We’re all stressed! It’s a consequence of modern-day life. No one lives without stress. There are so many different sources of stress in the world today. This stress can rob you of energy, health, productivity and happiness. You cannot afford to allow stress to sabotage your well-being or quality of life. Stress seems to be mounting on you from all sides – job security, workload, financial worries, family stresses and strains, relationships, illness, day-to-day activities and many other sources of stress. Your ability to cope is being tested to the full.
Symptoms can be psychological, physical, or both. Some examples that you may relate to are: irritability, lack of concentration, worry, migraines, overeating, not eating enough, not sleeping well, lower back pain, rashes, an upset stomach or ulcers, tension headaches, high blood pressure, and chest pains, to name but a few. Stress can also lower your resistance to disease, and affect how well your body responds to sickness and how well you recover from minor setbacks.
‘Stress is the trash of modern life – we all generate it but if you don’t dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life’. ~ Danzae Pace
While some people like myself find blogging relaxing, a release and a wonderful outlet, many others don’t. Although they love to blog, they find maintaining a blog a very stressful experience. They find the pressure of having to write quality content time after time while at the same time trying to drive as much traffic to their blog as possible, to much to bear.
I love blogging. It gives me the opportunity to express myself, and connect to a wonderful audience. It has given me the platform to put myself out there. And I love the challenge that comes with blogging. You need to consistently producing quality content, promote your blog, network with other bloggers, maintain your site and a wide variety of other activities which are essential to blogging. This certainly keeps you on your toes, but it can bring the very best out of us.
Some people find the effort involved with blogging and establishing their online presence overwhelming at times. And if you’re not careful blogging can also quickly take over your life and your time, becoming more like a burden than the joy it should be.
As much as we love blogging, we shouldn’t kill ourselves over it. We have to avoid letting blogging stress us out as this would have a bad effect on our health and lives.
Stress is bad for blogging in other ways too. When you are stressed out your creative juices stop flowing.. That is a disaster to your blog, because it relies on your quality of content for its success over and above anything else. And when you are not in a creative vein, well the articles you churn out are likely to be pretty bad.
When you blog with a relaxed mind, the words flow out of you. It’s an amazing feeling. And the quality of what you produce is top notch.
Let me offer you a few tips on how to make blogging a stress free experience.
1. Blog about what you are Passionate about
No matter how much work is required to be a successful blogger, when you are working on something you love, that you are totally passionate about, it doesn’t seem like work. Alternatively if you blog about something you’re not passionate about, your blog won’t get far. You’ll end up losing interest and will soon quit.
Maybe this is a warning for you guys coming to blogging simply as a way to make money. Money will come but not straight away, you have to wait a while. But if you’re only blogging for the money you’ll have given up the ghost long before it starts flowing in.
Blog only if you want to express yourself and want to be heard by others. Love the subject that you write about, and in time success will be yours. When you enjoy what you are doing, and have fun while doing it you won’t be debilitated by stress.
2. Have a list of topics to write about
I haven’t written tomorrow’s post yet! What should I write about?” Sound familiar? That last minute panic of writing a blog can be an extremely stressful time. Thinking of the subject you want to write on, coming up with a title, creating the content.
I always keep a notebook at my side. Ready to jot down any inspiration. One of the things I do on a Sunday, my non blogging day, is sit down and brainstorm anything and everything I can think of that would create a good post. I create for myself a bank of ideas that will provide me with blog posts for many months to come. This is a great way to kick stress into touch.
3. Find a stress free posting frequency
Updating blogs is really important. While you want your blog to be regularly updated keeping both your readers and search engines happy, you should not forget one important aspect: qualityand not putting stupid, unnecessary demands on yourself. ! So maybe don’t set yourself a schedule of posting every day, make sure the quality of your blog posts are not compromised and your stress levels are kept low. Perhaps it would be best for you to choose a ¾ posting schedule a week so you don’t end up tearing yourself apart constantly trying to churn out quality content.
4. Take regular breaks
If you’re feeling stressed, stop! I work in 50 minute slots, taking a 10 minute break at the end. This always recharges me and I go back to my work with renewed zeal. Get away from your computer during these breaks. Don’t be tempted to check your emails, comments on your blogs, or your traffic statistics. Walk away, take your mind and body and do something different. Maybe the washing up needs doing. Go do it, the break will do you good. These short regular breaks are a great way to combat stress. As much as I enjoy what I do, I need to take regular breaks. I don’t blog on a Sunday, that’s my total day of rest. I know that taking breaks helps avoid stress.
5. Network With Bloggers
Networking with other bloggers not only helps in link building and SEO. It also helps you reduce stress. Take time to come out of your own blog and read others content. This will help you to relax and read different perspectives from different people. Leave comments on other blog posts. Interact with those bloggers and also other commenters. I have found my social network group on facebook has been a god send to me. There’s always someone I can talk to, have a laugh with, receive advise. It means I’m not a blogger all out on my own.
6. Schedule a Weekly Blogging Calendar and Stick to It
When it comes to blogging, you are your own boss. You can schedule your own time, but it is essential you do. You should make a time table for your blogging activities. This scheduling helps me a lot.
I have developed a weekly calendar for my blogging activities which I stick to. I know which activities generate the most outcome for my time spent, so I ensure that is where I schedule most of my time.I spend at least 80% of my time on these activities. This helps me avoid the stress that tends to plague many other bloggers.
