The Proffitt Podcast
Are you thinking about starting a podcast? Launching a YouTube channel? Repurposing your old blog content into something fresh? Hi, I'm Krystal - host of "The Proffitt Podcast." And I'm happy to say you've come to the right place!
Business owners and content creators dream of building a platform where they can connect deeply with their audience, and marketing feels easy. But I also know what it's like to feel confused and overwhelmed.
Join us weekly as we strip down those processes and remove all the overwhelm with new tips, simple strategies, and great conversations with creators like you. Tune in to hear how I help creators start, launch, and market their content confidently. The motto here is, "We all have to start somewhere."
The Proffitt Podcast
3 Time Management Tools to Avoid Podcast Burnout - My PM25 Talk
Feeling like your podcast is sucking the life out of you? You're not alone. The real problem isn't that you don't have enough time—it's that you're not protecting the time you have for what truly matters.
As someone who has published over 1,500 podcast episodes and coached thousands of content creators, I've discovered that sustainable content creation comes down to three powerful time management tools. In this episode, I'm recreating my popular Podcast Movement talk to give you the exact strategies I use to avoid burnout while maintaining a prolific creation schedule.
First, I'll show you how to implement a weekly workflow that embraces reality instead of fantasy. We plan as if life won't get in the way, but it always does—dentist appointments, sick kids, work emergencies. Learn how to plan around interruptions instead of being derailed by them. You'll discover the simple calendar system my family uses to protect both personal priorities and content creation time.
Then I'll reveal my game-changing PREPM Method (Plan-Record-Edit-Publish-Market)—the only content system you'll ever need. This approach prevents the energy-draining task-switching that leaves most creators exhausted. Instead of asking your brain to be strategic, creative, technical, and promotional all at once, you'll learn how to focus on one type of energy at a time. Imagine sitting down to record and ONLY having to record—no planning, no editing, just pure creative flow.
Finally, we'll tackle the mindset shifts needed to maintain a healthy relationship with your content. Sometimes burnout isn't about your system—it's about your approach, your audience, or simply your capacity in this season of life. We'll identify what's truly draining your energy and how to address it.
Whether you have five hours a week or fifty to dedicate to your podcast, these tools will help you create consistently without resentment or exhaustion. Download my free PREPM Method Guide at crystalprofit.com/prepm and transform your relationship with content creation today. Your future self (and your audience) will thank you!
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.)
So do you remember how, back in the beginning, I told you that I'm your fake therapist? Hi, I'm Krystal. I'm your fake content therapist. Well, now we are deep into our session, right, and we're about to get a little uncomfortable about what's really holding you back in your content. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, 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? Well, hello there.
Krystal Proffitt:This is going to be a super fun episode, because I am trying to recreate my talk that I did at Podcast Movement. All right, so bear with me as I try to remember what the heck I even said. So it's been almost it's been over a week and a half since I did this talk, but I was like man, I have to relive that moment because it was so important, so special, and I want this audience to have exactly what I did. So I wish I could be like standing in front of you and, you know, have my mic in hand and my clicker in the other. I mean, I'm still going to show you my slides. So if you're watching or, sorry, listening on the audio only version, you will get a lot out of it. But if you want to see the visuals, just know that they will be on the YouTube video instead of just the audio only version. And I wanted to preface all of this to say that this talk was really well received and it was so much fun. I love speaking on stage in front of real people, and so this is probably not going to be as great as it was that day, because I don't have the same energy, the same hype. Like, I'm recording this and there's a house full of kids, there's laundry happening in the house, it's raining. I'm just praying that there's a break where I don't have a severe thunderstorm in the middle of this recording, so all the things. But this is real life, right? This is being a creator, so I'm just going to dive into it. So let's get right to it.
Krystal Proffitt:Welcome to three time management tools to avoid podcast burnout. My name is Krystal Proffitt. If we haven't met before, I am a content coach and strategist. For those of y'all watching this. I'm just delivering it how I delivered it that day, so just roll with it, okay. Okay, we're just so. Just roll with it, okay. Okay, we're just gonna roll with it. And I'm so happy that you're here, because so many people talk about burnout and this is probably something that you've experienced yourself, so let's just dive right in to what burnout is and how you can avoid it.
Krystal Proffitt:So a few years back, I was experiencing having all these things that I needed to do. I am a busy mom and I was trying to be a content creator, be an author and have time for all these other important things in my life. And I actually looked at my calendar and I was like, how am I supposed to fit podcasting into my calendar? I did not have enough time to podcast. Can anyone relate to that? Can you relate to recording or editing right up until midnight, literally the night before an episode goes live? Yes, exactly, we've all been there. But the problem isn't that life gets in the way. It's that we plan like life won't get in the way. So content burnout isn't about not having enough time. It's about not protecting the time that you have for what matters most.
