What can you stop doing?

I always feel like I’m not doing enough; like I’m lazy.

Granted, sometimes I am playing Lemmings on my phone, and am in fact not doing enough; but mostly I think I’m just conditioned to believe I’m not doing enough.

So, in defiance of hustle culture and my own brain, I’ve cut out a big chunk of my weekly work.

I’ve put my podcast on hiatus for 6 months.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but for now, it’s packed away in a box, because I realised I was running out of enthusiasm after 346 episodes.

It can be really hard to let go of something you’ve been doing for a long time, even if that thing isn’t serving you or bringing you joy anymore. We get into a habit… Or, actually, a rut.

My podcast was starting to become a chore and I do not want to put out stuff I create that feels like a chore because it’s not fair on me and it’s not fair on my listeners.

The podcast started out as an experiment I jumped into with both feet and my eyes closed (which is how I do a lot of the stuff that turns out to be great fun) and I never expected it to run for 8 years.

Nor did Joe!

When I started podcasting, I was a copywriter, and that’s what the podcast was about: copywriting and marketing. I wanted to help freelancers who were just starting out with their marketing. And, of course, I wanted to bring in new leads for my business.

Then I started focusing more on marketing.

Then I found my raison d’être: helping people to write nonfiction books and have a bloody good time doing it.

So the podcast evolved too, and it became something of a mish-mash and I never really sat down and thought about what I wanted to do with it, who it was really for, and why I was screaming into the void every week.

It became a thing I had to do because I did it weekly, and that’s not a good enough reason to keep going.

Now, I want to do something else with the podcast.

I don’t know what yet.

It could be anything. My only “rules” are that it has to do these three things:

1. Bring me joy.
2. Help people who might not believe they can write a book, to start writing their book.
3. Bring awesome new people into my world.

I have a few ideas, and I’m going to be working with some cool people to figure it out.

In the meantime, I’m going to play with ideas, and create new pieces of work that make me smile.

I’m going to do a bunch of stuff just because I want to.

Because that is a good enough reason.

How ‘bout you? What are you doing just because you’ve always done it?

Can you stop doing it?

Does that give you space and time to do something that brings you joy?