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Can I tell you a secret 🤫 No one cares about your effort.
They care about your output. So why do we feel the need to make things hard for ourselves? Like making it harder for ourselves means more. But no one is giving you a gold sticker at the end of the day for your effort.
The more I spend time in the creator community, the more I see very real signs of hustle, burnout, and the relentlessness of being on the creator treadmill.
And that scares me.
I became a creator because I really enjoy creating. I enjoy being curious. I get joy from sharing what I’m learning.
But the more you create, the more audience you build, the more relentless being a creator can feel. What if you stop creating? What if you need to take a break? Will you lose all your momentum?
As a part-time creator, I simply don’t have the luxury of making it harder to ship. I HAVE to find ways to ship content with very little effort on my part. And to be honest I’m glad I have the constraint because it’s caused me to develop a framework for myself where I can work a really hard full time day and still have the energy for shipping content.
People look at my output and assume I must apply tremendous effort. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I’m constantly looking for the BIG EASY. Here’s how I ship every day with VERY little effort.
Now this will only work if you put in some preparation work prior. I spend an hour or so on the weekend prepping my creator week by lining up a bunch of essays I want to work on, then brain dumping & outlining ideas for them. This means when it comes to shipping all I’m doing is plating them up ready to publish.
Read more about my incremental progress for writing here…
Now onto my BIG EASY framework. I don’t lock myself into any kind of content calendar. I simply scan through my list of next up essays (it’s usually a list of 7–10) and I ask myself three simple questions to decide what I want to work on and publish that day.
I’ve found that locking myself into a content calendar just doesn’t work for me. My brain works best when it’s exciting & passionate to work on something. So that is what I look for with the big easy framework
Make publishing content easier by using the BIG EASY framework
I mean if I was Marie Kondo I’d ask you does that idea spark joy? If so, one part of this trifecta is ticked.
Something I took away from the book How To Take Smart Notes was that Nicholas Luhmann never worked on something that wasn’t interesting to him. If he was losing interest, he would find something else to work on.
This concept has become a staple in my creator life. It’s why I always keep a bunch of ideas to work on because I know there will be something that catches my interest.
And it’s always easier to work on something you are insanely interested and passionate about, rather than what you planned next in your content calendar.
My interest fuels the fire and momentum
My rule for idea capture is to always brain dump at the moment I have the idea. That’s when I find I have the most momentum and words just seem to flow.
I can have essays sitting in my ideas pile for months and come back to them when I find they spark interest for me again and jump straight in because I’ve taken the time to write a significant brain dump — rather than just a few obscure words on a page.
I also keep my Up Next Pile in my Roam Sidebar so when I do have time throughout the week I keep adding more brain dump & ideas to each of my essays.
On a day when I have very little energy or time for writing, I know an essay with a bigger brain dump can get out the door faster.
I don’t have the same level of energy each day. Some days I’m slammed, others I have boundless amounts of energy.
Depending on my energy level, I can choose to work on something easier (aka more brain dump or more interest level) or something a bit harder where I might have to think through it more or wrangle it into some kind of structure.
The best thing about having a pile of up next things to write is that each are in different stages so there are always ones that are more on the complete & easy end of the spectrum for the days I have no energy.
Honestly, this is probably the key to being able to ship even on hard days.
And when I find an idea that ticks all those boxes… well it’s the trifecta ladies and gentlemen. I slide on into that writing session with ease and flow and slide out with something to publish.
Once I’ve found my BIG EASY to work on that day I use my go-to templates, prompts & frameworks to apply leverage and get things shipped quickly & easily.
If you look at any of my essays they follow a similar formula that Nicholas Cole taught me when I took my first cohort of ship30for30. It’s called 1–3–1.
You start with one sentence to hook your readers. You follow that one sentence up with 3 sentences or lines to give context. And then you round it out with another one-liner.
Seriously go and look at any of my daily essays on Twitter they all follow this format. Why? Because I don't have to think. I take time to think about the idea, but when it comes to the format, I just slot it in like a well-fitting glove.
As well as a framework for writing I also use have a database full of headline & tweet frameworks to make it easier on myself when preparing to get that content out the door.
Being a creator doesn’t have to be hard. It’s OK to make things easy for yourself. In fact, if you want to build sustainability and longevity as a creator, you should find more ways to make it easy.
So, next time you’re wondering what you should work on, try using the BIG EASY framework and see how effortless it can be to ship content.
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