Krystal Proffitt:So, after publishing over 1,500 podcast episodes and working with thousands of creators, I've unofficially dubbed myself a content therapist. So we're going to do a little therapy here today, free of charge, of course, but I want you to think of me as the person who is going to help you work on the relationships that you have. But the only relationship we're talking about here today is the relationship that you have with your content. So we're here today to give you the tools you need to avoid creator burnout and fall back in love with your content, so that that relationship feels stable again instead of stale and running you down. So the agenda is we're going to talk first about a weekly workflow that you can actually stick to, even with a packed schedule. Then we're going to dive into my go-to content system and it, honestly, will be the only content system you will ever need after today. And then, third, we're going to dive into the mindset shift you might need to make to really have that healthy relationship with your podcast and your content, even if life is still chaotic. So diving into tool number one. Tool number one is all about planning for reality, not perfection, and this is so important because a weekly workflow that you can actually stick to will be so eye-opening for you, even if you have a packed schedule. So here's what's actually stealing your creative time.
Krystal Proffitt:Let's say you have this perfect plan versus the reality of life. Maybe you plan to record your podcast on a Tuesday. You're like Tuesday is the only day that it will work for me to record my podcast. But then life happens that dentist appointment that you absolutely forgot about and you can't reschedule because it'll take you months to get back on their calendar. Or maybe you wake up and one of your kids is sick, or you have a work emergency or 50 other thousand things that could happen. That is just typical of being a human on this planet. Well, suddenly it's Thursday and you're stressed and you're recording at 11 pm the night before an episode needs to go live and your energy is shot. You are faking it till you make it. So raise your hand. If this is something that sounds familiar, I know y'all are listening and nodding along today. But remember, the problem isn't that life gets in the way. The problem is that we plan like life won't get in the way. And I'm here to tell you guys spoiler alert life will always get in the way of what you're trying to accomplish. You can have a great plan and things just go awry and they don't happen the way that you want them to happen.
Krystal Proffitt:So I share this visual of my Google Calendar. This was like a snapshot of one week in our household, of like all the things that needed to happen over the summer, and I encourage you, when you look at your calendars, to start planning for interruptions and not around them. So I'm a mom of three kids. Like I said, this is just a snapshot of our weekly calendar and every single Sunday, we sit down as a family and we look at our Google calendar for the week ahead. It's so simple and so powerful. We ask the questions like where are those potential conflicts? Like my husband and I, like we can't be in, you know, the same place at the same time, with like three different kids going in different directions, and like all these other things Like what needs to be moved, what's a priority, what is something that we can skip and, for me, how can I protect that precious time that I need to record content?
Krystal Proffitt:So the method that I use in looking at a weekly workflow is look at the whole week and not just like individual days of the week. Identify those non-negotiable creative blocks that you absolutely need and you can't skip and then build in buffer time around those tasks, like don't give yourself 30 minutes to do something when in reality you know it's probably going to take 45, maybe even 60 minutes to really accomplish what you're trying to do. So I do the same review every single week for my personal like family calendar. I do the same review every single week for my personal family calendar. I do it also for my professional calendar and what I need to create. And then I merge them all together because whenever you protect your content, like you do a family priority, it really changes how you look at it and how you protect that time. And then people always ask me about my tools. So I always say that tools should serve you, not overwhelm you.
Krystal Proffitt:And the three tools that I use? I keep it very simple. I use Google Calendar. Google integrates with all the things that I need for, again, my personal life. In my professional life, I can pick up my phone, look at my Google Calendar and everything is in one place and I can manage it very easily. And then, speaking of management, I use a project management tool called Asana for all of my projects. So that's where I keep all of my deadlines. I track all the things that I need to accomplish in a week in order to meet all the different requirements that my content has to meet all the different requirements that my content has. And then Calendly is the scheduling tool that I always think of it as like the boundary protector of my business, because I can schedule interviews and know that it's not gonna get scheduled over a personal priority that I have, or on a day when my kids are out of school and I don't wanna record something, or I'm actually gonna be on vacation. So it's very helpful, and I know there's probably a bajillion other tools that you can use. I've just used Calendly for years and I have a really good price. So I locked in that price a long time ago and I'm just going to keep on keeping on using the tools that I have chosen. But the rule is choose tools that reduce decisions, not create more of them for you, and the best tool is actually the one that you will use consistently and it just works for you. So now that you know a few tools to protect your time, let me show you how to protect that creative energy that you have.
