I would generally consider myself (Cat) a minimalist. I don’t love clutter, I rarely have an emotional connection to objects, and I’m consistently re-analyzing the value something provides in our lives and weighing whether or not it’s worth keeping.
But I’ve learned something about myself in recent weeks: I’m a hoarder.
The root of hoarding is an anxiety or fear of not having enough—a distrust that there will be provision.
Alternatively, distress or overwhelm at the idea of cleaning or sorting. This often leads to a “freeze” response which only gets worse over time with the accumulation of more stuff. Hoarding generally leads to cluttered spaces, making it harder to think clearly, thus exacerbating the problem.
But mine is not a hoarding of “things,” mine was a hoarding of “content.”
Photos I’ve edited for social media, but placed in an album for “someday.”
Reels I crafted months in advance of our departure so I would have “backup” content to post when we needed it—sitting in a drafts folder on my phone.
Half-written blog posts clogging up my OneDrive in the hopes that maybe I could return to them for inspiration on days I have writers block.
In the book “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry,” he mentions a story about people trekking in Africa (I think that’s right…feel free to correct me if I’m wrong). Despite the explorer’s drive to keep moving, the tribe guiding him insisted on regular breaks and refused to continue until “their souls caught up with their bodies.”
In these last two months our bodies outran our souls. We just finished our first pet sitting gig in Europe: a week caring for a cat and plants in an apartment in Zurich. It was the first time since we left nearly 3 months ago that we had a full week of “nothing.” And not only did we catch up on work, we caught up on…ourselves. We reflected and rested and processed and considered what we want to do better in the next chapter.
For the last 3 months, I’ve tried to post something every day. The mental load of trying to post daily is very heavy. Around 3 or 4pm every day I would remember that we’re trying to post daily and interrupt whatever I was in the middle of to scrounge up something worthy of Instagram.
Talking head, trending, or b-roll?
Do I need to get drone footage or GoPro footage off of our harddrive?
Should I script anything prior to recording?
Make sure to provide value in the caption.
What’s the best time of day to post? Our analytics say 3-5pm, but I’ve been doing that and it’s not performed well… is that because I should change the time or is it the content itself that needs to change?
What about the 72 (not an exaggeration) half-edited reels in my InShot drafts? Should I do one of them? No—I might need them for later…
The result was often that I’d get overwhelmed and not post anything…. Then repeat it again the next day. Or if I did post something, it felt thrown together and I wasn’t proud of it. And it certainly wasn’t content aligned with our goals of growth and serving our audience.
In the social media world, there’s something called “content batching.”
It’s essentially when you pick one day and create every post for the next week in advance (some people do it for a whole month…I think trends shift too often for that to make sense for us). It’s something I decided to try for the first time yesterday (spoiler alert—big fan). I mapped out a content calendar for the month and gave thoughtful consideration to our content pillars, style, variety, objectives… then used that as a guide to decide on all our posts for the coming week.
I finally dove into all the folders and drafts and albums and realized “omg. There’s so much here. Too much here.” I’ve got about a month’s worth of “halfway-done” posts that I’ve just been collecting, saving, then getting overwhelmed about and ignoring…
So I started categorizing and sorting all those half-done posts into their respective places. And reflecting on the mess I’d created for myself: I’d been hoarding. Hoarding content. And I hadn’t taken enough time to “let my soul catch up with my body” to even become cognizant of it…until yesterday. Now I have the opportunity (and I dare say responsibility) to reflect on what brought me to that point and how to avoid it going forward.
- A lack of rest in our schedule
- There’s not much of a “roadmap” for what we’re doing. And nobody talks about the difference between “taking trips” and traveling. Because they’re different. Normal human needs don’t just go away because you’ve decided to live an a-typical lifestyle. And while “trips” can be 10 days of non-stop travel chaos, “life” can’t be. We need rest the same now as we did last year. And the consequences of ignoring that need aren’t worth it.
- Performance anxiety
- We’re trying to turn this into a business. We have enough income to float ourselves for a bit, but not for forever. High activity can often lead to high energy which can lead to high anxiety and fear. I think that fear of failure without the moments of quiet reflection had caused short-sightedness. I started “hoarding” for the future without actually considering the future.
I’ve said to quite a few people that this journey has taught us a lot about ourselves. I would never know that I have a tendency toward “content hoarding” if I hadn’t been in a position of needing to “create content.” But I’m grateful for it as each new discovery is a chance for new growth. Now I know what to watch out for in myself going forward and,
as usual, rest is 80% of the answer đź«
Also I’m a big fan of content batching. Gonna keep doing that.
-Cat
