I'd Rather Grow Slow Than Burn Myself Out to Keep Up

Prefer to watch? The video's below. Prefer to read? Keep going — this one's for you either way.

I was on Instagram a few days ago and saw a girl saying you have to post every day, or you'll get lost in the algorithm and people won't find you. She compared herself to someone else she feels is drowning her out — someone posting 300 times a day.

I watched it and just thought to myself: why would I want to trade one job for the next? Is that really what I'm getting into if I go on Instagram and TikTok? I know there are people out there who thrive on that — who love picking up the phone and recording all day. Maybe I'll get there. But right now, it doesn't sound exciting to me. It sounds like a new job I never signed up for.

Would I really have to post 300 times a day?

If that's what it takes to build something — to become a millionaire, to grow a community — is that really what I want? Because from where I stand, I don't even want to post a video once a day. For YouTube, I've set the goal of once per week. So if there are people posting 300 times a day and I'm posting once a week, I don't stand a chance. At least, that's how it feels.

I don't know if that's the majority. That was just one video I saw — I don't even have those apps normally. I downloaded them recently just to make sure my stuff was in order, thinking about going on them. But I would rather not. It doesn't feel like a confidence issue. Something about it just feels off to me. Why would I be okay with dedicating my whole life to posting 300 times in one day? I don't even want to do the math for 365 days.

Choosing my sanity over the pressure to keep up

If that's really what it takes to make it in the social media world, I am 100% good without it. My sanity and my health will always be prioritized over content made that way. I know there are tools now — Canva, AI — that can do most of the work for you. And again, why would I want that? I'm a human being. I have things to say. I have experiences I've lived through that I believe could genuinely help other people. And if that means taking the time to hone my skills — pressing record before I'm ready, before I have a script, doing it over and over until I get better — I'll take that trade. As long as it's done in a way that keeps me in integrity with myself.

Because I don't want to build a community knowing they're only there because I exhausted myself posting a hundred times a day.

Why I won't build a community by exhausting myself

A lot of people are on their phones now — swipe, swipe, swipe. I don't know if I even want those people watching my stuff, because five, six minutes in, they've already left, no matter how good the hook or the trending sound or the captions are. So where do people with attention spans like that fit into what I'm building? Or will I be the one who doesn't fit — the one who's "boring" because I'm spending seven minutes just talking?

I could be the outlier here. But when I saw that video, I knew: I don't want to be a part of social media the way it's being sold to us. YouTube is different for me — it's a search engine, like Pinterest or Google, not a feed you have to keep feeding every hour just to stay visible.

Feeling intimidated by other people's success

I'll be honest — I do get intimidated sometimes. You see girls with high-ticket sales, making millions, and that starts to feel like the goal. Meanwhile I'm 36, engaged, no kids yet, no multi-million dollar business, working remote, traveling. And I wonder — will my people even find me with all that noise out there?

Part of the reason I didn't start YouTube sooner is that I was afraid of having proof that I talk to myself, or that I ramble, or that I don't always have the story straight. But that's okay now. When I see content like that 300-times-a-day post, all I think about is my own unedited videos — the ones nobody will ever polish into a highlight reel, because if I actually want to become a good public speaker, there aren't going to be outtakes to hide behind. There's no pausing the audience mid-sentence to cut the "um."

Maybe posting constantly would make me more comfortable on camera faster. But at what cost? I know your body eventually catches up with you. That's not a trade I want to make.

What growing slower actually protects

I don't see how burning myself out lines up with my actual goals. So I keep doing this anyway — once a week, unpolished, still figuring out where to even mount my phone on the wall half the time. If nobody finds my video, buried under someone posting 300 times a day, that's okay too. I'm learning to talk to myself, learning how I tell a story, and getting better as a person along the way. I'm okay with that pace.

This is one more episode in Project 180 — my six-month commitment to posting once a week, becoming a better public speaker, and reminding myself that it's okay to actually fulfill the goals I set for myself. If I made a plan, I need to execute it. So this is me executing — putting myself out there, being seen, at my own pace, for the next six months.


👉 Your turn: what's a pace, standard, or number you've felt pressured to keep up with, even when it made you start to hate the thing you actually love?