Krystal Proffitt:So there's a story that I told about having a client who her podcast was such a time suck. She actually made time to do all the things, and the issue wasn't that she didn't have enough time, it was that when she did have time, she was planning, recording, editing and doing every single thing that her content required in one day, and she was bleeding creative energy, maybe not even in one day in like one 60-minute block that she had. So after implementing what I'm about to show you, she started to love recording again, because that's all she had to do. All she had to do on the time that she had was sit down and record, and it was so freeing to her. Imagine if, for your next session, all you had to do is sit down, press, record and start talking. Right, that sounds like a dream. Let me show you how this works. So tool number two that we need to talk about is protecting your creative energy by working smarter, not harder, and this is the only content system you'll need.
Krystal Proffitt:This method is the backbone of how I keep creating without burnout, and I love this quote by Greg McEwen. So he wrote the book Essentialism and he says if you don't prioritize your life, someone else will, and this really hits home for me, because whenever I started my podcast in 2018, I thought that I was supposed to be at the mercy of my calendar. But once I understood that prioritizing my time was my responsibility, I stopped waiting for that perfect week, all of these interviews and all these things, just to fall perfectly in line. I stopped waiting for that and I started creating a system that worked for me every single week. So how do you take control of your time and make it sustainable? That's where the PREP'M method comes in, and here's my little aside for everybody listening and watching today. You probably already know the PREP'M method because you're here, but if it's brand new to you, feel free to take screenshots because this is the good stuff here. But if it's brand new to you, feel free to take screenshots because this is the good stuff, all right. So if you're wondering and I actually said this from the stage, so you are getting like the behind the scenes, like a side If you're wondering which slide to screenshot, this is it. This is the PREP'M method. It is your creative energy protection system. It's the system we use at Proffitt Media for every single piece of content we create, and it's the same thing that I teach my students and clients and that's why I want to share it here with you today. So PREP'M stands for Plan, record, edit, publish, and Market. So each letter represents a different type of creative energy.
Krystal Proffitt:When you try to do them all at once, you're asking your brain to be strategic and creative and technical and promotional and analytical all at the same time, and that's not productivity, that's chaos and it's likely why you feel burnt out. So let's dig more into the root issue of the problem. So task switching is killing your momentum. This is your biggest issue. So every time you switch from planning to editing, to recording, to promoting and publishing and like do marketing, doing all these things your brain needs a lot of time to reset. I've read studies where it can take you up to 20 minutes to reset and fully focus. So if you're jumping in between all of these tasks, I've read studies where it could take you up to 20 minutes to reset and fully focus.
Krystal Proffitt:So if you're jumping in between all of these tasks, then you're never actually operating at full capacity. You're always in that foggy like wait, what was I doing? Have you ever found yourself like this? Like you're sitting down to record, you're like I don't need to play anything, I'm fine. And then you're like what was I talking about? What was the point I was trying to make? Well, here's the solution. The solution to avoid that is to double down on one thing. So let's say you only have 60 minutes tomorrow to work on your content.
Krystal Proffitt:What if you double down and just did a 60 minute planning session? So it's pure strategy and ideation and it gives you the ability to create space for your best ideas. Or maybe you did a 60-minute recording session and it's pure creative flow and it allows for creativity without any interruptions. Or maybe it's a 60-minute editing session where you get through all that pure technical focus and you just churn out all these episodes. You're just like man, I'm in the flow, I need to keep this going, and then I'll have all this content edited for the rest of the month. Or maybe you just sit down and have pure execution in a publishing session where you can schedule all of your episodes from now to the end of the year. And then maybe you can do a marketing session where it's pure promotion and engagement. Maybe you just sit down and answer YouTube comments because you haven't had time to do it, but you know that you need to. You're focusing that promotional energy for maximum impact.
Krystal Proffitt:But here's the freedom formula in all of this when you know exactly what you're supposed to be doing and when your creative brain is free to do what it does best, create right. That's the beauty in all of this. So here's a practical, tactical way for you to use the PREP'M method. So this calendar view really shows how you could do this next week. So if you've never implemented anything like this, you can literally start next Monday if you want to kick it off. So let's say, monday is a planning day. That's where you're going to focus on your content calendar work, on doing research for your next episode, maybe writing some outlines, prepping interview questions, maybe who you want to interview on your podcast. You're doing research and then on Tuesday you sit down and you record Maybe you can batch two to four individual solo episodes and then Wednesday you sit down to edit those.
Krystal Proffitt:You process all of that recorded content and then maybe on Thursday, you schedule it out by putting you know, have the publishing hat on, you upload it to YouTube, you upload it to Buzzsprout, you schedule it out, you do your SEO optimization or whatever else you need to do before that episode goes live. And then, on a Friday, you could sit down and think about your marketing strategy. You could be in Canva all day, which I love Canva, right. You could work on promotional graphics. You could create a PDF lead magnet to help you grow your email list. You could do your social media scheduling. You could again go back and answer all those YouTube comments that you've kind of neglected over time.
