The Joy and Pain of Podcasting

How to Keep Passion Projects Alive

This morning, I released my new podcast:

In this episode, I tackle the challenges of sustaining passion projects amidst life's busyness.

Drawing from my experience with this podcast, I discuss:

• Keeping our projects alive

• Reaching beyond motivation

• Staying human while many creators over-depend on AI

• My critique of grind culture and advocacy of slow productivity

• Lessons learned as I pushed this podcast into the top 1% of new podcasts

Below, you can read the transcript, though this is written for the spoken word.

Have a great weekend everyone!
Jim

The Great Joy and Terrible Pain Points of Podcasting

When I started this podcast, I was determined to keep it quite niche. I felt there was an intersection between creative life, solopreneurship, and my firsthand experience, which provided a clear focus and opportunity.

However, since starting, I’ve observed the landscape of content creation and, with the advent of AI over the last year, noticed a trend: a lot of content is getting more formalized and uptight.

When I go on YouTube or X, it feels that content creators are so determined to prove their expertise in a certain field that they lose the human connection. I think it’s compounded by the infiltration of AI everywhere. While AI makes content creation easier, it often feels, how do I say, roboticised , not human.

For instance, yesterday, I wanted to brush up on one of my favourite books, Atomic Habits by James Clear and went onto Spotify while on a walk to see what I could find. There was a Podcast called “20 Minute Books” and I though it could be a nice episode to refreshen the book’s ideas. The text I heard was so gallingly Chat-GPT generated that I literally felt my stomach turn. While I have no issue with AI in principle, this was representative of a burgeoning ocean of drivel, sorry, content designed to game the system and earn its creators a quick buck.

I want this podcast to be the opposite of that. The more I've thought about it, the clearer it’s become what I want this podcast to be and how I want it to evolve. Sometimes, a key breakthrough in creating something is learning what you don't want it to be.

Since starting the podcast a year ago, it has been a huge labour of love, a massive learning curve, and, at times, hard to keep up with. Doing it has revealed some of my own pain points, which I recognise as quite universal. Many of us struggle to keep up with our projects while balancing work, relationships, and daily commitments.

With this podcast, I’ve noticed an apparent clash between my joy in doing it and the time it takes to create it. I recognize that anything worth doing takes time, but the problem arises when we try to do too many things.

While considering how busy I’ve become, I started thinking about what area of my life to cut. For instance, my main creative focus at the moment is my new album, and yet here I am on a Thursday morning, delaying my work for clients and ignoring the lyrics I need to write for tomorrow’s studio session to write this podcast.

Having briefly considered scrapping the podcast altogether, I realized that I love it too much. I’m enjoying the feedback from you guys and have been so lucky to receive messages of encouragement along the way. It’s funny, but sometimes the idea of abandoning something you love feels like abandoning your own heart. So there you go, guys; I guess we’re stuck with one another!

All this said I am now turning my attention to the evolution of this podcast. With how busy life is and the fact that I have no income from the podcast, I need to reimagine my approach. I’m excited because I like reinvention.

To this point, my focus with the podcast has been on solving pain points faced by creatives and entrepreneurs in the digital age.

What I did not expect was that this podcast would itself become a pain point I have to solve too! But I find this challenge worthwhile because it means that I literally have to workshop with you in real-time how I’m going to solve these pain points.

You will have noticed that in the last few months, I had to reduce the release of the podcast from twice to once a month. The reasons were simply that I was utterly overwhelmed, and something had to give. Ironically, I read this quote from Alex Hormozi right when I stalled on episode 20:

"To be a top 1% podcaster, you have to upload 21 podcasts. 90% don’t go past 1...9% don’t go past 20. 1% make it to 21+. So when people say 'try harder' it usually just means 'don’t give up.'"

Well, here we are, guys, at episode 22. I’m really proud to say that I haven’t given up, and I don’t intend to. Yes, there have been ups and downs, and I understand why 99% of podcasts don’t get to this point. But here we are, trooping on and officially in the 1% of podcasts that make it to this point.

