60: If You Want to Profit, Do This!

Every season of life presents new challenges which require us to assess and re-calibrate our lives to accommodate for its changes. In the midst of a few things that remain consistent, like nourishing ourselves and getting sleep, the activities of various sizes that fill the rest of our 24 hour days are almost never consistent.

As a person who loves consistency, the minute changes in scheduling can often drive me nuts. I’m the kind of person who will give someone several days notice when I want to make plans. My flaw, in this regard at least, is that I expect the same out of other people as well. I don’t like last minute changes to plans and it’s hard for me to adjust when something new is sprung on me. This has been something I’ve acknowledged, however, and am working on because, more than anything, I get this distinct feeling of selfishness every time I get frustrated by spontaneous changes in plans. In my head, I see that the other person didn’t care enough about me and my time to give me more notice; very rarely do I stop to think about what might be going on in that person’s life to force them to change plans on me.

This week’s episode of Profitcast reminds me of a term we use in various sports practices and training sessions. Conditioning. Conditioning is useful in many regards, though none of them are strictly considered fun. It is used to build endurance, to hone technique, and, very often, to humble the proud.

While natural talent, athleticism, and skill are valuable to components in any sport, each can only take a person so far. There are a lot of talented, a lot of athletic people in this world, all vying for the same goal: victory. In the end, it will be the person who dedicates themselves to the peripherals, to conditioning and technique, that will come out on top against someone of equal skill.

Managing schedules and organizing time reminds me of conditioning. Sometimes it can be brutal, sometimes people can hate you for it, sometimes it’s not fun, but we always appreciate it in hindsight. Schedules are a way to manage responsibilities and show respect; they’re also a way to maintain sanity.

Without endurance and technique, we get caught up in the big picture and forget about the fundamentals that comprise the big picture. In the world of podcasting, the fundamentals are those things that surround your passion podcast. For example, not getting enough sleep impacts our ability to provide consistent, quality content, but so do things like scheduling too many meetings on Recording Day, or inefficient time management that permits us to record, but not to edit and produce.

If we let our schedules run us ragged, the “get to” mentality slowly turns into the “have to” mentality. We lose steam, lose interest, and lose sleep. We’re telling ourselves and the people around us that all we care about is the end game, that we’ll do everything and anything to get there. And sometimes that’s OK, sometimes it’s OK to do whatever it takes, but that methodology isn’t sustainable over long periods of time.

Which is why conditioning is so useful! Getting a grip on your time will feed into all aspects of life, not just podcasting. It’ll let you give the time to podcasting that podcasting requires, to advertising that advertising requires, to family what family requires, and so on and so forth.

I will admit, I was surprised to hear that Brian is going to begin implementing a schedule. As he starts to acquire more clients, it might not be strictly necessary to have a set schedule for every half hour of every day, but it will certainly become useful in these beginning stages so that he can avoid over commitment and give to each client the time that they require. I’ll be interested to see how this goes for him and how it will change the way he approaches different projects.

Don’t shy away from conditioning! Build endurance for passion podcasting by taking care of the details and taking the time to understand each season of life, what it requires from you and how you can respect that season.

For the record, I do not drink 9 pots of coffee a day. Maybe 3.

Links!

• Profitcast Patreon