Why my “Email Storyselling” methodology may not be mental health friendly…

A reader asks:

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I just finished your Book and am going through the email breakdowns. I noticed you have Steam on your toolbar. Do you play video games are you a fellow gamer?

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Yes I do.

But not for the same reason I did as a kid & teen. No, now I play them more for… well…

My sanity.

Let me explain:

I’ve played games since I genuinely know myself. I believe I picked up the PS2 controller for the first time when I was 4-5 or something…

Anyway, through my entire childhood – and adolescence – I played them religiously.

Most of my free time was pretty much spent there…

(The rest of it on sports/gym…)

But nowadays?

I don’t play them neaaaarly as much… I schedule only 2-3 hours of playtime every Sunday evening.

That’s the only time I’ve been playing games for the last 5-6 years or so…

And sometimes – if I’m really busy and overloaded – I even have to skip out on that Sunday night game night.

Although…

I prefer not to. Why?

Because those 2-3 hours serve a very specific purpose – they provide me with a huge benefit.

(That’s not entertainment – which was their purpose for most of my life.)

And that is:

They take my mind fully off of work for those 2-3 hours.

And it has to be video games specifically, because I find movies/books not as engaging a medium for this goal.

(That’s not to say those media are bad – I spend a few hours every day reading, those two are just not enough to fully distract me.)

And I need those 2-3 hours of „rest“ for my brain…

Because when you do the kind of stuff I do (i.e. „Email Storyselling“) and send out an email every day?

(Both for my own, but also my client’s newsletter?)

Your brain NEVER fully shuts off.

The positive side of this?

I have way more ideas than I know what to do with – so I’m pretty much never starved for email ideas & find daily emails a breeze.

(This is also one of the questions I got asked a few times: ‘How do I come up with an idea to email every day?‘ Well… now you know.)

BUT… the negative side to this is, well, obvious:

I’m always thinking & on the lookout for new ideas.

• While watching movies…
• While reading books…
• While on my phone…
• While walking…
• While driving…
• While eating…

Hell – even in my sleep!

(Which is what I most HATE – because I find myself sometimes waking up at ungodly hours, snatching my phone and rushing to write the idea down just so it doesn’t wither away likely never to come back again…)

I told all this to my girlfriend once – to which she replied:

„When does your brain ever get some rest?“

It does not.

I basically live inside my own head. I write everything of note down, file it in its proper folder – determining whether it will be used as content for an email… content for a book… content for a video breakdown… or maybe used for something else entirely!

Or:

It gets totally lost in the shadow realm – never to be used and completely forgotten, ignored and passed over for the fresher, newer and hotter ideas.

(And in the time between it gets written down and used for something? My brain is connecting dots all the time – looking for connections to other stuff; trying to piggyback off of other things or build onto it or change it somehow…)

A man can go batshit insane living like this sometimes…

That’s why I genuinely NEED my 2-3 hours of video game time every Sunday evening.

Hope that answered your question.

Anyway,

If all of the above sounds like too costly of a price to pay for having possibly the most kickass marketing emails in this entire industry?

Understandable. But you’re going to have to cough out some moolah (and quite some of it too) to outsource all of this to me – and get all the pros without the cons…

(i.e. „Email Storyselling“ without having to live inside your own head 24/7 like a madman…)