#208: How to Avoid Burnout in Music Production (Do Less, Achieve More)

Are you feeling drained from endless hours in the studio? Wondering how music producers can avoid burnout or what strategies actually work to recover from creative exhaustion? You’re not alone; burnout is one of the biggest creativity killers for producers and indie artists today.

In this episode of Inside The Mix, Marc Matthews dives into proven techniques that helped him rebuild his workflow and rediscover his passion for making music. You’ll learn:

• How to avoid burnout in music production with the three-pillar framework.
• What the 80/20 rule means for producers and how focusing on the right 20% of tasks can deliver 80% of your results.
• How to eliminate, automate, delegate, and mitigate tasks that drain your energy and waste valuable studio time.
• How to recover from creative burnout with simple mindset shifts and practical habits.
• Why limiting yourself to three key goals per day can help you achieve more while working less.

If you’ve ever asked yourself, 'Should I take breaks when music feels draining?' Or 'how do I balance content creation and music production without burning out?' This episode gives you the answers.

Whether you’re catching the early warning signs of creative fatigue or already deep in burnout territory, these strategies will help you create more music, reduce stress, and find joy in the process again.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

We'd love to hear from you! Submit a question

Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing the burnout dilemma
• 2:05 Productivity Hack: Set 3 Simple Daily Goals
• 4:21 Eliminate, Automate, Delegate: Save Time in Music Production
• 10:49 The 80/20 Rule for Musicians (Do Less, Achieve More)
• 13:45 Burnout Prevention Recap and Call to Action

Transcript

Marc Matthews: 0:00

Ever feel like you're working harder than ever on your music but your creativity is drying up? You've probably hit that dreaded wall burnout. But here's the real question Is burnout inevitable for music producers and indie artists, or can we actually prevent it before it hits? And if you're already there, is there a way back? You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Welcome to Inside the Mix, your go-to podcast for music creation and production. Whether you're crafting your first track or refining your mixing skills, join me each week for expert interviews, practical tutorials and insights to help you level up your music and smash it in the music industry. Let's dive in. Hey folks, welcome to Inside the Mix, or welcome if you are a new listener or viewer if you're watching this on YouTube.

Marc Matthews: 0:54

In this episode I am answering one of your questions, and this question was submitted by Oliver M, and this is the question. I'm looking at my notes here how do you avoid burnout or recover from it? If you've ever felt exhausted, unmotivated or even ready to quit music altogether, this episode is for you. So if you want to stay productive, created and excited about creating music, stick around. But before we dive into my response to Oliver's question. If you have a question that you would like featured on the podcast, click the link in the episode description and send me a message and, who knows, your question could feature on the podcast and you'll get a shout out as well.

Marc Matthews: 1:34

So my first tip is to keep your daily goals simple, and the way I do this is I write a to-do list every day at the end of the day. Now you could do this in the morning and I've known people do this in the morning, but this particular to-do list now I'll hold it up to the camera here. So if you're watching this on youtube, I've got this nice rnli to-do list that I purchased from eczema, from the rnli, and on there I'll put three, possibly four. I try and aim for three key tasks that I want to complete the next day. Now you could do this in the morning, and the idea here is these are the key tasks that will move things forward, and we'll come back to that in a tip that I'm going to share later in this episode. With regards to what is a key task and here I'll share with you what, for example, what I've got written on here today and these are the things I want to do so I've got produce this podcast episode. I've got mix session prep so I'm prepping a mixing session for a client and I've got pod prod, which is podcast production for the episode that's going to drop on Tuesday. And I've also got pod mid-roll video, so I'm creating a mid-roll video for the podcast itself. So technically I've got four things, and usually it'd be three, but one of these is quite short, so I squeezed another one in there, and the idea here is I'm going to stick to these tasks only.

Marc Matthews: 2:48

These are the key tasks that are going to move things forward, and I find that writing a list really does help. I can get it out of my head, I can stop thinking about what it is I'm going to do the next day or that given day, and it's there, it's on my list of things to do, things to do, and I don't know about you, but I love ticking things off. I don't know what it is, just love doing it and it just makes me feel ultra productive and positive about the tasks I'm doing for that day. To summarize if it's not on the list, it's not urgent, and this will stop you. It stops me from suffering from shiny object syndrome, which is where you see something on social media, for example, and you end up going down a rabbit hole. I do this go down a rabbit hole of a music production technique, a mix technique or just a concept of audio, and then I end up wasting time and don't complete the tasks on my list and then it has a knock-on effect to the next day. So it really does help solidify what it is I need to do in that particular day and set boundaries.

