Marketing is an energy practice.

As I wrote about on my blog, there's always something to work on in life. While this can be a positive stimulus for growth and creativity, it can also be exhausting, depleting and discouraging. Entrepreneurs - especially solo ones - experience this sense of functional fatigue constantly. Especially with the pressure to grow, scale, hack or otherwise kill yourself at the millstone of effort.

This world-weariness with all the tasks and things on our to-do list has sprouted a plethora of productivity ideas from the likes of 4-hour work weeks, lean start-ups, agile, growth hacking, etc. But I don't think it is about productivity. I think it is about the resource of energy. The better you manage your energy, the better you can apply your attention, activate creativity, be a better human to yourself and others and much more. To that end, I've found these three books to be the most useful:

• "Time Off" by my friends John Fitch & Max Frenzel
• "Essentialism" by Greg McKeown
• "Start Finishing" by Charlie Gilkey

These three books have greatly influenced how I structure my time, manage creative projects and protect and renew my energy levels.

Of the myriad of tasks that an entrepreneur has to deal with, there's not one more consistently frustrating and debilitating than marketing. This is largely due to the Too Much Information Age creating an ever-growing over-saturation of marketing tools and tactics - as well as a lot of shitty advice on how to use these tools. Through failure and recalibration, entrepreneurs learn that there is no one way to do marketing right but there are thousands of ways to do it wrong.

In the spirit of essentialism and energy management, here are a few filtering questions to ask yourself about your current marketing efforts ...

Does this align with my mission? By mission, I mean your purpose for being on this planet, not the mission of the business (which can often be the same for small entrepreneurs). Your mission will inform your strategy, which will inform your marketing efforts. If something you're doing is not aligned with your mission and strategy, you need to have a difficult conversation with yourself about why you continue to do it.

Is this energy-positive or energy-negative? This doesn't mean you are able to only do the energy-positive things. But it does mean to do them first. If you enjoy writing, do that! If you enjoy having conversations (1:1, group, podcast), do that! If you enjoy shooting video, do that! This will either give you more energy to do the stuff you don't want to do - or it will give you the incentive to delegate it. In addition, taking ownership over what you say "yes" or "no" to is empowering and calms the nervous system. Which allows you to make better decisions and produce more quality output.

What can I automate? Building out a marketing infrastructure is a heavy lift and it may not be energy positive for you. But it is absolutely worth it for the long-term health of you and your business. I'm not surprised by how much manual marketing entrepreneurs are doing. The idea of automating your marketing sounds great, but is overwhelming to implement. This is why we strongly suggest getting some help from an expert in this area. If you'd like some recommendations on who to work with, DM me.

At Root + River, we teach our clients to slow down to work on the brand so they can speed up their marketing. To make better, faster decisions with your marketing, you need a strong brand foundation. And that takes some dedicated time, energy and space. At a minimum, you need to know who you are, what to say and who to say it to. Without clarity in these three areas, marketing will continue to be frustrating and overwhelming - and ineffective.

Final thought ...

Give yourself the gift of stopping. Take a break. Cop a squat. Sit quietly for 5 min. Go for a walk. Dance. Just do something to get you out of your left-brain task-orientation. Then go back and reassess what you are giving you energy, attention, resources to related to marketing. Ask yourself the above questions. Then take immediate action - even the simple act of saying "no" or "not right now".