🗂️ Reclaiming my content maker sanity

I have TWO full newsletter editions sitting in my drafts folder right now, ready to go.

TWO!

Do you know how satisfying that feels?! After months—no, honestly, after most of this entire year—of white-knuckling my way through weekly deadlines, I finally have a proper backlog.

This didn’t come from some grand strategy.

It came from standing at an airport on my way to Dublin, staring at my calendar, realizing I’d miss another newsletter. That made two in a month. My perfectionist brain went into overdrive: “What kind of content strategist can’t maintain their own publishing schedule?”

But here’s the thing—this tension is universal, whether you’re creating content for yourself or your company.

We’re told to be consistent but also authentic. To show up regularly but only with something meaningful to say. To have structure without killing the passion that makes content resonate.

So how do you actually navigate that?

The passion paradox

I’ve always defended writing from passion. And honestly, there’s real value in it.

When you write about what excites you in the moment, that energy shines through. Plus, you stay nimble—you can comment on what’s happening this week, respond to what your audience is actually talking about right now.

But passion alone has hidden costs.

The quality suffers, not because the ideas are bad, but because you don’t have time to make them great. I’ve launched pieces this year that cleared my quality bar, but could have been so much better with more thinking time. And then there’s the anxiety. The weight of knowing you need to deliver something worthwhile in a few hours, and the panic when life throws you a curveball and suddenly you don’t have those hours anymore.

Passion matters. But creating from panic doesn’t make better content.

Why a backlog actually works

Here’s what changed when I built a backlog ahead of time.

First, space to think. When you have a couple of weeks before publication, your brain keeps working on the idea in the background. You’ll be doing something unrelated and suddenly think, “Oh, that’s the angle I need.”

Second, you can bring in other perspectives. You can run a LinkedIn poll, ask a peer for an additional perspective, and incorporate what your network thinks. These additions make your work richer and more nuanced.

Third, you add real depth. You’re not just sharing the first insight that comes to mind. You have time to explore counterarguments, find the nuances, provide frameworks that actually help people implement your ideas.

Finally, critical distance. Write on Friday, let it sit over the weekend, come back Monday with fresh eyes. Suddenly, you spot what’s unclear or needs more support, the parts where you’re making assumptions your readers might not share.

All of this improves quality without sacrificing authenticity.

Building a flexible backlog

Keep it stupidly simple. Pick one place to capture ideas—Evernote, Apple Notes, Google Docs—and stick with it. When an idea strikes, jot down a few sentences. Just enough so you remember why it mattered. Don’t build some complex Notion template with fifteen fields to fill out.

Want to maintain that passionate energy when developing ideas in advance?

Capture your initial thinking the moment the idea hits. Record a quick voice note that captures your emotional response. Brain-dump your raw thoughts in a doc or a new chat with Claude. Save that authenticity so you can tap back into it when you sit down to write the full piece weeks later.

When to break your own rules

Your backlog is a suggestion, not a commandment.

If something timely comes up that you want to cover, postpone what’s already written and publish the timely piece first. The backlog gives you freedom to make that choice without scrambling.

The backlog should make your work easier. If it ever feels like a constraint, you’re doing it wrong. A good backlog creates space for both planning and spontaneity—it doesn’t force you to choose between them.

***

I’m literally two editions into maintaining a proper backlog, so I’m not claiming mastery here. But I already feel some interesting seeds of creative freedom getting unlocked. The structure isn’t killing spontaneity—it’s creating space for better thinking. You can still be timely when something important comes up, but you’re not forced to be reactive every single week.

Your backlog doesn’t have to look like mine. It just has to remove that last-minute panic and give you room to do your best work.

Flexibility matters,

P.S. How far ahead do you work on your content? Does having a backlog feel like freedom or constraint? I’ve got a quick poll running on LinkedIn about this—would love to hear your thoughts!

📆 Next week

Join me for a visual branding deep dive

Most marketers know design matters. But it’s hard to know which visual choices actually move the needle—and which ones are just making things pretty. This is why I invited brand designer Sarah Hart for a strategic look at brand design. We’ll talk about visual sales funnels, using psychology in design, and creating efficient brand design assets. Of course, there will be a ton of examples to bring these ideas to life.

Register for free here →

👌 Handpicked stories for you

Here are some interesting things I stumbled upon this week while reading, writing, researching, and being a generally curious marketing person on the internet:

💼 Three for work

How To Rank in LLMs Using Digital PR | A short and to-the-point piece demonstrating the value of Digital PR. Siege Media’s DPR flywheel is a great way to explain the concept to your team, and they did a good job explaining the brand mention preferences of the LLMs.

A Marketer’s Musings on the Tug-of-War Between Meaning and Machinery | “AI can support us. It can — and will — generate. But only we can mean.” A great piece about the content marketing mindset that will probably get us through this current AI-shaped storm.

Use this custom GPT to audit your SaaS pricing page for conversion gaps | I’m not so interested in the actual GPT here, but I love the clarity in the scoring rubric under point 3. You can use these categories for your personal audit.

👀 Two for fun

This behind-the-scenes look into a famous magazine | Fact-checking is the toughest job we rarely think about, and this piece dives into the details inside The New Yorker.

This heartwarming set of photos of sumo wrestlers visiting London | It’s so nice to see these guys having fun and making us all smile in the process.