sketches out the issues and draws exciting conclusions. All you need to do is connect the dots for your brand.
By Andrew Davis
Burnout can occur when the projects we start and maintain far outweighs the things we stop doing.
"Stress is an epidemic," says Maureen Jann. "It's almost worse than Covid," she adds in her 2022 Content Marketing World session focused on managing marketer burnout.
Maureen knows our pain.
Earlier this year, her team at NeoLuxe Marketing asked 1000 marketers to gauge how run down they were feeling as a result of their work. After all, it is good to know we're not alone.
The results were shared in The Burnout Index (registration required), which found that nearly 68% of us are chronically stressed out, numb, moody, and filled with doubt.
CMI found similar results in its just-released Content Marketing Career and Salary Outlook report (registration required): Over 70% of marketers say they feel at least somewhat stressed at work.
Chances are, you're suffering from at least some of that stress.
But why? Why are marketing professionals, specifically, SO exhausted?
Well, according to Airtable’s 2022 Marketing Trends report (registration required), marketing teams' workload jumped by 52% last year. We're understaffed and overworked.
Also, only 1 in 5 marketing teams meet their deadlines, and 3 in 4 marketing leaders are frustrated by how long it takes to ship our work. We can't keep up.
If that's not enough, let's add the looming recession, the war in Ukraine, the kids, our flailing TikTok strategy, and global warming.
(I feel more stressed out just writing about burnout.)
Now, there is a lot of great advice on combatting burnout. Maureen offers some ideas, such as:
These are all great suggestions; however, they may not get to the root cause. Unless we address the most common sources of marketing burnout, we're just treating the symptoms, not preventing the disease.
So, what causes burnout? Perhaps, it's our inability to connect our everyday work to a meaningful impact, as The Harvard Business School proposes. The Mayo Clinic suggests our cynicism and irritability may stem from a lack of social support, little agency over our schedules, or our inability to strike the perfect work-life balance.
All of these might be contributors. But I don't feel like they get to the heart of the matter – specifically for us marketers.
If you're anything like me, you decided to become a marketer because you love storytelling. You have a penchant for creative problem-solving. You adore diving into new technology and emerging trends.
Nothing excites a marketer more than the chance to explore a new social media platform, a new campaign, or a new medium. We love any new opportunity to get creative.
The problem is our creative fuel is finite.
We might wake up each morning with a full tank of creative gas, but every added task burns some of it off. Posting a witty tweet might use only a drop. Writing a blog post might empty the entire tank.
We get cranky when we're running on fumes, and even more stressed, burned out, and exhausted when we’re pressed to keep working when the tank is totally dry.
Our agitation climbs off the charts when we still have 10 more campaigns to execute though we're already broken down on the side of the highway with our hazards on.
Some say we need to learn to say 'no' more often. But who are we, the IT department? No. We're marketers. We love to say yes.
Maybe so many of us are suffering from burnout because we don't know what to stop doing.
Does this conversation sound familiar?
“Remember those monthly Facebook Live videos we agreed to do? When was the last time we did one? February of 2018.”
But it's still on the calendar. And it’s still gobbling up a little creative juice every time we kick ourselves for not having done it.
Dump it.
I've embraced an entirely new approach to every exciting marketing opportunity: Kill two things so my creative energy can live on.
Essentially, I kill at least two other projects, initiatives, or campaigns before I take on something new.
Why two things?
First, we need to make an easy sacrifice. We need to tell everyone we’re no longer doing those Facebook Lives, so we can get it off our calendars – and off our minds.
The easy one is the thing we're still supposed to be doing, but it's fallen so low on the priority list no one seems to notice it's not being done... until they do.
Then we must kill something that’s harder to let go of – perhaps the one where egos are attached, budget is allocated, and resources are committed but the outcomes aren’t matching up with the input we devote to it.
The hard kills are often the ones that can put the most creative fuel back in your tank.
For example, you know the podcast the CEO asked you to start? The podcast no one listens to.
Kill it.
What about that monthly newsletter with an open rate of .0001%?
If we're going to thrive as creative marketers in this fast-paced digital world, we need to learn to end more than we start.
Our creative fuel is finite. Burn it wisely.
What two things are you going to stop doing right now? CCO
Andrew Davis wrote for Charles Kuralt and produced for NBC. He's worked for the Muppets and MTV. He co-founded, built, and sold a marketing agency. You might have seen him on The Today Show or in The New York Times. He's a best-selling author and one of the most influential marketers in the world. Follow Andrew on Twitter @DrewDavisHere.