7. Don’t Check Your Statistics More Than Once A Day
As a blogger, you do need to check the performance of your blog to see how is it going, what traffic you’re getting, where it’s coming from etc. Many bloggers tend to be addicted by this information and constantly keep checking their blog statistics – traffic, visits, page views, revenue and many more almost on an hourly basis. Not only are you wasting a lot of your precious time, you are also stressing yourself out over the statistics and your analysis of them.
8. When You’re In Creative Mode, Write, Write, Write.
Sometimes you’re just in the zone, are excited about your blog and feel like you could write for ever. One thing you will notice at times like this, when your creative juices feel as though they’re filled up to the top, bubbling to come out, you can produce masses of quality content. Get to that keyboard and type away. Don’t stop. Produce multiple articles. Capitalise on this moment. It’s going to take pressure off you in the future because you will have lots of posts ready well aheaad of time. You could use this time to write your posts for the week. What an awesome stress relieving experience this can be.
If you follow these simple rules you will experience better health and overall performance with reduced stress on your blogging journey.
Do you have any tips on managing blogging stress? Comment and share them.
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LOL Larry…my list of topics goes on and on. My problem is just sitting down and getting started. Once I do that…then it’s difficult for me to stop 🙂 Another great post! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Mary Schedule your start time, and stick to it.
I can do all of the above, except the ‘weekly calendar’. It seems I start out with good intentions of how my week is going to go, but then things start happening and it all goes kapooee! Poof! Gone. Then I have to grab whatever time I can to get in here and do my thing 🙂
You should try and create a schedule, side by side with an actual performance schedule. Do this for a couple of weeks to determine when and what causes you to go off track.
Great tips here although I have to ask, if someone is THAT stressed out over blogging, why do it? I am one of the folks who love to blog and I can’t imagine trying to continue doing something that brings out so much stress. If you need a blog for your business, hire it done. Or maybe you shouldn’t be a blogger? LOL Just my two cents . . .
Martha – excellent point. I think the truth is that blogging is fantastic. It infact should be a great strerss relieving tool. Our way to clear our inner thoughts by typing them into an article and publishing. I have the benefit of being a full time blogger now, but when i wasn’t, i still never felt stressed, and the reason is i have always understood the importance of time managwement and scheduling. Maybe blogging is like chocolate, to much of it just isn’t good for us, a little bit is wonderful.
Keeping my daily devotions written ten days in advance of when I will post them has relieved the pressure and stress I would encounter if writing and posting one day at a time. I am passionate about what I do and love every minute of it!
Thanks, once again, for some terrific advice, Larry!
Blessings!
Martha – that is awesome. To actually have 10 posts written in advance. Super organised. It is so important for bloggers to do that. There is nothing more stressful than finding you haven’t got anything prepared and feel the pressure of having to post. What you will end up producing, with these time constraints will end up being not to a standard you would want. I hope others heed your method
Yes, Yes, Yes! Great insights for keeping things under control when it comes to blogging. I’m a relatively new blogger, and I realized that when I was starting to stress out, it was time to switch things up.
I reduced the number of times i post and stick with a posting schedule (one of your tips). I also focus on writing as many ideas as I can at a time and then schedule them to auto post.
Great helpful post!
Steve – you may be relatively new to blogging, but obviousl you have already learnt some key things. Auto posting is brilliant. When i am away on business not certain on being able to find wireless connections i set up things to post automatically each day. It works great, and yes takes alot of stress away.
I HAVE BLOGGERE BLOCK ..UUUUUGGGGHHHHH…AS ALWAYS,,,XOXOXOXO
Bongo, you can’t have bloggers block, you always have something to say.
Many excellent tips. One other thing I’m going try too is to write some shorter posts sometimes. It’s really hard for me to do, but I think if I can find a balance in post length, I’d do more blog updates. Thanks!
Viqifrench. I am known to be a write of long posts. Some of my readers struggle to get through to the end. It is a good idea to vary the length of your articles. I am now aiming to produce 2 long full on articles with 3 shorter ones each week. This seems a sensible mix.
That’s a nice quote by Danzae Pace. I started a new blog today and I found many takeaways from this post. Finding new and unique posts will always be a challenge. One possible way is to blog of more than one categories.
Arun, good luck with your new blog. It certainlky can be challenging to continue producing fresh, new unique content. You have to practice many stress relaxing techniques to ensure your mind when it needs to can go into focus and bring out your creative juices.
Blogging is good but don’t kill yourself. Stress out of blogging has the same bad effects as other types of stress and the effects are actually worse than you think. Blog while stay healthy by eliminating stress.
Kristal, totally agree with you. I love blogging and everything that goes with it. But i do know that at times people can become very stressed of it for a wide variety of reasons. Blogging has its moments of stress, and bkoggers have to learn to deal with it because as we know its no good for us.
Great tips, especially this one, “short regular breaks are a great way to combat stress. As much as I enjoy what I do, I need to take regular breaks.” Thanks for the wonderful sharing.
There’s money in blogging. I guess that’s one of the numerous reasons why bloggers can’t say no to it although they are stressing themselves out looking for unique things to post. But I think blogs that stand out from the rest are those that offer valuable information to the readers and those that the readers can really relate to.
Well I think one should get away from the PC. Forget about the video games, videos, Facebook, or ebooks. And you could chuck that phone too.
Head off to the beach or park, or just take your dog for a walk or hang out with friends for an hour or so everyday. Of course, I don’t do any of these but I keep telling myself that I must.