Preventing Content Burnout: 3 Mistakes That Drain Creators and How to Avoid Them

Feeling burned out with content creation? You're not alone. Many creators face exhaustion and frustration, often due to three key mistakes.

First, poor planning can overwhelm you. Implementing the PREP'M Method (Plan, Record, Edit, Publish, Market) allows successful creators to prioritize planning, which in turn gives them more freedom in their personal life outside of content creation.

Second, last-minute content creation turns joy into stress. The scramble to meet deadlines leads to burnout, making it hard to maintain a sustainable practice.

Lastly, inauthentic content—like adopting a persona or following trends that don’t resonate with you—can be draining. Authenticity is vital; create what excites you and evolve.

To combat burnout, focus on better content practices that bring enjoyment. If you're not having fun, that’s a major red flag. Subscribe for more strategies to build a sustainable and fulfilling creator journey!

Ready to stop starting projects and never finishing them? Get the proven system that creates consistent content without the chaos. Get the PREP'M Method Now

Click the "Send Krystal a Text Message" link above to send us your questions, comments, and feedback on the show! (Pssst...we'll do giveaways in upcoming episodes so make sure you leave your name & podcast title.)

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Content Burnout Problems
• 3:15 Mistake 1: Not Planning Content
• 9:55 Mistake 2: Last-Minute Content Creation
• 13:42 Mistake 3: Inauthentic Content Approach
• 18:16 Infusing Fun Into Content Creation

Transcript

Krystal Proffitt: 2:15

There are three content mistakes that creators are making that are making you feel so burned out and instead of not showing up anymore for your content because you don't think you can do it anymore, or just feeling defeated every day or every time you go to record. Let's talk about these so you can avoid them and not fall into the trap of burnout.

Krystal Proffitt: 2:40

Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, crystal Profit, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time-saving shortcut. So let's get right to it, shall we?

Krystal Proffitt: 3:05

First of all, can we get some love for this incredible sunrise? I mean, it just looks amazing out here and it is a great way to start. Content mistake number one so this is what I'm seeing y'all doing. You are not planning and as someone who's obsessed with planning, I feel like I have the right to call you out because I'm on the opposite spectrum of planning. Like, I plan to a fault. That's my husband. We have a project plan for our garage gym remodel that we're in the middle of working on. We have a project plan for just about everything.

Krystal Proffitt: 3:48

So I am the person that you want to talk to about planning, but what happens is you're not settling into the things that you need to do well in advance. You're probably just looking at what you've always done and saying, yeah, like this is good enough. But is it Like in reality? Like I want you to ask yourself right now is it good enough? Because if you're watching this video, listening to this, you probably hit play because you're like, oh, she's talking about burnout. Like, maybe that's me or maybe you know for sure. Like, oh, this is me. I need to hear this. What is she saying? Am I making these content mistakes and planning, more often than not, tends to be the go-to mistake that I see people not doing. Tends to be the go-to mistake that I see people not doing. So how do you know, right, how do you know if you're falling to the trap of not planning One? You know, you know who you are. I'm not going to sit here and list all the people or call people out by name, like you know who you are.

Krystal Proffitt: 4:53

But the other piece is you are feeling overwhelmed by your calendar. You're feeling overwhelmed by your email. You're feeling overwhelmed by the constant need for people to request things from you or ask things of you, and you don't feel like you have a good handle on any of it. On any of it, you're just like I don't know what the heck I'm doing, but I know I need to be doing additional stuff, but I don't really know what that is, and I want to be strategic. I tell people, I tell my friends and family I'm strategic and what I'm doing is with intention, but I really know that that's a big fat lie. Did someone really feel that? Like, are you feeling that right now?

Krystal Proffitt: 5:37

Because I've been known, if you're new around here, to be people have called me a content therapist. Actually, that's not true. I've called myself a content therapist, where I help people work on their relationship with their content, and I see this a lot people just not being truthful to how they're really portraying or telling themselves that they are with their content. They're saying they're being strategic or being thoughtful or insightful, but in reality you're not. You're just flying by the seat of your pants. Yeah, I'm a gardener too, so I could see you flying I can't even talk now Flying by the seat of your pants or plants, whichever one works for you. But just winging it isn't going to be the thing that helps you create a successful creator business or go viral or get your next client or do any number of things that you're trying to achieve. So back to my original thought what are the characteristics of not planning? Is all the things that we just listed? You just feel all over the place, discombobulated fun word, by the way and I'm going to tell you how to get over that.

