511 - What Forms of Creation Deserve My Life Energy Now?
At the beginning of 2026, I committed to publishing a new episode of Podcast Answer Man every Friday morning at 12:01 a.m.
I kept that commitment for months.
Recently, I decided to let it go.
In this episode, I want to take you deeper into the thinking behind that decision because this has become about much more than how frequently I publish a podcast.
I've been asking myself a larger question.
What forms of creation deserve my life energy now?
Audio podcasting has been one of the most important creative mediums of my life. I've produced more than 5,000 podcast episodes across more than 55 shows over the past 20 years. I'm certainly not walking away from audio.
But I no longer want an arbitrary weekly publishing schedule determining where several hours of my creative energy go every week.
Going forward, my commitment to Podcast Answer Man is that there will be at least one new episode every calendar month. There may be many more when I'm inspired. I'm giving myself the freedom to create those episodes when there is something I genuinely want to communicate.
One major reason for this change is that I've rediscovered my identity as a writer.
Before podcasting entered my life in 2005, I had spent years writing online. I recently rebuilt an archive containing hundreds of my old blog posts, and going through that material reminded me how much I used to enjoy writing.
For years, one of the biggest disadvantages of written content was simply the amount of time it required. A long-form article or newsletter could consume anywhere from two to eight hours of my time.
AI has dramatically changed that equation for me.
Today I can begin by talking through an idea, transcribe those thoughts, use ChatGPT to help me organize what I've said, explore relevant stories from my archives, develop an outline and then work with that material until the final writing genuinely sounds like me.
A piece that once might have consumed most of a working day can now often be created in roughly the same amount of time I would spend producing a podcast episode.
There is also a significant difference in potential reach. I have thousands of people on my email list, nearly a thousand subscribers to my LinkedIn newsletter, a much larger network across LinkedIn and Facebook, and I'm now intentionally building on Substack.
Meanwhile, I have more than 5,000 podcast episodes in my archives, many containing evergreen ideas that thousands of people heard when those episodes were originally released, but tens of thousands of people in my current network have never encountered.
I'm very interested in what happens when some of those ideas become written-first content.
I also talk about something I'm experimenting with in this very episode. This single recording was created simultaneously as an episode of Podcast Answer Man, an episode of The Cliff Ravenscraft Show and a long-form YouTube video.
I'm continuing to think about each medium differently. Audio should work as audio. Video should work as video. Written content deserves to be intentionally crafted as written content.
My video strategy is still being figured out, which is one of the reasons I'm heading to VidSummit soon.
Toward the end of the episode, I share a story involving my PLAUD Note Pro that illustrates another principle that has become central to the way I approach problems.
When something happens that I don't prefer, I eventually ask myself, "What is my desired outcome?"
Then I start looking for the available paths toward that outcome.
In this particular case, that process somehow resulted in three brand new PLAUD Note Pro devices.
Relevant Links
- Next Level Mastermind: Momentum: https://www.cliffravenscraft.com/momentum
- Substack: https://cliffravenscraft.substack.com
- LinkedIn Newsletter: The Entrepreneur’s Journey : https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/the-entrepreneur’s-journey-7275950143143604225
- PLAUD Note Pro Affiliate Link: http://plaudus.sjv.io/en2jd6
Affiliate disclosure: If you purchase a PLAUD product through my affiliate link, I may receive a commission.