Seemingly everyone is on the content bandwagon, and best practices keep requiring more and more posts. At least twice a day for Instagram, at least once a week for blogs, God only knows for Twitter, etc.

But this drive to always be producing is having some unfortunate consequences.

Content Is King… And Dictator

From reporting for a newspaper to managing corporate marketing for many years, I have about a decade’s worth of experience being constantly on deadline for one article, landing page, whitepaper, or another.

It’s true that a lot of good came from having to publish a lot of content on a tight schedule. No time to succumb to the perfectionism beast, accelerated brand awareness, skyrocketing search engine rankings, and the like.

But, this was in no way sustainable. All those all-nighters were hard on the body and the soul. I was exhausted, irritable, and prone to more and bigger mistakes. Despite awards, raises, a promotion to news editor etc., I burnt out of my dream career in journalism 2.5 years in.

At first, the transition to corporate marketing was a relief. But the more awesome results our content marketing got, the more of it we were expected to do. The achievement bar was set extra high.

Even when I negotiated less extreme productivity goals for my team, I found myself constantly giving pep talks and noticing the energy drain lower and lower- even when we adjusted the scheduling to give each team member more variety in their projects. 

The thing was, there was hardly ever room in the schedule for learning, reflection, strategy, or brainstorming. It was just constant production without pause. It turns out, varying what we were producing didn’t help much at all. We needed rest. We needed rest factored into the schedule. Not once every other quarter, but every week, every day.

In both settings, despite all of us being born writers who had actively pursued writing careers, the repetition and the grind were not fun at all. We were expected to keep working well past burnout, no exceptions. To cope, most of the people who didn’t quit developed unhealthy habits in order to numb their discomfort. Be it cigarettes, alcohol, or other less than helpful distraction techniques.

Corporate Culture Ignores The Necessity of Rest

The sad truth is that this is a wildly, unremarkably, normal work environment for those of us whose jobs it is to produce content. To no one’s benefit. Not even our bosses.

We’re people, not machines. The business world needs to stop treating content creators as though we’re robots. If something doesn’t drastically change, our best content creators will keep on quitting and changing careers. Our content will keep getting dumber and fluffier. We all get grumpier and more disaffected since we’ve long run out of the time and energy to produce our best work.

(And no, automation can’t replace us. Bots have a long way to go before they can even come close to matching our creativity, humanity, and all the resulting benefits.)

It’s time we fundamentally change the culture of marketing to factor in how necessary it is for creators to rest, be healthy, learn, and have new experiences. We also need to structure the job so that people aren’t having to choose between work and a personal life.

Let’s get into the 6 reasons why rest needs a much more prominent place in marketing strategy.

#1: Your Body Literally Needs Sleep

Sleep is essential to brain function. According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,

“Without sleep, you can’t form or maintain the pathways in your brain that let you learn and create new memories, and it’s harder to concentrate and respond quickly.”

So, when your content creation deadlines are so tight that you or your team is losing sleep- the quality of your content will almost certainly suffer. Further, the content creation process will be much more ponderous than it needs to be due to the physiological obstacles to concentration.

Worse, according to John Hopkins Medicine, lack of sleep leads to increased health risks.

“Symptoms of depression, seizures, high blood pressure and migraines worsen. Immunity is compromised, increasing the likelihood of illness and infection. Sleep also plays a role in metabolism: Even one night of missed sleep can create a prediabetic state in an otherwise healthy person.”

You can’t write through blinding pain. If your content creators are so sleep-deprived they’re ill, you better bet you’re going to have a hard time staying on track with your content plan.

We recommend setting content production goals that do not require late nights. Not even just once a week or once a month. Lack of sleep is just too harmful to health. 

#2: Downtime Has So Many Benefits

Content creators, like all humans, need time & brain space to learn, have new experiences, & get inspired. Without this, the content that gets produced quickly gets shallow, boring, and repetitive.

A rested, calm brain is much more likely to be creative than an exhausted and depleted one. For this reason, innovative companies like 3M and Google give their employees 15% of their time to pursue their own projects.

Downtime also makes people better at solving problems and facing challenges. Giving your brain time to process gives you the opportunity to come up with new solutions and approaches. If you just power through your list of problems to solve, you don’t have the brain space to come up with better ways to solve them.

There is also evidence that vacations improve your health and breaks reduce workplace stress and improve productivity. 

#3: Excessive Screentime Is Very Unhealthy

For most of us content creators, we have to stare at screens all day for work. Which, it turns out, is bad for you. From disrupting our circadian rhythms to blurring our eyesight, to giving us all back problems- there are more physical hazards than you might think associated with producing digital content day in and day out.

Notification addiction also plagues us. Especially if we work in an environment where we are expected to quickly respond to emails or texts (even on nights, early mornings, or weekends) or our job performance evaluations are tied too closely to likes, reposts, etc.

Since we are at particularly high risk for screen addiction and all of the associated health hazards, digital marketing leaders need to structure the workload and schedule around giving their content creators sufficient time to rest and detox from screens.

#4 Working Through Burnout Leads to Big Mistakes

Since lack of sleep makes it harder to concentrate, learn, and retain information, it’s no wonder that working through exhaustion leads to big mistakes- even when the stakes are high.

For example, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

“Physician burnout is not only potentially dangerous for doctors, but also for patients. Recent research linked burnout to medical errors across specialties, finding that doctors who report signs of burnout are twice as likely to have made a medical error in the previous three months.”

Now, lives may not be at stake over the quality of your content marketing, but if your team is having to work through burnout, you’re unlikely to generate consistent quality content. 

So, while your superstar content creators might be able to meet your quantity requirements- they may be publishing content that hurts your brand and harms your business goals.

#5 Your Employees Hate The Grind

And look, it breaks your content creators’ hearts to be putting out shitty content. It’s a special kind of depressing to land a job where you get to exercise your awesome talents only to have the pace be so fast you end up dreading the thing you are most skilled at.

It doesn’t benefit your marketing or your business to make your talent miserable.

And, if the Great Resignation has taught us anything, it’s that talent is less willing to stick around unfulfilling, unrewarding workplaces.

Want consistent, quality content that will generate a huge return on investment for your business and your customers? Then treat your content creators well. Let them rest.

#6 You Were Made For More Than Just Productivity

The cultural obsession with productivity, workaholism, and perfectionism has been linked to widespread mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety, stress, and even suicidality.

The truth is that God or divine microcellular chaos or whatever you believe in did not evolve the human species over millennia to clock in from 9 to 5, type at our little keyboards, and frantically post on Instagram at all hours.

There is more to life than that. Your marketers deserve time to live. To go outside, have face-to-face conversations (with the vaccinated members of their pods). To dance IRL. To play with kittens, make art, eat delicious food, hike waterfalls, and have snowball fights. They deserve time with their kids, time to read a novel, time to stare into the fireplace and ponder the great mystery of all that is.

So, factor rest into your marketing strategy. Always remember that the way we spend our time is the way we spend our precious, finite lives. Don’t set your expectations so high your content creators have no time to actually live.

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