Okay!… it is almost a month that I wrote my last post. While the first 15 days I was away vacationing, the other 15 days went in the vacation hangover..
You read that right. Even vacations can give you a hangover.
So here is how it works. Once you are back from a vacation where you were chilling out, I am sure most of you would have experienced that gloomy kind of feeling where you don’t feel like doing anything. You push yourself to get out of that status, but it just doesn’t seem to happen.
This is what I can the vacation hangover. 🙂
You don’t have to actually be away vacationing to be in such a situation. We all come to a point where we want to be away from everything for a while and take some rest. As a blogger and internet marketer, I come across it almost every 2 months. So I keep myself away from blogging and all the other IM activities. But the actual problem starts when I am back. In spite of the fact that I was away for only 2 days, I still find it very difficult to start my daily routine again.
Are you faced with something similar?
Getting out of the Idler’s Couch
A couple of days back I was reading a post from a co-blogger, Kerry Russel at thestrategicblogger.com. I have always enjoyed her posts and if you are a newbie blogger I would recommend that you should read her blog. The post was about a similar situation that Kerry found herself in and how she got over it.
That post gave me a different perspective to the entire planning that I used to do. I would have a calendar with all the activities that I am to do in the next 3-4 weeks, 3-4 months and then a year. Though I always believed in planning well in advance because that would give you a clear view of what you want to achieve and how you will achieve that, I for a moment felt that a little too much of planning was what was stopping me from putting that good thought I had into words.
While every day I spent without doing anything was becoming a burden when I looked at the calendar, I was also busy doing everything in terms of planning except executing.
Kerry was true that at times you should just go spontaneous. Blogging in fact should be spontaneous. While you can plan you activities, you shouldn’t actually wait for that day or, time to go do it. Just do it, as soon as you feel like doing it.
[social_quote duplicate=”no” align=”center”]Planning your blogging schedule can be helpful but blogging should be spontaneous to be productive and effective[/social_quote]
Writer’s Block and How to avoid it
While the above situation would not exactly qualify as writer’s block, I would still like to call it by that name. Getting over it is not easy. It is also true that the longer this period extends to the more difficult it will be to come back. This is how most of the blogs die. Once you are caught in that situation, you will struggle to get out of it. The more you struggle, the more difficult it becomes.
There are quite a few good posts which discusses tips on getting over a writer’s block. Mark Ling has a very informative post that discusses 5 ways you can beat a writer’s block. Affilorama has been one of the best sources of information in my internet marketing journey. These 5 ways that Mark discusses in this post are extremely simple to execute and can get you out of your situation pretty easily.
If you enjoy Copyblogger, then you will also love to read this article on 10 ways to beat a blogger’s block at Copyblogger which was authored by Orna Ross.
My Action Plan to Beat the Idler’s Couch Syndrome
I don’t want to overwhelm you with a lot of information. So let me put a simple action plan to get out of the idler’s couch syndrome that we spoke about at the start of the post.
- As soon as you are back from a vacation log into your computer and write the headline for a post. Then do whatever you want to do.
- Set an alarm in your smartphone to repeat every 2-3 hours that reminds you of the heading that you had written.
- As soon as you start your computer, log in straight into your WordPress blog and start writing something. It could be any topic not necessarily on the heading that you had written earlier.
- Don’t clear all you emails. Keep some pending so that you are pushed to log in to your computer.
- Whenever you feel you are pushing yourself to write, keep your calendar away.
- When you are stuck writing, browse over to your favorite blogs and read and comment.
These are some of the things that I do when I am in a similar situation. I am sure these might help you as well. Do let me know if there are some other ways you beat this situation.