For that, I really just want to say thank you. Projects are hard. Dreaming them is easy, initiating them is challenging, but reaching consistency is the hardest part. So, like any project, it is time for this podcast to evolve.

Part of that challenge is figuring out how to stay consistent as life gets busier. The real question isn't just how to keep consistent but what I want this podcast to be. For anyone out there struggling with consistency, I recommend this as a good starting point: think less about why you are struggling with consistency and instead take some time to return to the joyful pulse that attracted you to the project in the first place. I find that when I drift off course, the first correction is to return to the centre.

Reflecting on all this and the ubiquity of AI content has helped me refresh my own approach.

Many podcasts focus on showcasing expertise. However, what interests me beyond this is the human journey. When I listen to a podcast, I don’t want to be spoken at, but spoken with. Yes, I want to learn, gain insight, and receive value. But I also want to feel kinship with the human journey rather than the growing tendency to be talked at from a pedestal or through the filter of AI, for that matter.

These personal reflections are informing how I want to move forward with my podcast. Yes, I want to continue sharing creative insights and what I learn about the digital economy. But I want to root it deeper in the realities of the challenges I face, the pain points that stalk me, and the brutal ways life imparts its lessons.

I've been thinking about the problems with AI and noticed a tremendous gulf between the ease of accessing information and the scarcity of true wisdom. The problem with AI is how clinical it is. Wisdom needs to be hard-lived and rooted in story. The challenge lies in understanding the complexity and journey required to gain wisdom.

This is why we seek stories, podcasts, and lectures. We are looking for reflections of our own journey, a new perspective, and a little guidance.

As I write this, I think of a quote from a book I often return to, "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse. It evokes what I feel better than any descriptive words can.

“I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason, and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.”

This is the crux of it. Creative life, for most of us, is a dogfight. While it's healthy to look for solutions, it's too easy nowadays to copy/paste solutions from AI or experts onto our own lives. You can’t copy and paste change; you have to live it. Figuring stuff out is messy, and its useful to be conscientious about where and how we look for guidance.

The way we search matters. You can search without really searching. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned about searching, it’s that it requires energy. Our typical smartphone search is the opposite of that. It is hoping to find something without the energy of looking.

Wanting to disrupt this tendency to browse was part of my personal drive in starting the podcast. I wanted to break down the sense of separation from the people who inspire me. Speaking with someone directly breaks down this wall of expertise and creates instead a sense of having an ally.

That is what happens when you get to know someone. The connection lessens the separation inherent in not knowing someone. This experience is informing where I’m landing with this podcast.

How can I share my search and discoveries more directly with you? I want to be an ally, not an expert.

And the vehicle for doing this is through story. Because it is through each other’s stories that we learn the most. It makes me think of one of my own heroes, Joseph Campbell, and the way he drew wisdom from the great mythological stories of the ages, seeing them not as unattainable parables but as archetypal expressions of our own lives.

Recently, I was listening to a narration of one of his books, one of my favourites, called “Pathways to Bliss”. I was on a run across Tempelhofer Feld here in Berlin when he said the following words:

“This is the adventure. It is always the path into the unknown. Through the gateway, the cave, or the clashing rocks. One asks: what is the meaning of this business of the clashing rocks? It’s a wonderful image. We live on this side of the mystery in the realm of the pairs of opposites, true and false, light and dark, good and evil in all that dualistic rational worldview. One can have an intuition that is beyond good and evil, that goes beyond the pairs of opposites. That’s the opening of this gateway into the mystery, but it is just one of those intuitive flashes because the conscious mind comes back again and closes the door. The idea in the hero adventure is to march boldly through the door into the world where the dualistic rules don’t apply.”

I think this is what attracts us to mythological stories; we find our own lives in them. The point Campbell makes is that encountering a challenge is like arriving at a gateway. It's easy to get an intuitive flash but harder to act on it and then walk through the door.

