As a full-time content creator your channel is your business. That means you wear all the hats of that business from marketer to editor to producer and writer. This gets easier to manage as you build a team which means you can outsource some of that work and re-focus your time.
But, assuming you are building a great team, (shout out to everyone working behind the scenes on a youtube channel) the work will continue to grow, and outsourcing that work is of course part of the productivity equation, but it is not all of it.
That’s why it’s really important to focus on being sustainably productive in the areas you may not be outsourcing and a big area that a lot of people overlook is the script.
So here are some tips coming from a YouTube script writer on how you can be more productive, particularly when it comes to writing your scripts so that your production pipeline can remain sustainable as your channel grows.
1. Group Like-Tasks Together.
The American Psychological Association says that the brain is less productive when it multitasks, so it tends to be much more efficient when you group like-tasks together. If you are developing multiple videos at the same time this can look like grouping the script drafts into one or two days, then doing the editing pass another day and so on.
The core idea is that you give your brain enough time to enter deep-focus which makes you more productive in the long term. This is particularly true for script writing where there are distinct phases:
- You have to ideate the idea.
- You have to research it.
- You have to outline it.
- Then you have to draft it.
- You have to edit it.
- And then finally lock it in and format it to be ready for production.
Those are a lot of steps but if you are able to split them up into different sections of your day so that, for example, your mornings are for drafting your afternoons are for editing and so on, it can help your brain navigate those stages in a way that works for you.
2. Change of Scenery (and Greenery!)
This is particularly important since chances are you may be working from home. A Human Spaces report found that people who worked in spaces that incorporated greenery were 6% more productive while a separate study from researchers in Cardiff found a 15% increase in productivity over three months from those who worked in green spaces compared to those that didn’t.
Depending on your set-up, it is unlikely that you’ll have a forest in your backyard (though if you do I am massively jealous), so a good way to incorporate some greenery into your work is to add more plants into your home, or to look for greenery in other places nearby.
I am blessed to live in a major city and have access to various cafes with plenty of plants, but the idea is to find something that works for you that helps you be more productive, more creative, and also get out of the usual monotony of working, living and breathing from home.
Also, going out for a little motivational sweet treat never hurt anyone.
3. A Dedicated Work Hub.
Once you get to a point where you want to get serious about your channel uploads and you need them to be more consistent, you will likely be interested in finding a way to organize your video pipeline.
If you have a team you may choose something like Trello or Millanote which are both collaborative systems that help you organize ideas so everybody can access them at any time.
But if you’re only one person or a smaller team there are plenty of options out there to keep your ideas organized and your script development pipeline on a track. I personally use Notion for my scriptwriting project management (may be a template coming soon).
4. Work With Your Brain.
A wonderful part of being self-employed as a creative is that you can shape your own hours around the times that you work best.
If you’re a morning person make sure to put the hardest work in the morning and so on. Every brain is different, but finding what helps you get into flow state is a really important part of making sure that a self-employed venture like being a YouTube content creator can last for years to come. So don’t be scared to try stuff out to go through trial and error. These things take time, but know that the time you put into increasing your productivity in a sustainable way will benefit your channel 10 times over.