Burnout is something I hear a lot of YouTubers talk about. For the longest time, I've taken pride in not ever really getting burnout as a YouTuber. With my upload schedule only demanding one video a month, I considered myself immune to burnout.

But now, I believe I've finally accepted that I may be suffering from it right now.

Quick summary for those who don't want to read this whole thing:

• I started working more on videos by working on more than one at a time.
• However, that led to me getting burnout for the first time in a while.
• With this, I am reevaluating my workflow in order to better plan for and fight against burnout in the future.

How I Used To Operate

Historically, I focused on my channel on a video-to-video basis. I would pour all my time and effort into one video, release it, and only then begin work on the next. While I might've came up with video ideas in advance, I typically only started production of a video once I had the previous one finished.

How I Started Operating Recently

But over the past few months, I started overlapping video production. I would start recording my next video while still editing the first one. Or I would start organizing two recording sessions for two different videos instead of just one for one video.

Since YouTube is my full time job, I considered this a necessary step in the right direction. And, it had good results!

The average time between my videos decreased! I was uploading faster and I was starting to get ahead of schedule, even recording videos months before starting to edit them.

Getting Burnout

But recently, I started to get less of a drive to work on videos. Despite having time, I've struggled to get the motivation to work on videos. For the longest time, I kept making up excuses, but I now believe this to be a symptom of burnout.

Truthfully, I probably could have released my next video by now. But I haven't yet due to burnout preventing me. I don't have the motivation to finish my remaining projects right now despite the fact that I know I need to. And that is making it very hard to get work done.

My Solution

While most people would tell me to take a break in this situation, with Geometry Dash 2.2 so close to releasing, that is not a desirable option. But even if it wasn't for 2.2 coming out, YouTube is my job, so I can't be taking unscheduled breaks like this.

And not only that, but even if I take a break and solve my burnout now, that won't stop it from coming back to haunt me in the future. I want to solve this issue here and now so I can fight against it better in the future.

Burnout is something that I am going to have to live with, and as such, I am going to have to plan for it. I have to treat it like a real and reoccuring condition if I ever want to continue doing YouTube sustainably.

As such, I have created a list of steps I can take to help with burnout. This list will not only help me now, but will be used whenever I encounter burnout in the future.

1. I will not take on any new projects and I will drop all unnecessary ones. I will only limit myself to my core projects that need to get done, being my videos. Right now, that means not accepting any new collabs until 2.2.
2. I will take a little extra time off to focus on myself, but without adding any unnecessary stress. This will mean getting out more, taking more walks, playing other games with friends, and talking with my friends and family, but without committing to anything, as that might add stress. Taking a little extra time for myself is important for my mental health, which is necessary in order to make my videos the best they can be!
3. I will turn larger goals into smaller tasks to motivate myself to work. Right now, that means making a list of small tasks for each video that are easy to check off. This will motivate myself to begin working again by making everything look far less daunting.

Feel free to follow these steps if you're ever struggling with burnout and think it will help you!