The BIG EASY Way To Publish Content Effortlessly
Find Your BIG EASY daily, only work on what interests you & build a sustainable creator practice
I've been writing & publishing content daily for 2 years now.
My Secret?
I only work on easy content ideas that I am insanely interested in.
I know what you’re thinking… this can’t possibly be true. How do you publish for 2 years and always have something interesting to work on? AND make it look easy?
Don’t you face tough days? Days where the creativity well is dry and you just don’t have anything left to give?
Yep. Yep. & Yep.
And this is exactly why the BIG EASY Framework came to be.
Essentially each day my goal is to find the easiest thing to publish (yes! publishing content can be easy every day!). To do this I use three filters
👀 Attention
🧠 Brain Dump
🔋 Energy
If a content idea can hit the TRIFECTA of these three filters it usually doesn’t take long to write & publish that idea.
For instance, this morning I could have worked on the second idea: What to do when you can’t push any writing out. It hit the brain dump & energy filters & I even had a significant outline to work with… but it was missing one thing ATTENTION.
I just wasn’t interested in writing it today. I could have sat down & tried to push it out, but I’ve always found doing that leads to poor-performing content + it makes me resent my writing time (because it feels hard).
That doesn’t mean it’ll never catch my attention. It’s just not for today.
At first, this might just sound like a glorified way to procrastinate, but it isn’t. I’m not choosing NOT to publish. I’m leaning into what will be the EASIEST thing for me to publish that day.
The choice is never NOT to publish something.
A second case in point: Yesterday I published an essay I originally brain-dumped all the way back in October. After 3 months of just sitting around in my ideas list - it suddenly caught my attention. I wrote & published that essay in about 10 minutes after spending a whole day at the beach and with a glass of wine in my hand. If that doesn’t sound easy, I don’t know what is.
And that is the power of working in your BIG EASY - you almost always have something interesting to work on.
So, Let’s Get Down To It. How Does This BIG EASY thing work?
Step 1: Create A List Of Ideas
Keep a list of content ideas & brain dumps. Use any app or notebook that you like. The only rule is that whenever you have a new idea for content you MUST brain dump the whole idea at the time (any time of the day or night).
Trust me on this: you are never going to be more excited or in flow than at the conception of that idea. So use that momentum to get as much as you can onto the page.
That might be one paragraph it might be 10…. keep writing till you’re empty.
Step 2: Move a bunch of them into an Up Next List.
At the beginning of each week go through your ideas list and move a bunch of them that you want to work on in the coming week into a new list called ‘Up Next.’
This is like your shortlist of content ideas (it helps to keep you from getting overwhelmed by ALL the possibilities)
If you use a tool like Notion or Tana you could easily create a ‘status’ field with options like Idea & Up Next (or you can keep it simple and just have two lists into your notes app)
I usually do this when I’m planning my week on a Sunday & it always feels so exciting. A fresh bunch of ideas to work on!
Step 3: Find Your Big Easy
Each day look through your Up Next List and mark down whether the idea fits your three BIG EASY criteria. Ask yourself the three BIG EASY questions.
🧠 Do you have enough Brain Dump?
🔋 Do you have energy for it?
👀 Does it catch your attention?
When you hit on one that matches all three - IT’S GO TIME! Start writing until it’s finished (or until you’re finished with it).
You may not publish daily like I do - and if that’s the case, just take the time to move that content idea forward as much as you can.
Step 4: Do some light work on others
The key here is to always be working on things in multiple stages of creation. We’re essentially trying to trick our brains into working on hard things… but just for small increments at a time.
So once you’re done with your BIG EASY, look through the list and put some work into another content idea. The magic about this is once you’ve worked on your BIG EASY you kind of feel invincible, so you usually have the momentum built to work on something a little harder.
By following this system I’ve been able to hit publish most days for the last 2 years not by pushing, but by finding flow in following my interests and my joy around.
I hope you enjoyed Edition 1: 2023 of the Creator Playbook Newsletter. This year I’ll be writing one of these quick dives every Wednesday into the creator systems and mindsets that have been instrumental in building a sustainable daily creator practice over the last 2 years. Glad to have you along for the ride.
If you want to dive even deeper into these systems and templates I’m launching The Daily Creator Course this January. We’ll cover the 10x Creator System in-depth & I’ll hand you the tools to build your own sustainable creator practice. Stay tuned for more info on that in the coming week.
Till next week my friends… stay creative & curious ✌️
Hey Ev, where do you mostly publish? Do you have a website you’re publishing on, or Medium, or what?