Marc Matthews: 3:50

So it can often be said that burnout is a result of doing things that don't matter, doing lots of things that don't really matter. And what I do to identify the things that don't matter is I track what it is I do in a given week and at the end of that week and also the end of the month, I do a weekly review, which is short. Okay, what have I done this week, what went well, what didn't go well, what could I improve and that comes from the teacher in me. And then I plan for the next week and I use google calendar to map out I know exactly what time I have, and then I move pieces or tasks around like a jigsaw and put them into relevant slots so I can dedicate time to a particular task and I like to dedicate time.

Marc Matthews: 4:25

We're going off on a bit of a tangent here. I like to dedicate time or allocate time, because I find that if I just have open-ended time, whatever task it is I'm doing, I would just fill that time with that task. So I like to set time boundaries. Obviously, there's a time and a place whereby you don't want that, but for the most part, particularly particularly with admin tasks like if I am doing some podcast, research or something like that I will set a time for which I want to do that. I won't have an open-ended time for that. So that's just a slight tangent there. But basically, yeah, I review at the end of each week, at the end of each month and quarter as well, and it's always what went well, what didn't go well, and then I take that forward and basically I'm trying to identify tasks that don't really have any impact. So I've got a great framework for categorizing the tasks that I've identified and there are four buckets.

Marc Matthews: 5:18

We've got eliminate, automate, delegate and mitigate. And I got this from the home studio profitable home studio podcast, I think it's called. I could be corrected on that. I think it's called something different now, but at the time that's what it was called. So we'll start with eliminate. So here, what adds no value, and I quickly identified that being on all social media platforms really didn't add any value. So I was on X, tiktok, facebook, instagram, youtube, and I got rid of X, tiktok and Facebook. Well, technically I'm still on Facebook, or active, let's say but it's just automatically sharing from Instagram because I was getting nothing from those. You get shares, you get a bit of engagement, but was it really doing anything? No, and was it taking up a lot of time? Yes, doing all this cross posting and whatnot. So now I focus on two platforms Instagram and YouTube. So eliminate those did not add any value.

Marc Matthews: 6:12

The next is automate. So repetitive tasks. Is there anything I can automate, and you can leverage AI for this? But in this instance, it's my mailing list. So if you're on my mailing list, great. If you're not, click the link in the episode description, jump on, get weekly tips, no spam, no fluff, and basically, with the mailing list, I automated it so it cleans my mailing list every six months. So if someone on my mailing list, a subscriber, doesn't open an email in the last six months, they are scrubbed from my mailing list and I've just automated that, so I don't have to go in and do that. And I also do that with, every two months, a re-engagement email as well, which sent out if somebody hasn't engaged in two months, just saying would you like to change your subscription settings? Basically, alternatively, you've got the option to unsubscribe as well, so I've automated that saves me having to do it. So that's automation.

Marc Matthews: 7:10

The next is delegate. So this is where possible, can you delegate any tasks? And I do this. I did it in a couple of ways. So with podcast editing, I delegated that, which I recouped a significant amount of time. And when I did have the Facebook group active, I delegated the administration of the Facebook group, because that took a bit of time as well, with posting, responding to posts and just cross posting new episodes each week. Now, admittedly, the Facebook group is no longer active, but that is an example of how I delegate your tasks. So is there anything that you can get friends or family to help you with, whether that's promotion or if you're a producer and mix engineer, mix prep or something along those lines, if you've got the ability to do it, maybe you can get an intern in to help you with regards to mix prep. Maybe somebody wants to learn more about mixing and editing and you can offer them some guidance just some ideas off the top of my head, and in return, they will help you with that. But that's delegate, delegate. So so far we've got eliminate, get rid of social media automate, automate the cleaning of my mailing list, delegate the admin of a group and also podcast editing and then mitigate. So mitigate is where, here I've got my notes.

