Complacency Kills
Have you lost the passion for writing and blogging? Maybe you’ve been doing it awhile and don’t feel the same drive as you did when you first started. Sometimes we start out passionate about a topic, but that passion can turn into complacency and later lead to lethargy.
Before we get into some tips to either keep your passion alive or revive a lost passion let’s cover the definition of these terms.
The dictionary defines complacency as:
a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.
If you’ve ever been on a construction site you may have seen signs that read, “Complacency Kills.” What this means is that by getting too comfortable with your daily routine you often make mistakes. In the construction business these mistakes can be deadly. Complacency in your blogging or online business may not physically harm anyone, but it can lead to death—death of your business.
The dictionary defines passion as:
any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.
You love blogging, you love your business, but sometimes the passion just isn’t there, especially if you’ve been doing it for a long time. Maybe you still go through the motions but your content often reflects how passionate you are. Maybe it’s gotten dull and boring to your readers. A lack of passion for your business can lead to lethargy—which is death in itself.
The dictionary defines lethargy as:
the quality or state of being drowsy and dull, listless and unenergetic, or indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inactivity.
Once you reach that stage in this cycle it may seem impossible to ever get your passion back. These tips will help you to avoid reaching the lethargic stage and may help you pull out of the funk if you’ve already reached it.
1. Take a break. You can either take some time away from your work completely or if you’re running a blog do fewer posts each week. If you blog daily, make an announcement that you’ll only be blogging two or three times per week.
If you feel the need to completely walk away for awhile, look at tips 2 and 3 to keep your blog updated with new content.
2. Hire a writer. If your budget, allows you can hire a writer to write a couple of posts each week. This will give you more time to kick back or to work on traffic and promotions instead of writing all the time.
3. Ask for guest bloggers. Having people guest blog for you is an excellent way to free up some of your writing time, add fresh content while maintaining a good posting schedule and it also helps someone else gain exposure to their blog as well as yours.
4. Spin. I don’t mean spin class. I’m talking about reinventing yourself or your brand. Get creative and make it exciting again. Add a little twist to your current brand.
5. Support Team. Create your own support team – surround yourself with only positive, supportive people, in an environment that fosters creativity – like a forum or social network. Offer your help to those people. Sometimes focusing on helping someone else come up with creative ideas will also spark your own ideas about your own business.
Prevention is always the best choice when you feel yourself waning from having passion about your blog and business. No matter how passionate you may be, you can still lose your excitement. If you’re aware this is happening, just take some of the steps above to prevent becoming lethargic about it. Outsource some of your work if you can or need to. Get involved with like minded people and draw inspiration from their passion. Do something! Even if you need to take a few weeks off, do it. You can set your blog to auto-post while you’re away.
Things can keep running smoothly even when you need a break.
With the new year, many people are looking to start up new sites and begin new projects. But while this is great, the simple truth is that the vast majority of these projects will fail, many becoming nothing but memories before even spring sets in.
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