Perspective Shifts

Uncovering The Tension Between Fast & Slow Podcasting Processes

The faster you can get things done on your podcast, the better. But spend 90% of your time in upfront planning. Here’s how podcasters resolve that opposite advice in different ways all the time.

September 16, 2020

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Abe Lincoln said that if he had six hours to chop down a tree, he'd spend the first four sharpening his ax. The quote’s apocryphal nature isn’t important. The sentiment is.

The idea that you should spend a significant amount of upfront time preparing to do a task is just good advice. In fact, it’s the ideal way to operate. Put another way: slow and deliberate preparation will allow you to execute elements of your podcast faster.

But rarely do we live in an ideal world. Pressures are constantly hitting us from all sides, and we often just don’t have the time to be slow and deliberate before we take action. Podcasters -- from pros to hobbyists - have to adjust and adapt to their own situations.

Because I’m a student of Venkatesh Rao, my mind immediately builds a 2x2 grid anytime I see two forces at play. I’m a terrible illustrator, but here’s my quick sketch:

2x2 grid showing four quadrants listed in this article. And it's poorly drawn.

Attractive, no? No. But leaving my failings as an artist aside, you’ll see that graphing things this way gives you nice quadrants to look at. Let’s examine each of them from the point of view of a working podcaster. Named Evo. Self-serving much? Yeah...

Fast Preparation / Slow Execution

Think of this as the “festering” quadrant. Activities that fall here will take a long time to complete (if they ever completed) because of (mostly) insufficient up-front planning.

This isn’t a good place to operate, podcaster or not. But I recently found myself in this quadrant when I decide to (finally) create a YouTube channel just for the edited videos of Podcast Pontifications. Prior to this decision, I’d been loading the videos to my personal YouTube channel, where they competed against videos of my speaking gigs, tons of videos from my travels around the world, and random video flotsam and jetsam I’ve collected over more than a dozen years.

Because of my poor planning, I decided to face my own demons and start making things right. The time to prepare was three years ago, but this is where I live now. So a couple of Friday’s ago (or was it last Friday?), I took the plunge. I leaned on a couple of friends who are more active on YouTube than me to help me avoid major pitfalls, and started the task. The channel was live that day with Season 3 videos, and I’m slowly back-filling. But with ~300 videos to re-upload, it's taking me a very long time to execute. And that’s OK, but only because I don’t have a time machine. This isn’t fun, but it is a reality.

Fast Preparation / Fast Execution

I’m tempted to call this the “unrealistic client expectations” quadrant, but I’m nicer than that. And it doesn’t roll off the tongue. So instead, I’ll call this the “today” quadrant, because it’s where I live with this very podcast.

And that’s my example: this very episode. And, in fact, most episodes of this show. I chose the topic for today’s episode yesterday but didn’t do any real planning until this morning. In fact, I hadn’t even conceived of the 2x2 graphic or example activities for each quadrant until I was in the shower at around 6:00 am. And I was in my studio chair less than half an hour later. That’s pretty fast.

I do not recommend you do this! I can get away with that because of the tight processes I’ve developed over time to get episodes of this podcast out on a consistent basis. The fact that it’s a short-form show with episodes on a single topic that require very little audio editing certainly works in my favor. It would be much harder (though not impossible) to do with a more complex show. So again, I do not recommend living in this quadrant if you value your sanity! But it is called the “today” quadrant for a reason, so you might.

Slow Preparation / Slow Execution

Spending lots of time in upfront planning is a good thing. But if you then take forever to actually implement the plan, you’re in the “limbo” quadrant, where good ideas go to die. Worse than the “festering” content that I started this article with, things in “limbo” don’t annoy you enough to ever give them the attention necessary to move them to done.

By way of example, I’ve yet to select an effective and efficient way to communicate with all of my clients en masse. Individually, we communicate all the time and quite effectively. And that’s the important part. But on rare occasions, I need to let all of my firm’s clients know about something. For example, the fact that Amazon Music now lists podcasts, and that my team has already made sure their show is listed.

Because I’ve been slow to select a solution (I’m aware of dozens, so this isn’t a request for suggestions), I’m forced to send out individual notes to all clients. Because I rarely encounter a situation like this, I can justify taking the time to select a solution. And even when I do (?) finally select one, I’ll probably take a long time getting things set up. Because it’s not annoying me enough, so it goes into limbo. I've got other and better things to do with my time.

Slow Preparation / Fast Execution

This is the sweet spot hinted at by the fake quote of our real 16th president, where you take plenty of time getting ready, and then you quickly do the deed. I have two examples of how I’ve been in this quadrant recently with my podcasting processes.

The first is the website for Podcast Pontifications. I spent a lot of time deliberating what solutions I was going to use. I knew what solutions I didn't want to use, but kept an open (and future-forward) mind about what I would use. That meant I spent weeks (yes, more than one) looking through requirements, looking at examples of sites built with those solutions, talking to support personnel, interviewing current users of the solutions, and generally making sure that whatever solution I chose was going to be the right one for me.

