Stop Trying to "Grow" Like a Full-time Creator

Have you ever watched a “Fitness Vlog” online?

The person is always in incredible shape.

Their muscles flex as they move through the workout and somewhere between the protein powder, supplements and energy drink they casually imply that if you follow their routine closely enough, you can eventually look like them too.

Now genetics aside, there is an asymmetry there that we knowingly ignore.

These people are doing “fitness” full time.

Their day is structured around training, nutrition, recovery, sleep, content creation and optimisation. They get paid for it. They receive status from it. Their entire lifestyle reinforces it.

Then there’s you.

Working a full-time job. Running a household. Looking after the family. Trying to squeeze in a workout three times a week after work while the gym is so overcrowded you spend half the session waiting for a machine to become free.

The creator economy is full of these asymmetries.

You have twenty-year-olds who have never worked a serious job giving advice to exhausted professionals in midlife about “just posting more content” or quitting long careers to “go all in” online.

That’s fine. It’s just that most of this advice was never designed for your actual life structure.

Which means if you are building something online part-time, you need a completely different operating model and different expectations.

So what does that actually look like?

How do you grow consistently while still keeping the job going? How do you write, post, build products, maintain relationships and stay psychologically sustainable without turning your entire life into a performance treadmill?

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I have been building online part time for almost five years now, and the biggest confusion I see comes from people dramatically underestimating how much energy full-time creators pour into growth, then wondering why trying to imitate this leaves them overwhelmed, fragmented and discouraged.

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To make this simple, I need to be direct.

Things rarely move until you know exactly who you are, what you want to build and who you are actually trying to reach.

Stop trying skip Developmental Stages

Back in the 1970s, Noel Burch developed a model describing the four stages of competence. This framework explains something critical.

Professional full-time creators are usually operating from the final stage. You are still somewhere near the beginning, and the distance between those two realities is significant.

This is also why I believe it is so important to build around problems you are actively experiencing in real time.

The most useful systems and frameworks usually emerge from trying to solve problems you are actively experiencing yourself.

As you read through the model try to accurately assess which stage of development you are in….not which one you would like to be in.

1. Unconscious Incompetence

You do not know what you do not know.

This is usually characterised by high energy, confidence and complete ignorance of the complexity ahead of you.

This is a good thing because if most people fully understood how difficult building something could become, they would never begin at all.

This is what I call the honeymoon phase. Everything still feels exciting because reality has not challenged your assumptions yet.

2. Conscious Incompetence

Then reality arrives.

You begin creating consistently and slowly realise how much you lack. You become aware of skill gaps, weaknesses, inconsistency and complexity.

This stage is painful because awareness replaces fantasy. This is where the vast majority of people quit.

Being consciously incompetent does not feel good at all. But it is completely normal.

Think back to your first serious job. There were new systems to learn. New software. Office politics. Team dynamics. Expectations you did not fully understand yet.

Nobody walks into a professional environment already fluent. Competence is developed through repetition, friction and time.

So why do people expect building online to feel different? Why do they assume discomfort means they are failing rather than developing?

3. Conscious Competence

This is where things begin to take shape.

You can perform reasonably well now, but it’s still not fluid. You need systems, structure and focus, but you can feel yourself improving.

This is where frameworks and rhythm start mattering.

In practical terms, this is usually the point where you finally know:

• Who you are

• Who you are trying to attract

• What your writing is actually about.

You are no longer posting random thoughts into the void hoping something resonates. You begin noticing patterns. Certain themes consistently connect and certain topics attract the wrong audience entirely.

You start understanding the difference between attention, alignment and conversion.

But you still need structure because without it your work can easily drift back into vagueness or inconsistency.

This is why full time creators eventually develop systems.

Ironically, this is the stage most beginners wish they could start at. A huge amount of unnecessary suffering comes from resisting the earlier stages instead of accepting them.

4. Unconscious Competence

Eventually the skill becomes embodied. You stop consciously thinking through every action. The process becomes instinctual, integrated and automatic.

This is the very essence of fluency. It is also where many professional full-time creators now find themselves. They can now afford to experiment with every growth strategy under the sun because they know exactly who they are, who they are speaking to and where this is all leading.

At this stage it becomes very easy to forget what confusion actually felt like. I am not yet at this stage in “creator land” but I experience this with German now.

As I have lived here for so long I often know which word sounds correct or which grammatical case to use instinctively. But if someone asks me to explain the exact rule behind it, I struggle to because the process no longer feels intellectual. It’s become instinctual.

