"Don't forget about me!"

Heading into my honeymoon, the creator part of me was a little nervous. I felt like I had built up a lot of momentum around my creator business – more chatter about Creative Elements on social media, a bunch of new readers, my audience on social media was growing...

And I was about to go offline for two whole weeks?! What if I lost that momentum??

I was genuinely a little worried. Thankfully, the real-life, freshly-married, human being part of me runs the ship around here and didn't let that stop me! ??

So for two weeks, my laptop sat at home. My autoresponder was on and my business was operated solely by automation and scheduled content.

And do you know what happened in those two weeks? What changed?

Nothing happened.

Nothing changed.

Nothing at all.

I didn't produce any new work. I published only a few updates to social media and the world didn't crumble. People continued to share my writing and my podcasts, people continued to communicate with me on social media, and I had no anxiety about deadlines or shipping anything.

But for the several weeks leading up to our honeymoon, I had near-constant urges to publish something – especially on social media.

It wasn't that I had near-constant ideas or messages that I wanted to share with the world...I had near-constant anxiety that I should be sharing something.

Near-constant anxiety that I would be forgotten or left behind.

Honestly, I would say 80% of what I shared on social media was driven more from ego and perceived necessity than it was trying to be helpful. I might as well just tweet, "Don't forget about me!" every few hours.

I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but not entirely. I generally felt a low, refrigerator-hum of anxiety that I should be publishing something on social.

But as I stepped away from my computer, stepped away from the day-in and day-out of creator Jay, it quickly became clear that my compulsion to be posting constantly was unnecessary, unhealthy, and unhelpful.

Yes, people read it.

Yes, people often like it.

Yes, people engage with it.

But most of it is also quickly forgotten. It's not enduring, work or life-changing information. It's junk food content. Easy to consume, tasty, and you feel good for a second.

But it's not really helping you any – it's actually just stealing attention from you for my OWN interests.

And here's the worst part – when we hear that voice in our mind saying, "I should really be posting something to social media..." that's stealing our OWN attention away from the work that truly matters. I often find myself trying to fit writing or editing time around my social media junk food production.

And then I find myself wishing for more time to produce longer-form and evergreen content that would be more enduring...more nourishing to my audience and my business than the junk food content.

But junk food is easier to produce. And it tastes good in the moment.

As I think in terms of longer time horizons, it's more and more clear to me that I need to cut the junk food out of my diet – both production and consumption.

I need to be focusing more on evergreen, enduring ideas that actually help and transform people.

Like all things, this isn't a binary, black-and-white situation. Of course there's a middle ground where you can both produce evergeen content AND still be prolific on social media.

There's a concept of "sawdust" in content creation that I like a lot – the idea that through producing enduring, evergreen content, you naturally produce "sawdust" – edges that got shaved off or pieces that didn't quite make the final cut.

You can take that "sawdust" of your creation process and use that for short-form content.

That's a different and much more efficient path to a balanced approach to long-form and short-form content and one that I intend to be more intentional about putting into play.

But when I think about my body of work and what people will remember about me years from now...it's not the Tweets. It's not the short-form video. It's giving new terminology to emerging trends in this new, creator economy. It's taking a critical look at how creators today are breaking through and providing a foundation for NEW creators to forge their own path.

...and that work just hasn't been getting done while I worry about posting 2x per day on LinkedIn, you know what I mean?

Speaking of the work that matters...

Design your own Introductory Offer ??

Now that I'm back from the honeymoon, I'm excited to dive head first back into making the?Creative Companion Club?the best online community for professional creators.

In two weeks, we will kick off our next?Shared Focus Sprint, a 4-week workshop on creating an?Introductory Offer. Inspired by?this conversation?with Matt Giovanisci and Miles Beckler, I'm going to help members design an offer they can soft-pitch to new email subscribers to generate sales on autopilot.

This is the type of thing I?love?doing inside the CCC. These Shared Focus Sprints (basically lightweight cohort-based courses) allow me to invest deeply in helping members really move the needle on their creator businesses – and a sprint like this will even help make the membership pay for itself.

You can join now and take part in this next sprint! Not to mention, you'll have instant access to all of my workshops and our past sprints focused on Sales Pages and Lead Magnets.

?? Join the Creative Companion Club

About Jay Clouse

Hey, I'm Jay! I'm a writer, podcaster, and community builder helping people build their creative platform and become professional creators.

I'm the founder of?Creative Companion?and the host of?Creative Elements, a narrative-interview podcast exploring how today’s top creators make a living with their art and creativity.

I previously led the Community Experience team for Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income, designing their paid membership community and cohort-based course programs.

You can connect with me on?Twitter?or?Instagram.