Krystal Proffitt: 6:52

So at Profit Media we have what's called the PREPM method. That stands for Plan, record, edit, publish and Market, and what I love about this is that if you've been around here, you know we spend the majority of our time in the plan area. Now what does that look like? It looks like a lot of calendars. It looks like a lot of strategic like brain dumps and checklist of okay, I'm going to sit down to do this thing or start this project, what all is involved, what all is needed to hit, publish on this next podcast episode or be successful with my next YouTube video. Like there's a lot of variations of what planning can look like, but at the end of the day, it is sitting down and being intentional. We have this cool graphic that we'll put up on the screen that there are five steps in the PREPIM method and we spend 45% of our time in planning. So that looks like for me planning keyword research. It's looking at my strategy for all the different social platforms. It's planning out content Like what does the next quarter look like?

Krystal Proffitt: 8:11

What am I talking about? What's upcoming, what's happening in my personal life? Like when can I take time off? I mean, this video is all about three content mistakes that have you feeling burned out. When was the last time you took a break? Right, when was the last time you actually took a break from your content? If you haven't, you're like Crystal I can't. I have this going on? I have that going on. No, you don't have a plan, is what you have. Right, the ducks are quacking at me wanting to walk next to me. But it all circles back to.

Krystal Proffitt: 8:47

Having a plan can make you feel more in control and give you that freedom to experiment, to try new things, to do all the creative things that you really want to do in your content that maybe you've been scared to do. And planning gives you that freedom because it'll tell you hey, the whole month of December, crystal, you got it off, you don't have to do anything. That thing you want to do, that girl's you know luncheon that you wanted to attend. Or the kids event at the school my kids play instruments, so those you know. Holiday concerts, yeah, you can attend those and you can be very fully present. You can travel across Texas because we have a lot of family that lives all over Texas. It gives me that freedom to do it and those things, being able to enjoy those moments that's how I avoid burnout. All right, so content.

Krystal Proffitt: 9:48

Mistake number two that you're making, similar to planning, is you're just waiting until the very last minute. So if you fix your planning problem, you're probably not going to do this as much, but I see this a lot. I will talk to podcasters. I will talk to creators and whenever I ask, like you know, how's your content going? Even if they have a very, very successful show, if they have a podcast they used to love, they will say it's not going great, even if it is on the outside, even if it's getting reviews, even if it's at the top of the charts.

Krystal Proffitt: 10:32

And I'm like, well, why, what's going on? And they're like, well, it's just exhausting. Why is it exhausting? You know, remember, I'm a therapist. I like dig into the root of the problems, like we don't just settle at surface level answers, we dig into what's actually going on.

Krystal Proffitt: 10:48

And when I finally get down to it, they're waiting until the last minute. They're waiting until the night before. They're on the phone with our editor until midnight making sure that the episode is just perfect or they're not planning again, going back to planning, and they're exhausted or worried about something that should have happened two weeks ago but now it's not happened and they're just like, oh my gosh, like I have to. They're scrambling, like, and I don't know about you, but if I'm running late for something, I'm going to run faster, I'm going to drive a little bit faster, right Within the speed limit, within the speed limits. But if you're doing that, if you're constantly sprinting with your content, again, this is going to look so different for everyone.

Krystal Proffitt: 11:37

But if you're doing this every single week, or maybe even every single day, if you're posting, like social content, like how exhausting is that? How is that any enjoyable journey? Right, like, how is that sustainable at the end of the day? Because when we talk about if you want to avoid burnout, what is the opposite of burnout? Sustainability? Enjoying a long, a long career as a creator, in whatever capacity that is. I'm actually working on a talk for Podcast Movement, so shout out to everyone to go into Podcast Movement in Dallas 2025. But I've been really deep with this topic. Right now, I'm working on a talk that's called Three Tools to Help you Avoid Burnout, and so this is why I wanted to create this video.

