Blogger Burnout- Destress and Refocus

You are not a super hero.

Let’s say that one more time: YOU ARE NOT A SUPER HERO. Sure, with enough coffee, you might feel like it, but even the most productive employee or entrepreneur has their limits. Ironically, one of the worst things you can do for your productivity is push yourself too hard, too fast, and too long. What you will end up with is a lot of stress, a lot of anxiety, and very little actual accomplished.

If you’re a professional blogger, especially when working for an agency, often times it’s hard to refocus yourself when you feel the imminent burn-out. While writer’s block and burnout isn’t completely unavoidable, there are some tricks and systems that may be able to ease the stress.

Here are some simple tips on how to de-stress, and avoid getting to the point where recovery is necessary.

Pace Yourself
When you work, you should certainly be working your hardest, but there’s only so long that a person can go before needing some time to breathe. Those ten or fifteen minute breaks that are installed in your day are there for a reason. Skipping them can literally be disastrous. One method of time management, known as the Pomodora technique, suggests working for a half hour, then taking a five minute break, in order to make sure you stay consistently refreshed. This will allow you to be relax a little more, true, and it will also make you more productive during your work time.

Track Your Work Time
One common mistake that productive workers fall into is to mix their concrete writing work with other activities. A far more productive and low stress way of approaching the situation is to do concentrated work and track what you do at what times. You can use iPhone apps or other software in order to time the work you do on given projects, manage emails and other tasks in batch processes, and otherwise make the most out of the time you have available.

Delegate to Machines
You won’t always have the chance to get human assistance with your projects, but you can always hire out to a machine. There are many minute tasks that you don’t need to do simply because there is software that can do it for you. Systems like Microsoft’s exchange hosting will complete a lot of your tasks for you, including synchronizing documents and information, and sorting files, emails, and contacts. If you set up appropriate filters, then exchange hosting can even do most of your organizing work.

Delegate to People
There are other times when human assistance will be a crucial part of not overwhelming yourself. While writing isn’t necessarily something you always want to hand over to someone, it’ll help the stress a lot if you can manage to make an outline for someone to follow. In order to not disrupt workflow, and to be able to work with individuals or groups who are outside your office or shift schedule, project management solutions like 5pm are basically miracles. With 5pm, you can easily assign and track tasks. It’s okay to share the burden.

Project management software like this makes sure that the shared burden gets finished.So, now you know how to avoid stress, manage your stress flow, delegate your tasks to others who are less weighed down, and otherwise evade burnout. You may be tempted to ignore this new information when projects come at you in the future, but keep in mind that business success isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon. Prepare yourself for the long haul, assuming you want to make it to the finish line.