Marc Matthews: 8:25

High stress, activity stress might be the wrong word take a lot of time with better systems. So this is all about systematizing. So, in particular, with a podcast, going back to what I said earlier about using ai, I now use ai. I leverage ai to help me with researching podcasts, podcast guests and podcast episode description, seo and scripts as well. So I use ai. I don't I don't rely on AI to create it, but I use AI to refine it. So I will draft the script, the description, and then I'll chuck it into ChatGPT, for example, and just say can you refine this, proofread it and offer any advice on how I could improve it. And obviously you don't have to accept what AI puts in there, but generally it's quite good. So that's how I use AI and I also use it, and this folks helped me significantly.

Marc Matthews: 9:23

With regards to content, I use a platform called Riverside I'll put a link to it in the affiliate link in the episode description and I use Riverside to create micro content. So it will take the podcast episode and it will create reels for me of the best parts using AI and it has saved me so much time. I used to have to do it manually. I use ScreenFlow to record episodes when I'm doing tutorials, for example. Previously I used Zoom to record interviews and I used to have to do it manually and just to create four pieces. It takes so long, but now I use Riverside and it automatically does it for me. It's called magic content.

Marc Matthews: 10:04

I'm not selling Riverside at any point here. This episode isn't sponsored by Riverside. I'm just telling you what I use and just an example of how I use AI to recoup so much time by using Riverside to create the short form content for me. And I know that I used to use another platform called Opus Clip I think it's called, but ever since Riverside started doing it, I don't use it anymore because I don't need Opus Clip. But Opus Clip will do the same Chuck in a video and it'll pick out the best parts for you and then you can use that and it just saves loads of time. So I'm waffling a bit now, but that's mitigate. So I'm leveraging AI just to recoup some time for tasks that I know I need to do and I need to do them, but I want them to be done quicker and more efficiently. So there we go You've got eliminate, automate, delegate and mitigate.

Marc Matthews: 10:51

Third and final tip is to apply the Pareto principle, which is the 80-20 rule. So this principle in effect states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. For example, using the eliminate bucket from the previous tip, I identified that I was spending probably 50% of my time posting on various social media platforms and it was only generating a small percentage of growth in podcast downloads and subscribers and also Spotify monthly listeners. So I was spending half of my time on social media, but it was a tiny amount of growth happening as a result. So I identified that and then I eliminated all those platforms. So it was TikTok Facebook, and what was the other one? X? That was it. So I identified that and then I eliminated all those platforms. So it was TikTok Facebook and what was the other one? X, that was it. So I eliminated those and recouped time.

Marc Matthews: 11:43

And also, going back to the mitigate as well, I now use automation to create the micro content, which again has saved me significant time. So I've now gone from sort of 50% of my time dedicated to social media to, probably in a day, I would say maybe 5%. It's very small, and I've even set a limit of 40 minutes per day, and then all my apps just block me out from going on social media. So I really have zeroed in on that percentage of time that I was dedicating to social media, which really wasn't moving the needle. I'm still active, don't get me wrong still active, still enjoy it, but a significantly less amount of time.

Marc Matthews: 12:24

So what I'm doing here is instead, I'm double downing, I'm doubling down. Doubling down on the activities that actually move the needle. So, for example, with the podcast that is reaching out to other podcasters and building a network and cross promotion on other podcasts, that's featuring on other podcasts and having other podcasters on inside the mix. And with regards to my music, I have spent time honing and refining my meta ad strategy and doing research into that, which has helped significantly. And also now I am reaching out to radio stations, blogs and getting features as well. So, in essence, I'm actually doing less but seeing more results. Basically, that 80 20 principle 80 of the results come from 20 of our our efforts. So I'm doing less but achieving more.

Marc Matthews: 13:13

And those are my three top tips to avoid burnout and also recover from it as well, as a producer or indie artist, and to be fair. To be fair, you can do it any walk of life, really. So let's do a quick recap. I'm looking at my notes here. We got number one limit your daily to-do list to three essential tasks. Tip two, track your work and apply the eliminate, automate, delegate, mitigate framework. And tip three, use the Pareto 80-20 principle to focus on what truly matters. So these three strategies can help you create more music and avoid burnout. So, circling back to the beginning of this episode, folks, if you have a question like Oliver M that you would like answered on the podcast, click the link in the episode description, send me a message and get featured on the podcast. Until next time, stay inspired, keep creating and don't be afraid to experiment inside the mix.