How to Prevent Blogging Burnout: Tips for Long-Term Success

Blogging Burnout – it’ll kill your blogging career and take you down a rabbit hole of blogging misery.

The best way to deal with this sort of thing is to take the proper steps to prevent it from happening, which I discuss in this article. However, if you get burned out from blogging and need help recovering, I have tips and pointers about that below, as well.

Everyone will essentially learn the effects and impacts of blogging burnout. Trust me—I have been burned out from blogging a time or two, but you see me still writing. That’s because I recovered, and now, I’ll show you how to recover.

Let’s face it: Blogging burnout can ruin all your hard work and cause you to miss critical opportunities in your blogging career.

I don’t want that to happen to you, me, or anyone else. So, I hope you enjoy this article and that it helps you stay healthy bloggers while avoiding burnout.

Understanding What Blogging Burnout Is

Blogging burnout is simple to explain.

It’s when you no longer want to blog, can’t think of new content ideas, and have zero motivation to write new posts. It’s real, it’s common, and it’s the most frequent cause of blog abandonment.

The symptoms of blogging burnout are easily diagnosed, too.

• You’ll be exhausted – both mentally and physically when it comes to blogging.
• You’ll turn negative about your blog, niche, industry, work, etc.
• You’ll detach yourself from anything related to your blog
• You might even get depressed because you’ve worked hard on your blog. After all

There will be other symptoms that impact other people in other ways.

One of the biggest reasons for blogging burnout is that you either overwork yourself on your blog or set such unrealistic expectations that your goals can never be achieved, and you feel like a failure.

Many bloggers burn out because they lack variety, as well.

You might even burn out because you’ve put too much pressure on yourself. Maybe you’re trying to be more consistent than possible. Or maybe you’ve set deadlines that are becoming impossible to meet. Maybe you are upset by a lack of quality and value in your content.

The first step in preventing and curing blogging burnout is to identify its symptoms.

Time Management Practices for Blogging Burnout

If you want to avoid blogging burnout, you have to be able to manage your time better.

The first thing you need to work on is pacing yourself as a blogger. Don’t jump into everything at once. Work on getting good at one or two things at a time.

I use a three-year strategy to help pace myself. I focus on content creation for the first year, marketing during the second, and profiting during the third.

Quit setting unrealistic goals!

Unrealistic goals, such as aiming to publish a new blog post every day when you’re just starting out, will never be achieved when you want to achieve them. This will cause blogging burnout quickly. Instead, you should set micro-goals that will help you achieve your main goals. If you can achieve goals quickly in a short amount of time that are measurable to your main objectives, you’ll stray far away from burning out.

Try to plan ahead.

Create a strategy for your blog. Plan ahead for your content, community, and money-making goals. This will allow you to follow a strategy as you continue to grow as a blogger; otherwise, you’re just walking around in the dark with no real mission.

Organize your blogging routine by creating a content calendar.

Choose days on which you can create a bunch of content. We call this content batching. It’s a technique where you dedicate specific days to creating multiple pieces of content, which you can then schedule for future publication. The more content you schedule ahead of time, the better you can stay ahead and not feel like you are not going to be able to meet your deadline.

Once you learn to manage your time effectively through organization, you’ll have no problem preventing blogging burnout.

The Importance of Prioritizing Self-Care

If you don’t care for yourself, blogging burnout is bound to happen.

You definitely need to watch your screen time. Step away from your blog and the computer from time to time. This means daily. Technology is great until you become consumed by it. We’re not made to be attached to these screens 24/7. We need a break. Take a break.

Try to refresh your mind and body as much as possible.

Work on the things that matter for you to keep living: fitness, dieting, and sleep. Exercise more. I hike and bike a few times a week. Adjust your diet. Eat better. Sleep is really important, too. Try to get a full night of good sleep every night.

Choose some hobbies that aren’t related to your niche and enjoy them.

You also need to set some boundaries. Blogging should never interfere with your job, schooling, relationships, and family. You need to know when to stop so that blogging doesn’t impact the other people you love and care about.

If you can’t take care of yourself, blogging will be a negative lifestyle.

How to Stay Motivated and Inspired

Motivation and inspiration can help you become a better blogger while avoiding all types of blogging burnout.

