If you treat blogging as more than just a passing hobby, it is likely you will experience blogging burnout at one stage or another. It is often confused with blogger’s block. In my opinion, blogger’s block is when you are at a sudden loss for words and cannot think of anything to blog about. I had earlier written how you can avoid bloggers’ block.

Blogging burnout - now, that is much more serious. A blogger feels burnt out when they struggle to keep up with their blogging momentum and process. They might have materials ready to be published, but suddenly feel that it is more a chore than something they enjoy. It no longer feels fresh to them. As a blogger, you live each waking hour eager to share your thoughts with others. When you suffer from burnout, you would rather stay in bed. You feel overwhelmed by all the work put in to maintain a blog.

I have personally come very close to burnout. As someone who has always shown intensity in the things I do and going to the extremes, it is a common danger I face. Fortunately I can easily identify it as well, before being consumed. Over the years, I have also come up with ways to keep myself fresh and my mind eager whenever I needed to recharge my batteries.

The simplest way to avoid a total meltdown is to take the occasional break - not just from blogging, but the other accompanying processes you have to be involved in, such as social networking and reading other blogs.

“Gasp!” you might exclaim. “If we do so, wouldn’t our readers disappear and our hard work wasted?”

Unfortunately, that is likely, if not done right. However, keep the long term goal in mind - your continued interest in the whole exercise, or to finally give up when you feel that the passion is gone. It is a common psyche in human nature - most people would break and find it hard to sustain their motivation, even when things are going well, once the whole process becomes an order waiting to be served, rather than something fun to do. Even champion weightlifters have rest days in their routine - the body needs a rest to recover from the physical exertions. Your mind is no different. Blogging is a mental exercise - you would be well-advised to sharpen your mind by taking it away from it occasionally.

For a more advanced blogger with the funds, employ a few people to help maintain your blog. This does not have to be done everyday, but it can be helpful when you need to go on vacation (we all need one sometimes) to take your mind off it, while ensuring that the blog is updated regularly to keep readers happy.

If you do take an extended break from blogging totally, without a team behind you, feel free to inform your readers in advance or ask them to subscribe to your RSS feeds. This way, they will be aware that you have not just disappeared and forgotten about them.

Some of you may be worried about losing your audience or the results of your hard work. You decide that it is absolutely necessary to keep going at it everyday. Fair enough. Pace yourself such that you do not spend too many hours every single day doing this. As they often say “The tortoise goes slow, but often wins the race”.

Another way to avoid blogging burnout is to manage and diversify your blogging activities. While it may be optimum to perform a certain amount of each activity everyday (e.g. reading other blogs, writing, networking), nobody would notice if you did not do so occasionally! You would not be cheating your schedule and the time might be better spent on other more productive tasks. Another benefit is it lessens the chances of your blogging activities descending into everyday drudgery. A common method is not to blog everyday but maybe once every 2 days.

I have seen many blogging groups do this which injects more fun into blogging - getting away from the laptop, meeting up and just having a wicked day out. This is not far from the old days of bulletin board meetups. It can be part of your networking activities and involves real face-to-face contact in sharing of ideas. Imagine how refreshing it can be to meet other like-minded people or engage in lively debates. Granted this is often restricted by geography boundaries, but with the advent of blogging conventions (and airplanes) and with millions and millions of bloggers out there, you can easily find one to partake in. Come back and blog about it - you will be excited while doing so.

See if you can include the above methods into your blogging endeavours. What else have you tried to avoid blogging burnout? Keeping everything fresh and sharp just like your first day can be difficult, but not impossible. Sometimes motivation can be had as much outside the boundaries as within. In doing so, you can avoid the often depressing feelings of blogging burnout, and come back stronger, recharged and ready to take on the blogosphere.

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