Take Time When You Need It
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Nov 11, 2012
Last week was something different when it came to me and blogging. I never have any problems with not knowing what I may want to write about. Writer's block is something that just doesn't happen to me.
However, I did have to deal with something else, that being not wanting to write at all. I'm not sure why I wasn't in the mood to write, but I wasn't. Not that I didn't write, but I only wrote a couple of articles, and those were on other blogs.
What probably happened is that I got myself into a period where I didn't have to write for a while. Most of the time I write my articles at least two weeks in advance and then schedule them out. In the middle of October I had a business trip to take, so for all of the blogs I wanted to have articles on I'd actually had those written out three weeks in advance. So when it came to November, I really hadn't written a blog piece in a while anywhere.
That's one of the dangers sometimes when you do something in advance. Even though for the most part it's always better than waiting until the last minute to do something, I have found that in my past when I do a lot of things in advance my mind and starts to wander and I'm not quite sure what to do with myself. Then when it's time to do something I'm really not in the mood to do it.
I did this type of thing in elementary and high school. Whenever we were given books to read, many times I'd read the entire book and then have to go to class and deal with the fact that everyone else was working on a certain chapter that I had already finished. That usually meant I was concentrating on something else in class, quite often drawing circles or patterns instead of paying attention. It would throw teachers off when they would see me doing something else, ask me a question and I knew the answer. Strangely enough none of them ever asked me if I had gone ahead and read the book.
The same kind of thing happen in college. If teachers gave me writing assignments early in the semester, something I wanted to do was to get all the writing assignments out of the way so that if I needed to study for any classes later on I wouldn't be encumbered by having to write a paper. It wasn't until my senior year that I actually turned in all the papers in advance, which threw every single teacher off their game, but back then we had to type our papers and I didn't want to have to worry that I might inadvertently damage the paper; these days you can write a paper and save it on your computer and then print it out when you want to.
Anyway, in general I just wasn't in the mood to do much writing. So I wrote a couple of things when I had to, including my newsletter, but for the most part I just went off the grid and did something else. Sometimes that's just how life goes. The best workers in the world will sometimes have a short period where they're just going through the motions. It's not that their work is bad, but they're not giving it their all.
What you find is that anyone who's been doing a job for a certain length of time can pretty much mail it in for a while and no one would know the difference. That's why it's important to always keep employees engaged in what they do, while also finding ways to keep yourself motivated by changing things up from time to time.
And if none of that works, then take some time off. Most companies will give you mental health days, and there's nothing wrong with taking a few vacation days here and there. Since I don't get any of that stuff, working for myself, I have to take those moments as I can and either work on something else or just take a break. I don't get to do that often because if I don't work I don't get paid, but if I'm really not into it I'm not going to do my best work and that will hurt me more than working without commitment.
How do you handle things when you're just not in the mood to do them? Let me know.
I’ve recently wrote an article on similar topic on one of my blogs. I think the best thing to deal with that is to schedule few posts in advance. The other way to handle it, probably is using videos, images or polls.
Carl, as you know I have my periods where I’m writing like a guy who has way too much to say, and I actually had before running into this. After this, I’m back to my two weeks in advance mode again. lol
I am the same and it is like a taxi – there aren’t any, or there are too many. Certainly can write at least 10 articles in different niche in a day, if I am inspired by something and after that for 2-3 weeks, I don’t have a clue what to write about.