Consider trying new blog formats. This can be anything from the post type, like list articles and how-to guides, to the type of content altogether, like podcasting and video blogging. Try new things and see how they make you feel as a blogger.

Collaborate with other bloggers, influencers, and people within your niche.

Seek support from your fellow bloggers. Join my Blogging Collective forum, for example, and connect with other bloggers to stay motivated and inspired. It’s good to have many blogging friends and connections.

Try to focus on increasing your engagement with your blog. Engage with anyone who comments. Responding to comments not only shows your readers that you value their input but also helps you understand their needs better. Engage with as many people as possible on social media. The more you interact with your audience, the more you’ll feel connected and motivated. Engage with other bloggers and their content within your niche. Get Social!

Try to keep learning and mastering your expertise and authority in your niche or industry. The more you know about something, the easier it is to write about and enjoy writing about it.

Do things in blogging that raise the hair on the back of your neck and give you that feeling like you’re doing something you absolutely love to do.

Tools and Resources for Preventing Blogging Burnout

Take advantage of tools and resources created for bloggers. Many of these will help prevent all types of blogging burnout from happening.

Get to know and use scheduling tools. If you use WordPress, you can use their built-in feature to schedule your blog posts. This allowed you to stay ahead and not feel like you have to meet a daily deadline. Use scheduling features on social media or even a platform like Buffer to schedule your social media content ahead of time.

Take advantage of plugins if you’re using WordPress. Some of my favorite plugins include:

• Yoast for all things Search Engine Optimization. It speeds this process up significantly.
• Jetpack for security and performance needs. This helps protect your blog.
• Monster Insights to help understand who is visiting and your important analytics.

You’ll find other plugins and themes to help you along the way. Just be picky about what plugins you add. Too many of them can create more bloat and backdoors and can cause more harm than good.

Consider using something like Grammarly to help edit your content. Once I started using Grammarly, I was able to write faster and create more content.

Task and to-do tools may also help you keep to your schedule and prevent blogging burnout. I check my Todoist every day to ensure that I remain ahead of schedule.

If you have it in your budget, you can always outsource tasks to other people willing to do it. You can also accept guest blog posts for free to help slow down your own demand to create new content. Just make sure your outsourced activities and guest content are worthy enough to be posted on your blog.

Take advantage of tools and resources to prevent blogging burnout. They can save you time, money, and the headache that might come with some forms of blogging.

Modify Your Blog Strategy to Prevent Blogging Burnout

If blogging burnout is too much for you to handle, maybe it’s time to adjust your overall blog strategy to help you manage it.

Try to understand your analytics. I use Google Analytics. Learn what each metric means and how it applies to your blog. Once you understand them better, you can make changes to make your blog more readable and engaging.

Your goals may be unrealistic. If they feel like they take ages to complete, then they’re bad goals. Adjust them to be achievable at a quicker pace. Make a long-term goal with many little goals that will help lead up to it.

Quit trying to be perfect – human beings are never and will never be perfect. Stop procrastinating and start acting like the imperfect human you are.

Back to goals—quit setting goals that are only fairytales. Do you want to make money with your blog? You have to work for it. It took me four years to start monetizing. The internet is huge and highly competitive. If you think your goal is going to happen overnight, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

If you’ve tried everything and you’re still burned out – maybe you need to pivot. Pivoting is when you change your niche. That might be the best thing you can do.

Blogging burnout is very real and may require drastic changes to overcome.

Final Thoughts About Blogging Burnout

Thanks for taking the time to read my article about blogging burnout.

To recap, I’ve explained what blogging burnout is and the basic symptoms. I’ve given you many different tips and tactics to avoid it from happening altogether. I’ve also shown you how to deal with it if you’re already suffering from it.

Now, the rest of the task is up to you. What advice above resonates with you the most about avoiding burnout? I’d love to know. Leave a comment below with your answer.

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About the Author

Shawn Gossman has created content, blogged, ran online communities, and shared a passion for digital marketing for over twenty years. Shawn believes the best way to help content creators, businesses, brands, and marketers is to give away more than you sell. The same advice is recommended for the readers who follow this blog. Shawn also offers various services for extra help in content creation and blogging.