When we are presented with a pain point, it is exactly that—a point of pain. We often walk back because facing it means walking into the pain. Like a boxer biting on the gum shield and entering the 12th round, we need the courage to move forward.

So, how does all this affect the Podcast?

First, it might sound simple or obvious, but I want to be a person first. To root my discoveries in story. To share the pain points of my journey and the fight to keep going in the arts. We need to feel the allegiance of those in the trenches by our sides. That’s how I feel less alone—through the energy and spirit of my contemporaries and their perseverance.

Second, I will build on the niche of creativity and solopreneurship by adding how I experience these things spiritually. By spiritual, I mean our life path and grappling with our experiences. If that’s tough, so be it because that’s where the good stuff is gleaned. I want to speak from within the storm, not just look back on it.

The reality is that making stuff is hard. Sometimes, even getting out of bed in the morning is tough. But it's how we extract the raw stuff from our journeys that keeps us going, inspires us, and gives us the strength to twist again in our lives.

So let’s start with the reality. And from there, let’s go into the fight together. With new resolve. New hope. And the belief that by returning over and over to the commitment to improve our lives one stroke at a time, our lives will thus improve. Despite the horror, difficulty, uncertainty, challenges, and pain, life remains a great miracle, the most precious gift, and the briefest of stays.

So that is my resolution with this podcast—to return to the heart of things. The world is going one way, and I am choosing to go another. With any creative project, it is easy to get obsessed with taking the advice of others. We can start doing it, not the way our instincts tell us but the way we feel it should be done. As my consistency began to tail off with the podcast, I realized that I had fallen into the trap of thinking about what a podcast should be, rather than what I want it to be.

It asked me a simple question—sometimes remarkably hard to get to—what do I want it to be? There is a point in a project where the joy of doing it and how hard it is gets out of kilter. We often give up at this threshold. Simply put, it’s too hard, and we’re not having enough fun. But what a shame to put so much pressure on the things we love that we give up on them. Sometimes, we have such high expectations that good enough never feels like good enough.

It is part of the modern condition, but I refuse to fall into that trap. I don’t mind something being hard, but I do mind when there is not enough joy in it. Things lose their joy when our expectations become too big to live up to. We don’t have the money, time, or energy to fulfill the absurdity of our ambitions.

In such a predicament, we often overcomplicate our response. We are too quick to give up instead of thinking about what change we can make to keep going. It’s at that point when you have to crack off the hustle-culture trope that anything worth doing has to be harder than it necessarily has to be.

That trope is that the only way to get things done is by machoistic willpower and naked aggression.

And everywhere you see this Darwinian credo presented by motivational speakers as the only reality, and yet everywhere you see people struggling with burnout, terrorised by stress, and prematurely ageing.

Here’s what I can tell you from my experience: there is a different way to get things done. Yes great projects and extraordinary ventures are hard. But that doesn’t mean there is a one purpose fits all approach to doing hard things.

In two years, I shot five documentaries. I toured as a musician throughout China and East Africa, played every city across Russia by train in December (the same month that decimated Napoleon's army), raised funds in Europe during the refugee crisis, then set off to tackle the rise of populism in the US during Trump's ascent.

But I wasn’t motivated by will alone, and if I had been, it would have broken me. What the hustle-culture advocates don’t understand is that to make a deeper impact, you have to acquiesce to it.

When I got to the point of exhaustion on my tours, or when I found myself feeling cut off and further away from a home I no longer had than I had ever been, I found a way to surrender. Because no matter what they tell you, in the deepest dark, willpower alone just will not do. Sometimes you have to give yourself over to something greater than yourself and trust that it will do its work. That’s what it is to settle into the long term in your life. But it takes a particular form of courage, not to buy into the ways our society traps you into the illusion that the highest value in life is “doing” alone. Deprive yourself of the capacity to “be,” and you will see that doing alone can only bring you so far. As Lao Tsu put it:

“The way to do is to be.”