Krystal Proffitt:But people ask me all the time like, Krystal, how do you get ahead and create consistently when you're batching all your content? How are you doing this, this, this right here? This is how I'm doing this. I'm using this PREP'M method in order for me to do it, and the beauty this is what I love about it. The beauty of the PREP'M method is that it scales to your schedule. So, whether you have five hours a week or 50, you can adapt it to protect your creative energy, because people will tell me, Krystal, I don't have a ton of time.
Krystal Proffitt:Well then, implement this, even if it's only five minutes a day. If you only had 25 minutes this week to work on your content, do five minutes every day of one of these, all right. So we've covered tool number one your weekly workflow. Tool number two the PREP'M method for keeping your content engine running smoothly. But the truth is is that you can have the perfect workflow and the best batching system in the world and still want to quit your podcast. Okay, so I see you if you're like, yeah, so I have all these things figured out, but I still feel burned out.
Krystal Proffitt:Well then, this last section is for you. So let's talk about your mindset. This is tool number three. It's all about protecting your bandwidth and your mindset to keep showing up without resenting your content or the process. This is how you stay in love with your content.
Krystal Proffitt:So do you remember how, back in the beginning, I told you that I'm your fake therapist? Hi, I'm Krystal, I'm your fake content therapist. Well, now we are deep into our session, right, and we're about to get a little uncomfortable about what's really holding you back in your content. Sometimes it's you or maybe I should say, I should rephrase it Sometimes it's your approach, maybe it's your perfectionism that's holding your back, like you're spending three hours editing a 20-minute episode and it's keeping you stuck from moving forward. So I want you to ask yourself am I creating content I'm excited to share, or content I think I should create, because the moment you start creating that shoulding content and I said said shooting that's when you start to burn out. Or maybe now, like any other relationship, if you're not the problem, maybe it's them. Maybe they are the problem, and by them I mean your audience.
Krystal Proffitt:You're attracting those energy vampires, those listeners who are only complaining or demanding things from you, or people who expect free consulting in the DMs, or they just want free stuff from you all the time. They're draining your energy. And here's the hard truth Not everyone deserves access to your energy. It's better to have 100 engaged listeners who love what you do than 1,000 who drain you. And then the last one is sometimes it's your capacity and you just need a break.
Krystal Proffitt:Sometimes it's time for a break and I want you to get really honest about yourself, about how you're prioritizing your content. Maybe you're pushing through instead of adapting, or you're maintaining the same schedule, even though your life has changed. I said earlier, I started in 2018. It's 2025. My life looks drastically different today than it did seven years ago. So I have to pivot and bob and weave to what I'm doing today versus what I did back then, and I'm going to give this to you with like the gentlest love. So just imagine you're in my fake therapy office and you're hugging that tight pillow and you're saying, sometimes the most productive thing you can do is rest, giving yourself a break, because your podcast will still be there when you're ready to return with renewed energy. So I don't know which one of these applies to you today, but I want to do a little practical application self-assessment and I want you to think about you don't have to raise your hand or say out loud oh yeah, that's me.
Krystal Proffitt:But I want you to think about your last few episodes. What's your biggest energy drain? Is it your approach? Are you excited about your content? Are you just going through the motions? Is it your audience? Are you energized or exhausted by your listeners? Or maybe it's your capacity? Are you honoring the season that you're in right now? Are you fighting against it? And then, whatever you've identified here today, that's your starting point. That's where you need to focus on course correcting or maybe rebalancing in some way, because by being honest about what's draining your creative energy, you don't just avoid burnout. You create space for what matters. Now I want to share a quick recap. Right Like the main takeaways from this is value your time just as much as you value your content. When you do, you don't just avoid burnout, you create space for the work that actually moves your podcast forward, and that's how you fall back in love with your content so you can keep creating for years to come with your content. So you can keep creating for years to come.
Krystal Proffitt:Now, if you're watching this, listening to this, and you're a regular listener of the podcast or the YouTube channel, you probably already know this. But I want to give a plug here for the PREP'M Method Guide. So we created a PDF guide. You krystalproffitt. com/p repm, go to prepm, p-r-e-p-m, and it's gonna go a step deeper into how we use this in our business. It's exactly what I've used to create over 1,500 episodes without burning out, and I want you to have it completely free. So go to to download it. But I wanna give you one last piece of advice. This is what I give to everyone that's in our community, everyone everywhere, and it's actually how we're going to end this episode today. Because you're going to be so familiar with it. Make sure you hit that follow and subscribe button wherever you're watching and listening today and, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.