Once I made the decision, I then spent more weeks figuring out what pages I’d need, what elements I wanted to highlight, and then how to work best with the content management system and front-end to make it as easy as possible to update.

Once those tasks were completed (over a month of prep work), the execution was incredibly fast, like… days? And I’m neither a web developer nor a designer. But those factors went into my decision making and let me make a fast execution for the final site.

I took a similar approach to my selection of newsletter vendors. If you’re reading this on Substack, you know what I mean. If you’re reading it on my website, you may not know that you can subscribe to Podcast Pontifications In Your Inbox, which sends you this article (and a link to the audio file) every day an episode is published.

I spent a great deal of time analyzing and investigating newsletter options, going so far as to completely re-work my approach to the newsletter after said investigations gave me new perspectives. Once I made my decision, I was sending newsletters within two days, having back-filled with enough content to make it compelling.

And all that work on the newsletter paid off, as it's become my fastest-growing distribution channel. Hi, Substack readers!

So while that’s definitely a success story for slow preparation, fast execution, I don’t always live there as I’ve just illustrated. And I’ll never live there for everything. My reality is that I sometimes have to make decisions fast and implement them faster. I’ll always have nagging things that I’ll get to someday. Or non-nagging things that I may never get to at all.

That's the reality for most podcasters. Heck, it’s the reality for most people! We all live in various quadrants all the time. So we should forgive ourselves when we find ourselves not working in that sweet spot of slow prep, fast execution.

Perhaps you know of a procrastinating podcaster, or perhaps a podcaster with the attention span of a bunny doing lines of coke. (Do people still do lines of coke? Have bunnies ever?) Send them a link to this episode along with a personal note from you. Maybe it’ll help them understand ways over the hump, or see the benefits of more upfront planning. Either way, it helps the audience of this show grow, so thank you for that.

And if you like the concepts about podcasting I bring to you four days a week, please go to BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra and sign up for a recurring membership. It’s only a few bucks and it shows me you really appreciate my thoughts and ideas.

I’ll be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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PPS3E34 Uncovering The Tension Between Fast & Slow Podcasting Processes - Transcript

[00:00:00] The faster you get things done on your podcast, the better, but spend 90% of your time in upfront planning. Here's how podcasts resolve that opposite sounding advice in different ways all the time.

[00:00:21] hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara. Abe Lincoln reportedly said that if he had six hours [00:00:30] to chop down a tree, he'd spend the first four sharpening his ax. Now the fact that that's apocryphal, meaning it didn't really happen, or maybe it did. Who knows, who cares a really not important.

[00:00:43] It's the sentiment. It's the idea that you should spend lots of time preparing before you actually do something. And also that is kind of the perfect example of the ideal way to operate, which may sound weird. And that ideal way to operate [00:01:00] is doing lots of prep, slow preparation, and then fast execution, slow preparation, and then fast execution sounds weird.

[00:01:11] But that's the right, the preferred way of doing things. But however, that can't be the only way we do things, right. We want to work in the perfect world, but we'll look, here's the reality. We don't live in a perfect world. We can't work in a perfect world. We have to adjust and adapt to all things. So when [00:01:30] I see things like slow versus fast and two things that automatically makes my mind go well, let's build a two by two grid.

[00:01:36] I love two by two grids of great illustrations that you can put together. And it's pretty simple. Just draw a graph. And on the bottom for my graph that I happen to have here. And you can just picture this in your mind. I've got the speed in which we prep. So slow preparation, which take a long time or really, really fast preparation, uh, across to the right.

[00:01:56] And then on the up and down axis, and it's called the X [00:02:00] axis and the Y X, but let's not worry about that on the up and down axis, let's put how quickly you execute again from slow to fast, right? And start prepping these things start laying out some of the things that you do. Now you're going to automatically, when you have a two by two grid, you get into quadrants and quadrants where I want to talk about.

[00:02:17] So, as I said, previously, we really liked slow prep and fast execution, but let's start with this by doing the opposite of that. What do I mean by a podcasting process that [00:02:30] is fast preparation, which means short preparation and slow execution that takes a long time to execute. So again, Fast prep, which means not a lot of time spent prepping and then execution slow, drawn out execution.

[00:02:46] Now we don't want to be there. This is what I refer to as the festering quadrant, things that go here, they tend to fester they'll eventually get done, but you know, you're not really in a hurry to do that as an example of that, the reality [00:03:00] phase, because we have to do those. I will use me as an example for all of these things, my new YouTube channel.

[00:03:06] When I finally decided to take all of the videos from podcast pontifications that I've been posting putting on my personal channel, which has my old speaking gigs, current speaking gigs, all of my travel stuff. That's just a nightmare. I'm breaking those things out. I'm breaking those things out. My decision process to do that was I need to do that.

[00:03:24] I'd been, it's been in the back of my mind, but I hadn't really considered what it required to do. [00:03:30] And one day I just decided to do it. One day. I decided to heck with it. It's a Friday. I'm just going to build this YouTube channel extremely fast prep work. I asked two friends, some questions, avoiding pitfalls, and I started doing it well, I've started doing it, but I've got like 343 videos and it's taking me a very long time to actually execute that scares.

