A friend of mine, Ahmed Bilal, posted about dealing with blogger burn out on Performancing, and while he gives some great tips on battling the problem, he doesn’t explain why it happens.
My mother-in-law, doesn’t understand what I do for a living. She and her husband work on a farm. They assume that I am lazy, and that I basically read an online version of a newspaper, and play games all day. Don’t I wish!
Blogger burn out is probably as prevalent as any other technology or writing burn outs, but as blogging continues to switch into full time income worthy jobs, the pressure to perform also increases. If you are working in a network, they have certain expectations about the content you will produce, as they want to see a return on their investment. If you are working for yourself, then you have even higher expectations as you work on building up your online empire.
This can lead you into a very skewed lifestyle with all your time, focus, and energy being directed at managing your blog or blogs. And after a while your mind and body will get tired of doing this without break, and especially if you don’t find the time to enjoy your life.
I want to repeat, that bloggers don’t get burnt out more often than any other type of job, but that it is a growing concern as the number of bloggers continues to grow.
Here are one of the five tips that Ahmed posted:
Vary Your Routine: I don’t have a single day that goes like the last one, and while it DOES have a negative impact on my income it’s also wonderful for keeping me sane. You can have somewhat the same times for waking up, sleeping and perhaps 2-3 hours of your most important work. But beyond that, keep things flexible.
Check out the rest on Performacing.
My biggest tip to deal with blogger burn out is to just disconnect. Talk to your boss, or even yourself, and just take a day, usually works best on a Monday or a Friday, and just take an extended weekend. On this extra day that you’ve taken, make sure to disconnect. Do not check your e-mail, do not check your blog stats, do not blog. Take a day for yourself, get outside, and read a book. Do something you enjoy that isn’t blog related. When you come back to blogging after a complete day, or weekend of being disconnected, most of the time you will feel refreshed and ready to tackle the next challenge.
Originally posted on September 21, 2007 @ 1:44 am