How To Recover From Blogging Slumps

Do you remember that people face slumps sometimes, the periods where their self productivity and performance decreases ranging from being less productive to even unproductive at all? In blogging / online business activities, they are common obstacles in reaching success. I faced a slump myself just yet, but it’s over. This article is the mark of the changing of period, from slump to productive. Here I will share some tips to recover yourself from a slump, especially in blogging.

Get rid of your distraction

If you are distracted and it pulls you to a slump, it’s not easy to get rid of it soon. I faced this myself. I played online computer games as nostalgia with my old friends, but it drove my mind off blogging and pulled me to a slump.

I became lazy to write new articles for my blog, and eager to play games. I knew it was impossible to remove the drive to play the game quickly. So I had my own methods to handle it: “over-feeding” myself with the game.

I played the game and forgot about my blog, just played it again and again. About a week later, I felt bored to play the game and I missed my blogging routine. So I start my blogging routine step by step, and here I am back here writing this article.

So in facing distraction, you don’t have to get rid of it immediately. It takes time, and sometimes boredom is helpful in recovering your productivity. If you place it right.

Read others’ articles

Sometimes we are lazy or having no idea at all to write new articles, and then we dive into a slump. That is normal. Reading other’s articles will help improve our knowledge and at the same time, stimulate our mind to find new ideas for our own content. Which is obviously needed to recover our productivity.

It works the same as in music realm, when musicians / artists / bands have no inspiration to compose new songs / music, they listen to other songs. I took a guitar course once, and I still remember that my teacher Mr. Donny told me “If you want to be a good musician, you have to listen to others' music often to broaden your scope in creating your own.”

Compare your blog with others’

In the slump that I faced, for ten days I produce nothing. Before, I usually wrote articles everyday, sometimes a full article a day, and sometimes only some parts of it. But mostly I generated at least a new article every two days.

For the last ten days I wrote nothing, as the slump influenced me. My blog was stagnant during the period of time. Then I visited my friend Burak Bilgin’s blog Distiller’s Corner, and when I produced nothing, he still wrote some new articles. It gave me some adrenaline not to be worse than him, remembering we were starting our blog almost at the same time. If he can be productive, I have to be productive too. That is what I thought.

And slowly my instinct of blogging came back, and I was slowly back to my blogging routine, which I enjoy so much now.

Have some day off

People get bored if they do something everyday and every time with no day off. It also applies in blogging, if you write articles, edit them, promote them and back to its pattern everyday, slowly you will feel boredom. That’s why you need day off, some days when you don’t think about your blog at all, just some pure rests for your mind.

This day off also functions to refresh your mind, so new ideas will be able pop up inside your gray matter. Thus, retaining your peak efficiency in producing contents. Being workaholic or blog-aholic is not 100% bad, but you have to know when the time to rest is.

Promote others’ contents in your blog

When you have no new ideas to write in your own article, perhaps you can promote others’ articles, which you think that it is helpful and good. If you feel impressed by others’ works, why don’t you share it in your website?

You can express your agreement, interest, or even your contrary statement. You can highlight interesting things of the articles and what your opinion toward it. If you find the articles useful, perhaps some of your readers will also think the same.

At least it will be easier than writing new and genuine articles. I personally did it in my article “How to Make a Shining First Impression”. Check it out for an example.

You can also host blog carnivals on certain topic when you are not currently writing new articles. If you would like to know further about this, please visit my article 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Blog Carnival to Gain Traffic.

Well for the closing, don’t be afraid to face slumps., since no pain no gain. Facing them will give you more experience and improve yourself into a better person. Being persistent is not by being at peak productivity all the time, but being able to recover yourself out of a slump.

Have you experienced a slump in blogging / online business activities? How did you deal with it? Please share it in comments.