How Do You Cope With Blogger Burn Out?

This morning someone asked about coping with ‘Burn Out’. As bloggers we don’t just suffer from blogger burnout but also burnout from working on 20 different things at the same time and from matters other than blogging.

Everyone has a time when they ‘crash’ – the trick isn’t to avoid such instances but to know the best way to get back up. Look at ‘burnouts’ as your mind telling you that something is going wrong, that you’re offtrack. If you have a system to make course corrections, you’ll be able to get back to your feet with little downtime.

Here are 5 things to consider when you’re faced with a burnout – you are also welcome to provide your own suggestions in the comments in case you think I’ve missed out on something:

5 Steps To Coping With Burn Out

  1. Say No: Start saying no to people for 2 weeks – just say no to everything the first time. give yourself more time.
  2. Delegate: Delegate like you’re going on a long trip tomorrow and need people to ‘manage’ your business for you. Do it NOW – no, seriously, go and do it now and then come back.
  3. 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.
  4. Deal With Outside Stress: Are you sure it’s work that’s burning you out? Other stuff can bring you down more than you think. Find out what you’re worried about during the day, what sticks at the back of your mind, and deal with it. Habits and Problems can weigh our morale down a lot and suck the energy out of you like a thousand leeches.
  5. Refocus Your Priorities: Sometimes I get burned out when I lose sight of what I want to do in the long run and get stuck in dead ends trying to meet short-term objectives. It helps to follow #1 and get my priorities back in order.

You shouldn’t be getting burned out if you do things right – it’s a sign that something is wrong, and usually it has to do with your mind shutting down because it isn’t being allowed to focus on what you want to do. It your mind’s subconscious way of saying that you’re messing up, and you need to fix things.

So what do you guys do to deal with (and to avoid) burn outs?

8 thoughts on “How Do You Cope With Blogger Burn Out?

  1. One thing I find is that when one of my blogs is doing well, I don’t sleep well because I’m too excited. Burn out usually follows. In fact, there is this cycle of success followed by burnout that I seem to be in.

    I’m going to try taking some sleeping pills.

  2. If you are feeling blogged out about blogging, I find it very useful to write about it on my blog, maybe even put up a list of things I’m doing to get past the burnout. Blogging is basically a written linear version of psychoanalysis at some levels, and linkbaits are very similar to a good group session when they work.

    Sleeping in or forcing myself to sleep as long as I can followed by at least a half day of fresh air and exercise (hiking, jogging or something) often gets me through light stages of burnout.

  3. I think most people (myself included) lose sight of the long term goals and sometimes get frustrated which leads to burn out.

  4. if you schedule breaks regularly you won’t have an extreme burnout.

    On the other hand, sometimes extreme burnouts are good, because the time before it you are consistently working at your best for an unnaturally long time. Balancing may not give you that much impetus, and if you have your delegation properly handled then walking away for 3 days (why flowers – oh wait, I get it ) is probably more fun 😉

  5. for extreme burnout (which is almost always the burnout i encounter) the only solution is to walk away for 3 days with a bouquet of flowers in hand.

    Sniff. Sniff.

  6. Fresh air and time away from work issues, followed by a good sleep helps me most. When I am getting burn out I notice my sleep suffers. In the past I have sleep-coded all night only to wake up and have to do the programming for real all over again

  7. Good post, Ahmed. I try to vary my routine so that I can take some time off. I posted on writing burnout in May and included a round up of posts on the topic which I hope you’ll find useful.

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