How to overcome social media perfectionism: My 21-day content challenge
For years, I had a love-hate relationship with social media. Actually, mostly hate.
I'd post for a while, then disappear. Overthink my content strategy, then freeze. At one point, I completely uninstalled all my apps and didn't use social media for a whole year. It was honestly great for my mental health, but terrible for my business.
I used to write and share on the internet a lot. But over time, the "pressure of perfection" killed the joy of sharing.
How I got here
I started taking social media seriously back in 2020 when I launched my marketing agency. I branded myself as a marketing expert and gained some traction. But over the years, as we know, life happens so we grow and our interests change. I explored entrepreneurship, productivity, self development, solo traveling, even digital nomad-ing. This made me insecure about my brand identity and content strategy.
Confusion leads to being frozen on the next step. That's what happened to me.
As a business owner, I know my job is to keep the ball rolling for my agency. As a consultant, I know my job is to provide strategies to my clients. But as a content creator... I didn't really know what my job was yet. Maybe that's why I couldn't apply my own mantra: "begin with the end in mind."
This year, I invested in my productivity by joining Ali Abdaal's Life OS community. One of the main things I liked about it is the daily focus lab session, where you meet other people doing focused work. In one session, I shared about struggling with impostor syndrome.
A few weeks ago, I received a very thoughtful message from one of my productivity coaches, Audrey. She sent me an 11-min voice note about her own journey in content creation - basically a free therapy session and wake up call haha.
After digesting her suggestions, I decided to challenge myself: post for 21 days straight and see what happens.
My commitment
Over the next 21 days, I committed to:
Share quick stories, reflections, strategies and resources on business and life
Be as candid as I can be (reducing the friction to post)
Have the goal of sharing inspiration and providing value, not "growing" on social media
PS. I was also so over AI generated content and overly polished visuals, so I gave a quick disclaimer that these posts are gonna be imperfect - but hopefully helpful.
My 21 days of content
Here's everything I posted, organized by theme:
On productivity & mindset:
On business & strategy:
Day 15: 10 Questions I Get Asked Most As A Strategy Consultant
Day 17: I Used To Think You Needed Significant Capital To Start A Business
On life & balance:
What I experienced
1. It was surprisingly easy.
As the days went by, I became less intimidated by social media and treated it more like a habit rather than a scary big task. With that mindset shift, the fear of not being "perfect" didn't hold me back. It's like when I used to challenge myself to meditate each day - it didn't matter if it was 10 minutes or 30 seconds. As long as I did it, I could tick off that habit from my list.
2. I became more comfortable expressing myself.
I stopped brainstorming with AI. I just let my words flow, then polished later. Some days I could write a full caption, some days just a sentence or two. Either way, I posted it.
3. Social media stopped feeling like a performance.
This helped me find my voice again. And my interests. Because I only wanted to write about things I'm actually interested in. I stopped overthinking and overplanning. There were days where I literally just looked for a photo, wrote a caption on the spot, and posted without a second thought. These were the days I'm most proud of - because I could have skipped or told myself I'll do it later, but my willpower was getting stronger.
4. I discovered what I genuinely want to talk about.
Not what I "should" post about according to my social media strategist or AI. Moving forward, I'm exploring these three pillars:
Business - my bread and butter, the main content I love to share about
Balance - how I maintain the balance between being an entrepreneur and also a regular human. Wellness, fitness, and grounding are crucial. Fill your own cup first before giving.
Self Development - exploring ways to optimize both my work and my life. I actually know quite a bit about productivity and learning, areas I haven't talked much about.
This will change over time, and that's fine.
5. I found my joy in writing again.
Not only did I post 21 short form pieces, but I also posted 3 long form blog posts on my website. Big win.
How to do the challenge yourself
While doing this challenge, I had a few people DM me if I was following any template or checklist (The answer is no). So I thought I’d compile a few tips on what worked for me, and hopefully can help you start your journey.
1. Do a self commitment.
Don't follow my 21 days just for the sake of it (though I planned to do 21 days knowing that it takes 21 days to build a habit, and I was trying to treat posting as a habit not a task). So for you, try to think what number of days will feel most achievable for you. That might be 7 days or even 3 days. The goal is consistency and avoiding overplanning.
2. Be clear on where you want to post.
I chose LinkedIn and Instagram (unknowingly it also was reshared to Facebook, which surprisingly was where I got the most engagement haha, probably because of friends and family).
3. Have a general idea of the topics and vibe you are going for, then explore different post ideas from there.
4. Have a system of how it'll be the easiest for you to post.
For me, it was either drafting my caption first then looking for a photo, but on other days it was also looking through my photo album, seeing what stands out for me, then writing a caption related to that.
5. Enjoy the process.
Don't look at metrics at all. I discourage you from tracking metrics at this time. Just focus on falling in love with the process. Stop overthinking and just do it.
PS. I'm thinking about creating a free Notion template with a Telegram community to help those who want to kickstart their content creation journey through a challenge like this. It will not be "21 days content challenge" but more of a personal challenge. If you're keen on joining, let me know by commenting "JOIN" and I'll DM you with details once I have it.
Hope this post was helpful, and if you have any questions, feel free to DM me on LinkedIn or Instagram - let’s keep the conversation going!
Rooting for your success,
Mikee Federizo
