Blogging Motivation!
New projects are often started with a wildfire behind them, but soon smother out. After that, inactivity sets in.
Inactivity is a terrible thing. Over time it digs into you and festers, like an unclean wound.
I have seen many projects begin and die out soon after. I have seen the fires of enthusiasm positively leak from the seams of a would-be blogger and those same fires turn to ash after a week.
Whether it is the idea of creating a community, doing a series of articles on a certain subject or posting your own poetry, the rules on depression versus motivation remain the same.
It takes concentrated amounts of willpower to get over a depression, but perhaps you had a thought or conversation that really inspired you to go for gold. You got the idea, you did a bit of research and now you think you can do this.
Perhaps you even crunched some numbers on how payouts work and you think that with a bit of dedication that you can earn yourself an additional income. It is possible, there are people that have done it.
What happens next is that there is a serious amount of failure of bloggers in the phase following. Those that got past their initial “down” and began something. They got past the thinking phase and into the doing phase. It is important that you keep going from this point onwards.
Beginning a new thing again gets harder each time.
So where does the motivation get lost?
Everyone that is earning a decent income out of their efforts has “made it”. Their actions directly contribute towards the success that drives them. If they love what they do then all the better.
The dangerous phase is the part in the middle. The part between initiating your conceptualization and success.
Let's look at ways how to deal with this issue!
1. A Solid Game-Plan
Whatever you are doing, be it a community works or doing a work of fiction, you need to have a Plan. What you need to do is use the enthusiasm that you have in your initialization phase and use it to do proper research and planning.
You need to consider what you need to do and when you need to do it. Outline stages of your project. Make a schedule of when you will be publishing your blog post and stick to it!
People get to know you based on your consistency or the lack thereof. This is something that everyone struggles with. Even the most dedicated blogger that I know had trouble keeping it going indefinitely.
At intervals you need to review and visit your Plan and update it as required to modify as the reality of the project changes and as you learn new things.
2. Managing Your Expectations with Goals
Another horrendous thing that people in new projects make is that if they are not in the group that thinks nothing they ever do will become successful, they fall into the other group – I have made my first post, why am I not popular?
No matter who you base your success on, a deep analysis of the most successful people are the ones that have learned to brush through stages of the project where the rewards were very low and the interest in your new project just as slim.
So as part of your initial phase, you need to draw up a Goals list alongside your Plan. Be realistic. Be forgiving. If you are not sure on the possible outcomes of your Plan, then set yourself a goal based on your first three days and/or posts. Also set three estimations on your goals, based on research. The middle goal is usually what you thought that you would go for and the other two is the minimum and maximum that can be expected.
3. Milestones
Your Plan and your Goals should have intersections where something will happen. Perhaps you achieve a certain amount of articles or you gain a certain about of SP, you reach a milestone.
It is good to have milestones that can show you the path towards your goal. When you reach these little victories then you need to celebrate them. Just a cup of coffee or a treat with your lunch.
The mindset is to create a positive outcome for yourself so that when you start going for the next leg of the process, that you not get discouraged but instead encouraged to reach the next reward.
4. Patience
Rome was not built in a day. This is a well-known idea and so basic and yet people cannot get over themselves that sometimes it is not about achieving instant results. There is so much out there that you are bound to run through some dry and empty times.
Sometimes I look back at my Journal series because for the last 160-odd days on Steemit, I have not missed a day of posting. The vast majority of those posts is just my Journal. It gets very little in the way of payout, but it does happen every single day.
I look now at other bright sparks that arrived with a bang and big promises to Steemit (or any other blogging platform) and just as quick the disappeared without an explanation. In the meantime, my Journal has been keeping my blog ticking over with reports on how my day was and how my stats are progressing.
After 3 months the results are there. The explosive bang people have given up and fallen away and I am still here.
Conclusion
By having a Plan, a list of actions to take, Goals, a list of achievable criteria, Milestones, steps along the way to mark progress and Patience to see it all through the chances of floundering and being frustrated is greatly reduced.
Success tends to become a habit and if you manage to just tick off what is on your plan for two weeks, doing another week and another week after that will become increasingly easy.
My own mission right now with blogging is to provide my blogs with 60 days of articles back to back, every single day. It is a hefty challenge, but I think that the rewards will be there for me at the end of that 60 days.
I have Planned a list of topics, these are numbered and my Journal already has my Goals and Milestones built into it. Lastly, I have been posting each day for 160 days. I have the Patience to do this as well.
There you go. The contents of my article, the list of useful information is being applied. Have a look later and watch as I achieve exactly what I said that I will!
I have the utmost confidence that I will manage it!
All Image credits to pexels.com