How to Continue Podcasting When Your Life Is Unpredictable – TAP294

0 Plays8 years ago

Life can get crazy and unpredictable. It can be joyous moments like a birth or marriage. It can be sad moments like a death or job loss. It can be trying moments like a move or transition of any kind. Here are 10 tips for keeping your podcast going, despite life's challenges.

As an extra resource, check out my webinar, “How to Prepare Your Podcast for Breaks,” inside Podcasters' Society.

1. Make life your highest priority

Whatever is making your life unpredictable is probably more important than your podcast. It's far better to invest yourself in your life and relationships. Like the instruction on airlines to put on your oxygen mask before helping others, you may not be able to help others through your podcast if you're suffocating your life.

2. Reduce your expectations

Is it truly reasonable to think you can keep up your podcast during an unpredictable season of life? You may have had a great schedule for consistency, and I think we all know how important consistency is. But when life is crazy, you may have to drop your expectations altogether.

3. Be open with your audience

Podcasting is already a more intimate form of media, so it's okay to be open with your audience. You don't have to share all the dirty details. But if you open up to let your audience know something's going on, they will usually be amazingly supportive!

From February, 2016 to February 2017, I published ten fewer episodes than usual. During that year, I took three breaks—a sabbatical, an emergency break for a death in my extended family, and time off for the birth of my first child. Never did anyone criticize me for those decisions. You and the rest of my audience were amazingly supportive! (THANK YOU!)

What you express is what you attract (one of my most-tweeted quotations). So when you're human with your audience, they'll be human back.

4. Discard old plans and make new ones (with flexibility)

Before your life changed, you may have had your schedule all planned out. You knew you could podcast on a particular schedule and have your episodes published consistently by a particular time.

Throw that all out.

During an unpredictable time, you need to make new plans. And yes, you should make plans, but they'll be very different from before.

With whatever plans you make, remember to be flexible.

5. Focus the time you do get

In his book Why We Want You To Be Rich, Robert T. Kiyosaki defines “FOCUS” as “Follow One Course Until Successful.” The core idea is that “focus” means doing nothing else but that task you mean to do, and doing that until you're finished or out of time.

Because your time may be so short for the tasks you have, it's vital that you spend that time entirely focused on those tasks. Even if it's only a few minutes, isn't that better than no time at all?

Here are some episodes, from fellow podcasters on my network, that I highly recommend to learn more about focusing effectively.