This is the realisation I had with my rebrand. If you want to help others it is essential to document your journey while you are still inside the friction.

Do not wait until mastery arrives. Those things are so easily forgotten six months from now. By that point you are often emotionally disconnected from the actual pain beginners are experiencing.

My first product was free. It was a basic Notion template built around problems I was actively struggling with myself at the time.

The same thing happened later with The 2-Hour Starting Point and eventually the 15-Note System.

Those products emerged directly from lived tension rather than detached expertise and I think people can feel the difference.

Why Clarity Matters More Than Growth Early On

One of the advantages of having a 9-5 is that this constraint forces you to become more selective much earlier.

When you only have a few hours each day outside of work, family responsibilities and the general maintenance of adult life, you simply do not have the bandwidth to pursue every possible growth strategy at once.

You cannot realistically run a podcast, YouTube channel, daily livestream, long-form newsletter, consulting business, Discord community and post across six different social platforms all at the same time without having a nervous breakdown.

In my experience, that limitation produces better work.

The lack of time forces you to stop thinking like a content machine and start thinking more strategically about sustainability.

You begin asking different questions.

What actually fits my personality? What kind of writing feels natural for me? Which platform genuinely aligns with the way I think? What can I still realistically sustain three years from now once the initial excitement disappears?

Most people trying to build online are overwhelmed because the modern internet presents them with an almost infinite number of possible directions.

Every platform encourages expansion. Every algorithm shift creates another pressure to adapt. Every successful creator appears to be doing ten things simultaneously.

But part-time creators do not have the luxury of scattering their attention endlessly. Which means they are often forced into developing something more valuable much earlier.

Many talented people such as Carl Jung, Charles Bukowski and Franz Kafka wrote in the mornings and evenings alongside full-time, demanding roles.

That is why growth should be approached through strategic experimentation rather than permanent escalation.

Try different formats. Explore different rhythms. Pay attention to your energy and notice which forms of work create momentum naturally versus which ones constantly leave you drained.

Growth does not come from one dramatic action. It is the result of repeating a small number of coherent actions long enough for compounding to begin taking effect.

So before you start a podcast, or instagram page, or YouTube channel you should be prepared to do it consistently for at least a year before determining if it is really “working or not”.

Just because someone else has 10 things going on at once doesn’t mean you have to follow them.

This is also why I’ve been developing what I’m calling the Substack Clarity Framework for professionals building part-time as a way of helping people organise their experience, thinking and interests into a more coherent direction online.

The Alternative Operating Model for Modern-Professionals

So what does growth actually look like when you are building online alongside a full-time career?

well, it starts by accepting something that many people resist for far too long which is that trying to imitate full-time creators will destroy any momentum you may build in the first place. You must start at the beginning.

1. Who are you and what do you want?

This is where the developmental stages become key.

If you are not sure of the answer to this question then just start writing and posting…seriously.

It is better to start somewhere than to spend months on planning. Treat writing and posting as your clarifying direction tool.

This is partly why I’ve become increasingly interested in helping professionals think more clearly about positioning and strategic direction rather than simply “growing faster.”

In order to even think about something like positioning you really have to have written for a few months to get a clear idea of your own voice, your goals and how you want to achieve them.

Growth usually accelerates when people can immediately understand who you are, what you believe, who you are speaking to, and why they should continue paying attention.

A recognisable identity compounds. Random content does not.

2. Build From Your Existing Life Instead of Escaping It

This is your unique advantage as a part time creator.

You have a whole life outside of what you do online. Your existing life is the raw material.

Your job. Your frustrations. Your expertise. Your interests. Your lived experience. Your observations. Your failures. Your perspective.

Professionals already possess something extremely valuable which is pattern recognition developed through years of real-world experience.

Those are not weaknesses online. They are advantages.

That depth often creates something much more valuable than trying to imitate whatever currently performs well online.

The goal is not to become a generic creator. The goal is to become more recognisably yourself.

3. Use Short-Form to Refine Your Thinking

Short-form writing is one of the highest leverage tools available to part-time creators right now, but it is deeply misunderstood.

Most people use short-form reactively. They post random thoughts throughout the day, constantly interrupting their own attention and slowly fragmenting their thinking in the process.

I think this is one of the hidden psychological dangers of modern content creation. Your attention is not designed to repeatedly context-switch all day long.