Krystal Proffitt: 12:34

It was very top of mind for me and, at the end of the day, when I think about people waiting until the very last minute, I just think, man, I wish you could enjoy the journey, because anytime I hear someone's waiting until the very last minute on something, they're not happy, they're not. Maybe it's a one-off and you told yourself, oh, this will just happen this time, but it's a slippery slope. It truly truly is. If you wait until the last minute to do something or you're scrambling again, you're sprinting to get something done like you're probably not happy, and that, to me, is a sign of burnout. If you don't truly enjoy what you're doing and what you're creating, it's not long until you are going to hit that burnout stage and not want to create anymore. And that's what makes me really sad.

Krystal Proffitt: 13:30

And the third content mistake you're probably making is you're not being authentic to who you truly are or who you want to be. You're being a version of yourself. My husband he calls me out so much on this. Whenever it was really the early days of creating content, he would walk past my office, hear me recording. It was really a YouTube video. It wasn't always my podcast episodes, but if I was recording a YouTube video, it wasn't always my podcast episodes, but if I was recording a YouTube video, he would be like who is that person?

Krystal Proffitt: 14:10

And if you go back to some of my early videos, you will see me in like these really girly blouses and my hair is very done and I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a version of me being or trying to be something that I'm really not. I mean, y'all look at me. If you're not watching this YouTube video, you need to go check it out, because, crystal, on YouTube in 2025, you're literally on my walk with me. No makeup on my hair is kind of crazy. I'm sweating, I'm a little out of breath doing all of this and just walking and trying to, just trying to fit content into my life and do something different and try something different. But in those early days, man, I was not being who I am, I was being who I thought I was supposed to be.

Krystal Proffitt: 15:11

And similarly, what I see often is people and this is bad advice, so I'm going to call it out the experts out there that say, when you have a piece of content that's super successful and it goes viral and whatever viral means to you, right, it could mean 100 views, it could mean 100,000, 2 million views they will tell you well, you need to double down on that video or that topic, that content, right? And I just don't agree with that, unless it is the thing that you really want to talk about. So here's a great example I created this YouTube short right when threads came out so you know meta threads. When that first dropped, I was like, oh, this is a cool opportunity. I'm going to create a short. That is how to post your first thread. And I did this as an experiment. I don't even think I showed my face in the video. I think it's just a fully like, faceless video. It's a demo on my phone and I'm showing you.

Krystal Proffitt: 16:21

This is how I posted my very first thread. Well, it started taking off. I got this big spike. I don't even know how many thousands of views it has right now, but I got this big spike. And then I thought for a second oh, am I going to be the threads girl? I mean, this was in the first 48, 72 hours of the app dropping and this started to take off and it's still one that I mean.

Krystal Proffitt: 16:49

I get notifications every week that people are watching this. Like, am I going to be the Threads girl? No, I didn't want to be the Threads girl. I didn't want to talk about social media period. Like you rarely see me create videos just dedicated to social media, so it's not something that I necessarily wanted to be known for and it wasn't something that was authentic to my brand and what I wanted to do, so I didn't follow that path.

Krystal Proffitt: 17:18

So that's what I'm saying about being inauthentic, about not talking about the things you really want to talk about, or showing up in a way that you know like I mean, I've been doing this long enough that it's not that I don't truly care about what I look like. I do wear makeup, I do, you know, look nice from time to time. We'll put nice in quotes, right, I look nice from time to time, but in reality, I'm so dedicated to showing up here in a way that works for me, even though I've had multiple neighbors walk past me and hear me like talking on this, and they're just like, oh God, what's that lady doing out there? Like this is what works for me right now. Will this be a different version in 2026 and beyond? Probably, but this is what works for me right now. Will this be a different version in 2026 and beyond? Probably, but this is what's working right now.

Krystal Proffitt: 18:12

This is what's fun. Oh, this is fun. Remember we talked about fun earlier. If I can tell really quickly, if you're not having fun doing your content like red flags red flags all over the place If you're not having fun, like red flags red flags all over the place If you're not having fun. It is one of our core principles here at Profit Media in what we do and what we create. So, if anything, this is the only thing you get from today's episode.

Krystal Proffitt: 18:41

Where can you infuse some fun? You need some fun in your life, you need some fun in your content, and that, to me, it's like bonus tip. Number four is infuse fun in what you're doing and you are so much more likely to have a long and sustainable content journey. I've been doing this since 2018. I've had many, many, many evolutions of what I do and how I show up, and I just want to see that for you. I want to see you happy and I want to see you having fun creating your content, but that's all I have for you today. So make sure you hit that subscribe or follow button wherever you're listening, watching today and, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.