Here’s the secret. You have to not think it is work. You have to be passionate enough about the topic that it’s not work, it’s just something you do because you enjoy talking about <topic>. You like having friends also commenting on and talking about <topic>. You have to live and breathe <topic>.

If you are starting a Lemmy community simply for the sake of creating it, you’re probably wasting your time. A community is a passion project, sometimes of only a single person, but more commonly, the combined passion of many different people about a particular topic. If you’re the only one who cares about <topic> you’re going to have a difficult time even if you’re passionate about it. If you’re not passionate about it either, then it becomes an impossible task, and if neither you nor anyone else is passionate enough about <topic> to build a community around it… does Lemmy really need that community? Probably not.

So basically this problem generally solves itself. If you don’t feel passionate about creating a community, don’t bother. Either someone else who is passionate enough will, or nobody else will. It’s not your job. Unless you want it to be.