Dan Willis breaks down why YouTube creators burn out: the grind of filming, editing, thumbnails, and promotion wears you down fast. Start with one video a week, simplify your editing, and use short-form content like daily podcasts or 30-second clips to stay sane without sacrificing growth.
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Burnout on YouTube is a big deal and it's getting bigger. The more creators, the harder it's getting. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Dan from millennialmotivator.ca, helping you learn how to create, engage, and inspire. If you're new to the channel, go ahead and click that subscribe button, little bell next to it. You'll get notified when my next video goes live. Today we are talking about burnout. Yeah, it's a reality, guys. And it's funny because if you're outside YouTube, you'd be like, what, creating videos is tough? It is. It's a lot harder than you would think. The time and effort and strategy that goes into creating a video, and then all the backend as well— editing, processing, making sure that you've got the backend on YouTube set up correctly with a thumbnail and keyword, and then redistributing it and marketing it. It's a lot, guys. And for a lot of people to get into YouTube, they get driven by that energy when you get started— those first views, the first subscribers, first first shares, first comments. You are driven like crazy. That high only stays for so long, and eventually you find yourself putting out videos at a pace that is no longer fun, no longer exciting, and you're actually draining yourself in a really dangerous way. So stick around, I'm gonna give you some tips to avoid burnout and have a successful YouTube channel. Alright, number 1, first and foremost, guys, it's setting a reasonable schedule. Now for me here on this channel, I commit to videos a week, and that is a lot. It's a lot of videos. If you are new to YouTube, start off slow and scale up from there. Start at 1 video a week, see how comfortable that feels, getting the proper editing and sound editing in there, making sure that you're not feeling overwhelmed but you're enjoying the process. Next, if you can manage that, double up, then go to 3. The only time I would recommend that you hit that 5, 6 videos a week is if you are looking to become a full-time YouTuber and and you have some experience shooting videos. I find once you break that 3-video-a-week mark though, the stress really starts to pile on. So I'm gonna warn you, start off slow, take it one video at a time, and scale from there. That's the first tip. Next, guys, is enjoy the editing process. This is one where people get caught up in it, and it's hard to create great polished production quality videos. As you can see with mine, I don't do that. Simply on the basis that I am creating so many videos a week. I would rather have my personality be the thing that's coming through on the videos than a high production value. Now, that being said, there's guys like Casey Neistat and Peter McKinnon that are able to put out extremely high production quality even though they're putting out videos daily or semi-daily. But that being said, guys like Casey Neistat and Peter McKinnon have had to take extended breaks at periods simply due to burnout. So you have to learn to balance. If the production side of things is dragging you down, the editing, the audio, making sure you've got the backend on YouTube set up properly, it's so crucial that you go slow with that. Don't expect perfection and don't push yourself to the point where you're blowing your mind out looking for the perfect video. Accept what you can get out, meet your timeline that you set in the first step, and you should be better off for it. All right, guys. Last but certainly not least is engaging the community. It's not all about you creating a full feature video. I know during my day, I start my morning every morning with my podcast, my Anchor podcast. I'm looking around for my phone here. Where is it? I do a podcast. It's a 1-minute short form podcast every single day. That takes nothing from me. It's quick, it's easy, it's on my phone. I put up a LinkedIn video that's usually about 30 to 40 seconds. Again, not super polished, not highly edited, just bare bones, here's the content, and it's quick and easy to put out. Last but not least, I put out a YouTube video, and these videos honestly are for the most part one-shoots. I sit down in front of a camera for about 10, 15 minutes, I shoot the footage, takes about a half hour to edit it, and then it's up on YouTube and dispersed out to the networks. It is so easy to get caught up in the mechanics of this, guys, and it doesn't have to be that way. Simply take your time on the channel, enjoy what you are doing, and realize that not all of your content has to be about you creating a perfect 10-minute video. It can be as simple as you creating a short 30-second video and sharing that out with your community using the community tab if you have it. If not, use your other networks— Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, wherever else you are— to use short-form video content to pull people to the channel, to past videos that you've created. That is it for today, ladies and gentlemen. I sincerely mean this when I say I don't want any of you burning out. I want you to enjoy your time here on YouTube, and I want you to succeed. You're gonna do better if you are able to avoid this burnout, set a reasonable schedule for yourself, don't get so caught up in the editing, and realize it's not all about long-form content all the time. Sometimes it's just about engaging your community. Let me know down below in the comments which of those 3 points are gonna help you out the most, and I will catch you tomorrow with another great video.