[00:03:53] And the festering quadrant. That's fast prep with slow execution. What about the opposite? What about [00:04:00] fast preparation? And fast execution. So, so not the opposite. One of that pass and fast, fast preparation and fast execution. So again, really, really short time to prepare and really, really short time to execute.

[00:04:13] Well, honestly, this episode of the program for me is that. Most of the episodes of this program for my show are that now I can get away with it because this is the format I have established over the last several years. I've been doing [00:04:30] this. It's a short form podcast and I've got a process that is really well oiled.

[00:04:37] And when I do it, I do it. So this morning when I knew I was talking about this, I knew the topic last night, but I didn't really have all of the details done. Those were all done and decided, well, it was decided in the shower, how I was going to structure these conversations and what examples I was willing to put in there.

[00:04:55] And then the execution was really, really quickly because I have about 30 minutes. [00:05:00] To get all of that done. So that can totally happen. That's the today quadrant, right? And a lot of us live in this today, prod quadrant, where we have to go really fast on our prep and really fast and our execution, but not on all things.

[00:05:13] Some things we have to do, we can't operate that way. Always. What about slow and long preparation as well? Well, as slow and long execution, well, this is the limbo quadrant. If you thought the festering quadrant was bad [00:05:30] previously, this is the limbo quadrant. This is the quadrant where things go to die.

[00:05:34] They're probably never going to happen. Or if they eventually do it will be a long time coming. Now my example of that, that I am fighting with all the time. I real not fighting with it because of stuck in the limbo quadrant is I need a way to communicate with all of my clients. Easily. And I haven't found it.

[00:05:56] I communicate with all of my clients, don't get me wrong, but I [00:06:00] mean, on mass, like if I want to send a note to every single one of my clients that says, Hey, Amazon music is now live and your podcast is already listed there because that's what we do for you. I have to do that individually. Now. There are a lot of ways I could do it on mass.

[00:06:14] I just haven't. Done it. I'm not looking for advice or suggestions from you. Cause I know I can do there, but I just don't like any of the current solutions. So my preparation time is forever. And my execution time, since I haven't done it yet has also been forever. So [00:06:30] that's a limbo thing for me. And I need to work on that, but what are you going to do?

[00:06:34] I've got other things to do with my time. So let's get to the sweet spot. Well, we talked about slow preparation, which means take a long time to deliberate and fast. Execution. That's the sweet spot, slow long prep, fast execution, two examples for me, my readers website, which I did last year, I think it was, Oh God, the time is so weird and wonky, whatever.

[00:06:58] I said, I spent a lot of time [00:07:00] deliberating, what kind of website I wanted to have. I knew what I didn't want to have. But I had to and choosing other options was problematic. And I spent weeks looking through requirements, looking at examples, talking to support systems, making sure that my solution was going to be correct.

[00:07:19] And when it was correct, I already had all the details of what the pages are going to look like. The layout done, all of that was done up front. So my execution time was really fast. Turn it around fast. Even for me, a [00:07:30] non web developer, I turned it around really quickly. The other thing, an example of that is when I decided to start using sub stack to replace my previous email program, because people can subscribe to sub stack for free and they get a written copy of the episode, fully rewritten copy the episode, as well as the audio link that was sub stack.

[00:07:50] But again, I spent a lot of time analyzing and investigating, talking to people, making sure that this decision I was going to make was the right one. [00:08:00] And then once I made that decision, boom, switched over in a day, started sending things out. Back-filled it, maybe over the course of maybe two days and it's becoming my fastest growing channel of how people consume my content.

[00:08:15] So definitely a success doing slow preparation, faxed execution. But again, I can't do that. Always. I'd love to say I'm always going to do slow prep, fast execution, but the reality is I live in the today world where I've got to go fast. On both of my preparation [00:08:30] and my execution. Sometimes I've got things stuck in that festering quadrant, where there are very, very fast preparation times, but I'm slow to execute.

[00:08:38] And then sometimes I'm just slow on both of them. And that's just reality. We all live there and we should all forgive ourselves about that and try our best to work in that sweet spot of fast, slow prep. Fast execution. As often as we can. Now, maybe you have a procrastinating, a fellow podcaster in your life, or, or the opposite.

[00:08:57] Somebody with the attention span of a bunny doing [00:09:00] lines of Coke. Do we still do lines of Coke. I don't even know. So send them in this case, this episode on a personal note saying, Hey, check out some of these ideas, maybe it will help you either get past your hurdle or take another moment to think about things.

[00:09:14] Yeah. Send that to them with a personal note. I would certainly appreciate it. And finally, if you like the things I'm bringing to you four days a week, please go to buy me a coffee.com/ and sign up. We're a membership. The programs a couple of bucks helps show me [00:09:30] that you really appreciate what is happening here at podcast pontifications in all of its glory.

[00:09:36] That's it. I shall see you tomorrow with yet another podcast. Pontifications cheers. .

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