plateau of productivity – Podcastreporter.com

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we discuss this phenomenon called the “trough of disillusionment” (as was described in an article in the blog of pacific.content.com recently.

This notion deals with the curve on a graph that depicts the excitement and enthusiasm that a podcaster may have when conceiving, creating and publishing a podcast at first — but then the passion runs into the “wall of reality” for a stiff bucket of cold water in the face when the expectations do not always turn out as planned or desired.

As you can see in the post at pacific-content.com, the graph goes into several points of ups-and-downs:

The technology trigger;
the peak of inflated expectations;
the trough of disillusionment;
the scope of enlightenment; and finally,
the plateau of productivity.

As is described in the post, this curve on the graph depicted in the post is called ““Gartner’s hype curve” by renaissancechambara is licensed under CC BY 2.0.”

The main premise of the article is that there are some strategies that you can follow to realize that the disillusionment may not be as bad as you imagine it to be. In fact, the “slope of enlightenment” is suggested by the author to help the podcaster get out of the slump and trough and then be able to “bounce back” to a productive state where the enthusiasm and passion of the podcast may be resurrected — and in some cases, be even stronger than before. Mainly experienced by the aspiring or new podcasters, this trough of disillusionment can be overcome and lead you to the promised land called the Plateau of Productivity: “Once you reach The Plateau of Productivity, you can actually start working on Episodes Two through 100 with a smooth path forward.”

For this podcaster, the trough of disillusionment has rarely occurred, mainly because I tried to set my expectations at a reasonable or conservative level. So if the wild exaggerations of highly successful expectations would not result, it did not bother me — for my passion and my enthusiasm still kept going. Just like the saying that we have in the computer industry: “garbage in – garbage out” can have wild over-expectations of dreams that lead to depressive feelings once the reality of the world sets in. And if you, as a podcaster, do your realistic planning up front and with good personal productivity and organizational tools, I feel that you can minimize the feelings that accompany a potential curve as described in the post.

For myself, setting REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS and doing the hard work to get a podcast created and published is the key. For once you have done this, you can then monitor and adjust the episodes so that you can get positive results (not the wild expectations). Key examples of the trough described in the article were all the podcast shows that were started in 2014 to 2019 that imitated the old podcast shows that interviewed entrpreneurs — they had the false expectations of realizing the financial results of 6- and 7-figure revenues, as was done by a key podcaster that had fame at the time. But imitation without the realistic expectations could only lead to a state where the financial goals were not accomplished.

So, we hope that you, as an aspiring podcaster, can set realistic goals and not be caught up in the wild expectations of success (either by time or financial results) when you launch your podcast show. We wish you the best in having great planning skills, with realistic expectations and hard work to produce great content — but most of all, the PATIENCE to see your show grow and later become successful as you monitor and adjust the content to deliver VALUE to your listeners (and not just create imagined value for yourself that expects miracles in results).

Thank you for your attention.