And that’s the thing. The iron will of destiny is brittle. It can be broken. And if you follow it, you’re following something temporary. Its the paradox of burnout - that it comes from trying too dam hard, and yet trying too dam card is the idol of our culture.

It might be obvious to some, but I want to say this clearly to those who need to hear it: you don’t have to do it all today. You get to live. You get to love. It’s those things that replenish you, and those things that return you to the heart. And its returning to the heart where you find the energy and purpose to go again.

So, returning to the podcast, it is to this centre I return.

We feel joy when something extends out of our core. When it becomes second nature. When we manage our expectations and remove friction, joy quickly returns.

Why? Because we get back to that inner playfulness that brought us to the path in the first place. So, for me, with the podcast, that’s where I’m at. I want to get back to that sense of fun. That means subverting how a podcast should be done and allowing it instead to be an expression of what I want it to be.

I feel tremendous potential and excitement in that—to return to the pillars joy, exploration, and playfulness.

Before I sign off, I want to say a few words about how this will play out practically so you know what to expect.

What I’ve realized is that podcasting is a special medium for communication. It has an intimacy and directness that is different from video or song. In the next phase, I want to embrace the intimacy podcasting offers.

So, going forward, it is going to evolve a little, and I hope you enjoy it as it does.

First, I hope to publish more regularly again. I’m aiming for fortnightly episodes, but I also want to be less rigid. So, the podcast for this second season will be more about spontaneity. New episodes might drop when they’re ready rather than on the usual Saturday releases. Part of my learning will be to see if this approach is fun for you guys or if it’s better when the podcast follows a regular schedule.

Second, I plan to release more short episodes. Recently, I’ve started enjoying bite-sized podcasts. It always surprises me how I feel sad when a 10-minute episode ends. I think it’s a beautiful format, and one I hope to explore.

Third, I hope to explore different formats—micro episodes, unscripted off-the-cuff content, new music shares, and focused high-value educational pieces. The road feels open, and I’m looking forward to experimenting.

Fourth, I'm excited to speak to more guests, though they may be less frequent for now. I had a wonderful podcast with Gordon Raphael, the famed producer of The Strokes, in New York. So watch this space—there’s a great episode coming soon!

So guys, that’s an overview and update of where things stand with the podcast. It feels liberating to let you in on how I’m thinking about it, and I hope you’ll join me on the next steps of this adventure.

Regarding your own projects, I hope that exploring my own pain points with the podcast provides some value and insight. When we hit a block, it does not mean we have to give up, it’s instead a signal that we might need to adapt. Are you being too rigid? Are you attaching to a particular outcome, rather than shifting your approach and exploring if it can be reached via a different road. And for that matter, in such a goal-orientated world, what about instead ridding yourself of a fixed outcome altogether and instead taking a leaf out of Lao Tsu’s book? I’ve realised that for me the podcast is not about getting something, it’s instead about giving something. If life is a river, the episodes are little ports along the way. In that, my adaption is less about getting somewhere and more buckling into going somewhere.

In that, the important commitment is less about the goal and more about discovering a living process with something that becomes an extension of our lives.

For me, that is a far more powerful idea.

To pivot in a project does not have to mean you pivot away from your goal, instead it can mean pivoting towards your goal.

There will always be obstacles, and sometimes they will seem insurmountable. But going a new route brings new adventures, growth and opportunity. That’s where you build your strength and learn something new about yourself. So when it comes to pivoting, think about reframing it—not pivoting from, but pivoting towards.

Thank you all for listening guys. I can’t express enough the privilege I feel that you give me your time. It’s a privilege I aspire to live up to, and for which I’m deeply grateful.

If you’d like to support the podcast, it would mean the world if you rate and review it. And if you’d like to follow some of my mad cap videos as I go through the creative fires of making my new album, please come across and join me on YouTube where I’m documenting my process every step of the way.

With love and have a beautiful week ahead,

Jim