Do you ever give yourselves a holiday from blogging ? (#)
Blogging is a passion and fun activity for most. Most bloggers start off with great energy, and write several posts every week initially. However, it has been observed that the passion wanes soon when bloggers realize that blogs do not grow as quickly as they anticipated, and writing for their blogs may even become a chore.
Considering writing for a blog can degrade the quality of writing rapidly. Apart from this, bloggers may also get tired and suffer burnouts due to intensive blogging activity. This results in greater time spent on blogs to complete various tasks, but with lower returns. Eventually, the blogger considers the time and effort that he invests into his blog, and comes to the conclusion that blogging is not worthy of his time any more.
Have you experienced at least some parts of the above? It happens to almost all the bloggers -even the most talented and luckiest bloggers.
Treat yourselves to cheat holidays
In dieting and body building stints, trainers may advise cheat meals or occasional lay-offs from workouts. There is a strong psychological factor behind the cheat meals and lay-offs from exercise - it helps you come back fresh and reinvigorated for the next stint.
One of the many unique characteristics of the human brain is to get complacent and bored when doing repetitive tasks. Humans crave for change, instinctively. Cheat meals and lay-offs are an easy way to trick the brain your inner self into being efficient at the original task when you get back to doing it.
If you are finding it uninspiring to blog, you can give yourselves a well-deserved rest by taking a few days off from blogging. You could switch off completely from the online world during that period, or restrict yourselves to mails and feed reading only, or to anything except blogging. I would recommend the latter, because cutting yourselves off from any of your daily routines will create a backlog when you come back. However, promise yourselves that you will stay away from the blog.
Passionate bloggers (I am proud to be one of them) will find it very hard to stay away from their blogs for a few weeks, and may feel depressed and dull. They may also worry about their blog (whether there are spam comments, whether the blog has gone offline/is performing poorly etc.), but all of that usually lasts only for the first blogging holiday.
I’ve done it many times, as recently as last month (where I was away for a week). The first time that I stayed away from the blog was incidental (almost accidental), for a study course (which, in case you’re wondering, was a forced holiday, and not a desired holiday). Subsequently, you will find it enjoyable to work hard on your blog for days, and then take time off from blogging for a few days. Trust me.
Planning for the holiday
Of course, staying away from the blog does not, and should not mean that you abandon your blog. Planning ahead is crucial for the consistency of any blogger, and holds true in this situation also.
Write up a small bank of posts for your blog when you are away for your blogging holiday. To advise writing up as many posts as you would have written had you been working on your blog as usual is easier said than done. So, slow down the posting schedule slightly for a week before your holiday (so that your readers get used to the new posting frequency), and then calculate the number of posts required. If you have a decently-sized blog, publishing a post stating that you will be away and welcome guest posts can work (like Nirmal did) - but keep in mind that this cannot be done for each of your holidays, and should be used sparingly.
Ajay Pathak @ readerszone said on May 30th, 2008
blogging is a gr8. u are then owner what u want to do. any time u take a break and u can also work for 20 hours
blogging simply rocks