You ever feel like creator life is sort of like death by a thousand paper cuts? Not that it's killing you per se, but your time?
So many areas of the business need your attention: client calls, emails, DMs, comments, administrative stuff — and that's before you even get to the content!
When you're staring down a long to-do list, it's easy to fall into a "just get it done" mindset. I have to catch myself when I'm entering this territory — especially when I'm "checking the box" with my content.
Checking the box with your content is an increasing liability. You know what no one wants to see? Something you published but didn't actually care about. I'm sorry to say, if you feel like you mailed it in, we can feel it too.
But it's hard! It seems like everyone is publishing more these days with AI, and you're not the only one feeling like you can't keep up. The problem is that by watering down your effort to try and publish more, you're actually shooting yourself in the foot.
I shared in The Lab this week that I've personally felt the Red Queen Effect accelerating over the last 12-24 months. If you're not familiar with the Red Queen Effect, it's named after Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, where the Red Queen said to Alice (i.e. Alice in Wonderland):
"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place."
The idea is that sometimes it feels like you have to go faster and faster — not to gain an advantage, but just to maintain the status quo. That's a source of burnout: when you're working harder than ever, just to see the same results as before.
You don't outrun the Red Queen by working harder; you have to work smarter (or work differently).
One of the biggest areas of improvement I'm working on is eliminating what I call single-serving effort. In many cases, my effort completes a task on my to-do list, but that effort is then lost to time. Toiling over a bespoke LinkedIn post. Writing an essay I'm proud of, but never improve or post on my actual website. Publishing a podcast episode but doing nothing to share it.
I check that box, but there's little to no ongoing benefit to that effort.
Single-serving effort feels like putting gas in the car (business), only for the engine to burn it up. It keeps you moving forward, but that fuel is quickly exhausted (and the car itself isn't any better — it may just be slowly breaking down).
Instead, your effort would be better spent focusing on creating some reusable fuel. Or better yet, making your engine more efficient.
This is what I'm interrogating with my own time. Sometimes you just need to get from point A to point B, and fuel will get you there. But if that's all you ever do, you eventually run your car into the ground.
Multi-serving effort means that the effort you put in today can be leveraged tomorrow, next week, next month, and/or next year. Instead of burning through resources, you're actually creating them.
Multi-serving projects include:
- Long-form content
- Lead magnets
- Frameworks or other intellectual property
- Systems, processes, and SOPs
- Team building
- Capturing insights from calls and turning that into content
Even short-form content could be designed to be more than single-serving if you use it to test ideas, be part of a series, republish it every few months, or repost it across platforms.
It's not practical (or kind) to expect to get your single-serving efforts down to absolute zero. But before you do anything, just ask yourself, "What would the multi-serving approach to this be?" If you can't find an answer, that's a signal to ask yourself, "Is this a short trip from point A to point B, or should I actually spend this time in a more effective way?"
Chances are, the creators you admire have mastered this, whether intentionally or by happenstance. I've always admired Dan Koe's content flywheel of:
- Testing ideas in short form
- Turning the winners into long-form essays
- Turning the essays into a YouTube script
- Using the audio from the YouTube video as a podcast
- Repurposing other ideas from the long-form into new short form
I mean, it's brilliant. It's an amazing multi-serving strategy — and that's a big reason why he's so prolific.
If you've been dumping fuel into the car to keep moving forward but you're starting to hear some squeaks and groans, I get it. Sometimes I take longer routes because I enjoy the experience of moving more than sitting. You're not a failure for putting time into single-serving effort; that's actually an ordinary experience.
But if you want to leave the Red Queen behind and move into extraordinary territory, exchange your single-serving effort for multi-serving.
