7 Ways to Create Content from Flow

Link to Episode 13

Transcript:

I think the idea of a content calendar sounds great.

If you want to have blog posts or podcast episodes or YouTube videos and you create a content calendar ahead of time and you choose all your topics for the next three months or even the next whole year, then you have everything planned out, and all you have to do then is every week, look at it and write your post or record your episode.

But the thing is, I love this idea because then you just have everything in place and it’s all planned out and you don’t have to worry about it anymore. But my problem is that if I sit down to write a post on this topic that I planned a few weeks before, I actually don’t have any interest in doing it. I’m not in the right mood.

So of course there’s ways around that as well. And you can say that you should be more disciplined and just do what’s on the list and get it done. But that’s not the way I want to build my business.

I actually want to build my business from flow. I want to create whatever I want to create that day or that moment.

But then the question is, how do you plan your content so that anyone wants to listen? How do you go about it? How do you actually create interesting content?

So what can you do instead? In this episode today I want to give seven ways to create from flow.

The first thing on my list is journalling or free writing. And I use this quite often.

I sit down in the morning with my journal and I just start writing whatever comes up. Sometimes that’s just just writing about how I feel this morning, what’s going through my head, what has been happening, or also what I want to do for the day. Or I just write about an idea that I had.

I just start writing and see where it leads me, and I just leave the words flow out of me, and I write and I write. I’m never going to show this to anyone. That’s just for myself.

But sometimes along the way, I get an idea or I get deeper into an idea, and then all of a sudden I know what my next step is. I know what to do next. And then I usually just stop writing. The moment that I know what to do. And I feel like a call to action. I stop writing and I start creating straight away.

And I really like this way of tapping into my flow and into my intuition and see what’s next. Then another idea.

Number two is meditation. It’s another nice thing to do in the morning.

I am still learning how to meditate by myself without guidance. I definitely still like guided meditations that just calm me and create a certain peace of mind. But sometimes I can also just sit for a few minutes and just focus on my breathing without having to listen to guided meditation. And I find that very beneficial.

Quite often I don’t want to do it because I think, oh, that’s boring. Sitting down and listening to my breathing or focusing on my breathing. But that’s just my mind finding it boring, because I know that if I do it, it has a huge impact. If I can really calm down and focus on my breathing.

Breathing in and breathing out and become still. And not force my mind to be quiet. But just let my thoughts pass like clouds. Let them come and go. Just observe them.

Then that usually gets me into a very nice, relaxed state. And sometimes it makes ideas bubble up as well. Sometimes a bit later after the meditation. So that can be a nice tool as well.

Number three, a walk or a drive. Moving can really help to bring up ideas.

When I go for a walk, I either listen to a podcast or I don’t listen to anything and just walk.

Just listen to my own thoughts, maybe. And quite often I get an idea while doing that.

The same for driving. Like if I drive anywhere into town, it’s the same thing. I either listen to a podcast or I listen to music, or I just listen to my thoughts. And quite often I need to pull in, pull over and write down an idea. That happens all the time.

And this is actually how the idea for this podcast came to be yesterday. I was in the car and I had this idea, and I had to pull in and write down some notes about it, so I don’t forget. And then I kept driving and I kept having ideas and I needed to pull in again.

Actually there was a traffic jam, which was really good. So I got into into evening traffic and I could really enjoy the traffic because it just gave me moments of writing all my ideas down. That’s number three.

And number four to create content from flow is mind mapping.

Another tool that you can do in your journal, just write down an idea for an episode or another piece of content. Like if you say you have a certain niche or you have a certain topic that you usually talk about or write about, and you come up with maybe 4 to 5 areas that are within this topic. This niche.

And then there’s maybe one area that you would like to write about that morning. And you write down the area and then you create a mind map around it.

So you just write down all the things that come to mind that you could write about related to this area. And maybe one of them sparks your interest. And then you take that idea and you create another mind map with this idea and write all the things around it again that are related to this and that come to your mind.

So you kind of go deeper and deeper into the topic that sparks your interest, and you really go with your interest, whatever feels like: “Oh, I want to do something about this. This is something interesting. I want to go deeper into that.”

So this is another way of finding a topic to write about, and then to map it out and go into it.

Number five. Record yourself talking.

That’s what I do, I have been doing quite often recently as well. All I do is I plug in my microphone, press record and just start talking.

And because I always feel a bit intimidated in the beginning, I just say that I don’t have to use the beginning of my recording because usually I need some time to get into it.

Today, for example, I started, I pressed record, then I began to talk with a hoarse morning voice and just started talking about how I want to get rid of my morning voice and how I want to get used to talking again, get my voice fluid, and even know what to say, because it always takes a while for me to get into talking.

I’m still not feeling super confident about it, but it’s definitely getting better. It’s much better than my first episode. And also, I know that if I record myself that later before I put my recording out there, I can always edit. I can always cut stuff out. I can take out the “um’s” and the silence.

Or I could take out some of the mistakes, but I don’t really want to take out all of them, because part of what I’m doing here is I want to show how to be real, and I want to really accept myself the way I am right now. I don’t want to be a super polished version of myself.

But of course I can go back and improve it a little bit if I want. So that was number five and number six.

Number six. I like this one a lot. Solve your own problems and share about that. Or ask yourself a question.

So for example, if you have a problem yourself related to the topic that you’re writing about, say one of my topics is how to start building a creative online business.

And of course, there’s always new questions coming up every day. And I think, okay, I need to figure out how to do this. And so I ask myself a question and then I can find the answers to it.

And this in itself can be a content that I can share. So what I find out about it. Again this is really suitable to the episode I’m recording today because I was thinking I was reading about content calendars and how you can plan ahead your content. And I was thinking, I really want to do that. I want to have it all planned out, but I know from experience that I’m not going to follow through.

I know that I’m going to plan it all out, and I spend a whole morning or a whole day doing this, and then I’m not going to use it. I’ve done it before.

Or if I try to use it, it actually makes me feel really small and closed in, like, I don’t know, it just makes my world smaller.

When I plan out everything I’m going to do and write about in the next three months or 12 months. It takes away all the excitement for me in having this online business if it’s all planned out. And I already know what I’m going to do. I don’t want to live like that.

I want to look at each new day in a new and exciting way, and I want to see what happens today and not have everything planned out. So, but then I had this question.

What do I do about it? How can I actually create content regularly and not run out of ideas and have something interesting to say if I don’t plan it out?

And so I wrote down this question, and that’s where everything like and I started jotting down ideas, answers, brainstorming ideas to the answers.

Of course you can look up stuff if you don’t know the answers. But before you look up stuff, I would always first look at what comes out of yourself. What ideas you have regarding this question, this topic.

So that was number six.

And the last one, number seven is just another question for you. When do you have your best ideas? Observe yourself. When do you usually have ideas?

Is it in the shower? Is it while you’re doing housework? Some may be repetitive tasks. When do you usually get your ideas for something?

Just take maybe a few days and observe yourself and see what works for you.

So these are my seven ideas on how to create content from flow.

And I think what it comes down to is you need to be comfortable with not knowing.

You need to be comfortable with not having a plan and just taking it day by day. Just trust that there is so many ideas inside of you, endless ideas inside of you that you can write about or talk about.

And they will come out if you just give them space. But they are there.

So what is it that wants to come out of you?

Let me know if you want and I would love to hear your answers.