This is why I eventually stopped writing Notes impulsively and developed a system that actually deepens by thinking.

Short-form writing is not just a tool for distribution it is actually a mirror. A kind of feedback loop for your thinking, a refinement tool for your voice and ultimately a path to resonance.

This is also why I think short-form is so important for professionals specifically. You do not have unlimited time to endlessly produce content and hope clarity eventually emerges afterwards.

Short-form dramatically shortens the feedback loop between writing, positioning and audience response. It allows you to refine your thinking publicly in real time instead of disappearing for six months trying to perfect an identity in private.

But that only happens when you treat it with the same seriousness you give your long-form work. Not as a throwaway slot machine of random ideas, but as an intentional practice of building your presence in the minds of others.

The reason most creators fail at short form is because they think it’s about attention. It isn’t. Short form is about conditioning perception. It’s a way of shaping what people believe about you and your work every time they encounter your name.

But if you approach it without structure, it can also completely destroy your ability to think clearly.

4. Build a Product Earlier Than You Think You Should

One of the best ways to clarify your thinking is to try packaging it into something useful. Even if it is free.

Most people delay creating products because they assume they need years of expertise first. In reality, trying to solve a specific problem for another person is often the fastest route toward developing clarity yourself.

The moment you build a product, vague thinking becomes painfully obvious.

You suddenly have to explain your process clearly. You have to organise information and think structurally instead of emotionally.

My first products emerged directly from problems I was actively struggling with in real time.

The systems only existed because I needed them myself first.

5. Protect Your Cognitive Environment

High-quality writing is often the downstream effect of high-quality cognition. Which means protecting your attention matters far more than most people realise.

This is partly why walking became so important for me after moving to Germany. The slower rhythm here changed the quality of my thinking.

Some of my best ideas arrive as I’m walking across the university campus and down into the historic Westend on the way to work or back home. Far away from screens and metrics and constant stimulation.

You cannot produce clear writing from a permanently overstimulated mind.

6. Ignore the Pressure to Expand Everywhere

The modern internet constantly pressures you toward expansion.

A podcast. A YouTube channel. Livestreams. Daily posts. Clips. Threads. Communities. Short-form video. If you are a full time creator then this is what you do. You look at where the attention is and expand your operation to capture as much of it as possible.

Just like the fitness influencer I mentioned at the beginning this is not reality for us. As a Part-time creator you need to be ruthlessly selective.

All you need is one relationship platform (Newsletter, Podcast, Blog) and one distribution Platform (short-form writing, vertical video). If you are thinking of starting a podcast or doing video is it really because you are genuinely interested in that…or is it because someone told you that’s how to go exponential?

The goal is not to dominate every platform. The goal is to build enough leverage, trust and readership that your future no longer depends entirely on a single employer or institution.

7. Prioritise Real Relationships Over Audience Metrics

One of the most valuable parts of building online has not been audience growth.

It has been the conversations.

Since writing on Substack I have come into contact with people living completely different lives to my own. Artists. Founders. Writers. Business owners. People I never would have encountered inside the normal structure of my offline life.

And those conversations have changed the way I think.

Yes, you can feed questions into A.I and receive highly competent answers instantly. But a real conversation with another thoughtful person often creates a completely different kind of insight.

Another person will challenge your assumptions, notice blind spots and introduce perspectives you simply would not arrive at alone or with A.I.

In the long run, the people around you shape the quality of your thinking just as much as the information you consume.

I think a lot of professionals assume they are “behind” online because they cannot move at the speed of full-time creators.

But maybe the real advantage is not speed at all.

Maybe the advantage is that you are forced to build more carefully from the beginning. More selectively. More sustainably. With stronger boundaries, clearer positioning and a life that still exists outside the algorithm.

The internet currently rewards intensity very aggressively. But intensity and durability are not the same thing.

And I increasingly suspect that many of the people building part-time, slowly compounding trust, reputation and audience over years rather than months, are the ones most likely to eventually build something that actually lasts.

Over the next few months I’m going to be developing this idea further inside the paid membership through deeper essays, systems and the Part-Time Creator Operating System itself.

I genuinely believe professionals need a completely different model for building online than the one creator culture currently promotes.

This is also why I’ve been developing The Substack Clarity Framework for professionals building part-time.

A deeper guide to helping you figure out who you are, what you want, and how to build a coherent body of work online without turning yourself into a content machine.

Take care,

Ben