You must have a lot of free time…

How do you get it all done?

These are just a couple examples of the questions and comments that I get here and there throughout the average week. I thought I’d take a moment and address it and tell you a little about how I do 5 podcasts, a webcomic and blog nearly every day and still hold down a job, be a husband and super-involved father of two.

It doesn’t take up as much time as you think.

I do 5 podcasts… and that sounds like it must take forever… but not as much as you might think. From the very beginning I created the shows to be easy to produce and over the years I’ve worked very hard to simplify and streamline the entire process.

I created shows that require very little pre-show prep. The show with the most prep required is Nobody’s Listening and that’s only because there are a ton of email and voicemails that have to be read and added to the show notes. Geek Loves Nerd is super easy as we just pick a topic during the week and just sit and record. Children’s Ministry Monthly is similar in that I just choose a topic and write a few notes of my experiences with the subject and that’s about it. The Gospel of Kennison is recorded in the car on the way to somewhere with a portable audio recorder. I Like Genius’s pre-show prep is all done via emails randomly through the week as I try to get interviews with interesting and creative people.

As for recording, all of the shows, with the exception of GOK, are between 45-60 mins. Add about 15 minutes to that and the front and the back for setup and such and we’re at an hour and a half per show.

Post-production used to take me forever. I once recorded each voice on different tracks and remixed them… it took hours. Now it’s super simple. Everything is recorded in real time down to a single stereo track. Live to hard drive as they say. After we’re done recording I typically only have to trim and dead air off the front and end of the show, Hard Limit and Normalize it, encode it to MP3, upload it and post it. The whole process maybe takes 30 minutes these days.

I do most of it early and late.

I blog in the early morning during breakfast. I record podcasts late at night. Nobody cares what I do with my spare time after the kids are in bed at 9pm. So from 9:30 to 12… it’s my time. Jenn and I record GLN on Monday nights. Tuesday nights are NLCast. I Like Genius are done randomly throughout the week… but typically on Thursday or Friday evenings. GOK is whenever I’m in the car. CMMonthly is once a month on a Sunday evening. No time has been taken away from my family, chores or other responsibilities. The webcomic is done on Sunday evenings… takes about an hour.

So the tricks and tips? The KISS principal comes into play. If you going to do a lot of podcasting and blogging… Keep It Simple Stupid!