Welcome to episode 155 of the Food Blogger Pro podcast! This week on the podcast, Bjork talks about important ways to overcome blogger burnout.
Last week on the podcast, Bjork talked with Rachel Korinek from Two Loves Studio about improving your food photography with five powerful tips. To go back and listen to that episode, click here.
Keeping it Fresh and Avoiding Burnout
Burnout happens to everyone, so it’s helpful to have a few tips and tricks in your back pocket for when that feeling strikes.
That’s why Bjork’s here today. He’s talking about the seven burnout-fighting tips he implements in his own life. Between an efficient way to take a weekend trip to finding the perfect coffee shop when you want to switch up your work environment, this episode will equip you tools to knock out your blogger burnout.
In this episode, Bjork shares:
- Why he has a long-term mindset
- Why you should view everything as an experiment
- Why you should unplug once in a while
- Why it’s helpful to switch up your work atmosphere
- How to make “what I do” and “what I don’t do” lists
- Ways to meet up with others
- Why it’s important to switch it up
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Transcript:
Bjork Ostrom: Hey there, friends. Bjork here, you’re listening to the Food Blogger Pro podcast. And we are coming to you today with an episode that is a little bit different. We haven’t done one of these for a while, but this is a solo episode. So it’s me, sitting here, in my home office, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, talking to you.
Now I wish it could be a conversation, you and I sitting across from each other, but my guess would be and my hope would be, that with these solo podcasts, that we are talking about or the conversation, one-way conversation, I guess, is about things that would be interesting for you and I if we were to sit down and actually have a conversation at a coffee shop, or at a restaurant, or here, at our house. And today, I’m going to be talking about something that I feel like comes up a decent amount in this space. But also, in general, with people that are creatives, and that are business builders, of which you are both of those things.
And the topic that we’re going to be talking about today is this idea of keeping it fresh. Or, the opposite side of that is, how to avoid getting totally burned out. And one of the deep beliefs that we have, as Lindsay and I think about what we’re doing, and building a business, and building a thing around Pinch of Yum. So what does that mean? Well, we think of Pinch of Yum as the hub, and then we have these things around it. Food Blogger Pro is kind of becoming its own hub, as well. WP Tasty, which we talk a lot about on the podcast. We have a site called Nutra Fox for Nutrition, and our hope isn’t to really quickly build something and then sell it.
Some people build businesses like that, and build blogs, or online businesses, and their intent is to build them up really quickly and then sell them. But our intent is to be in this long-term. We think about the five year game, the 10 year game, the 20 year game. What does it look like for us to commit to something for a really long period of time? Now there’s lots of things that happen in life and we can’t predict all of them, so who knows what happens five, 10, 20 years down the line? Obviously, things will be very different for us and for you, as well. But that is the mindset that we have, as we go about building a blog, and building our businesses.
And my hope for you would be you would have the same mindset. Now it’s not bad to build a business and then want to sell it. But one of the advantages with having a long-term mindset, is you start to think about how you can make it sustainable, how you cannot have this sprint, where you are totally exhausted, and totally burned out, but how you can integrate it into your daily life and have it be a part of something that you do over a long period of time. And in order to do that, it has to be something that is exciting, and fresh, and continually engaging. And you have to be careful to manage this idea of burning out.
And I’m going to talk about some of the things that I’ve been thinking about lately and approaches that I’ve been taking and mindsets that I’ve had, as I think about going into the business-building mindset, and the business-building space mentally, and making sure that when I am in that space, that it’s one that I’m excited about, that I enjoy, and that feels like a really good centered experience.
So I’m going to be sharing a total of seven different things and these would be mindsets that you probably, it wouldn’t be something brand new or totally revolutionary, but a lot of times, all that it takes is a simple reminder. And sometimes, it’s the most simple things that can be the most helpful things, as we think about changing, and creating new habits, and approaching our work differently. So let’s go ahead and jump in. We’re not going to do any intro like we usually do. It’s just going to be me here, chatting, and having a conversation around some of these important things.
So number one, a way to keep it fresh, to avoid burnout is to view everything as an experiment. Now this is a little bit of a set up for the things that I’m going to be talking about down the line here, the other six items that I’m going to be talking about.
But one of the most important mindsets that I have is when I think of approaching change, when I think of switching something up, I’m initially resistant to that because I think, “Man, that’s going to be a really big thing that I’m changing. It’s a core piece of who I am, or it’s a really important habit for who I am. And if I change that, what are the implications for that down the line? Then I have to make all of these additional changes to how I work and operate.”
But if you view everything as an experiment, then you know that you’re not committing to that for the long-term, but you’re seeing if it is a good thing, if it is a good change. And then if it is, why not commit to that for the long-term? But sometimes we get hung up and we say, “Oh, I’m not going to do that because I don’t have time for it, or it stresses me out to change, or I just don’t think it would be a good idea.” But if you view it as an experiment, then that allows you the flexibility to go into it saying, “Hey, I can always go back to what I was doing before, but I’m just going to do this as an experiment to see how it feels.”
An example that I have is, switching up my morning routine. So I was really ingrained in a very specific morning routine. But there was an issue I was trying to work through and trying to solve, and that was fitting in exercise for the day. And I work with a trainer here, and it’s actually a digital relationship. I don’t go in anymore. I used to go in and meet with him, but that was another thing that I changed as an experiment. As I said, “Hey, what would it look like to do accountability via email, but not actually go in person?”
And his name is Kirk DeWindt, for those of you that follow along with Bachelor or the Bachelorette, you might know Kirk from his appearances on those shows, which I didn’t know before meeting up with him. And then something came up, where I saw something online. It was like an Us Weekly or something like that. And I was like, “Wait a minute, Kirk?” I went in the next time when I was meeting with him and I said, “Kirk, you were on The Bachelor,” and he’s like, “Oh, yeah.” But Kirk is this incredible guy. He’s a Personal Trainer, here in the Twin Cities, and has been really helpful in keeping me accountable.
And one of the things that happened was, when I changed and didn’t go into workout with him, I just wasn’t prioritizing my workouts. I would always say to myself, “Okay, I’m going to do this later on in the day. I have my morning routine. I want to protect that. That’s really important.” I read, I journal, I do things like that in the morning. But what I found was that, the day would get past me, it would get three, four, five o’clock, six o’clock. Lindsay would come home, I’d feel bad leaving, right when she would come home. And so I knew that I needed to change something.
So the experiment that I’m in the middle of right now is saying, “Okay, what does it look like to workout in the morning?” Prioritize that, have that be the first thing that I do. And that’s an example of something that I would have been resistant to if I said, “Okay, from now on, forever, I’m just going to workout in the morning.” Instead, I said, “Oh, there’s a problem here. There’s something I need to try and fix. Let’s experiment with doing this in the morning and see how that feels. Do I feel like my day is better when I do that? If it is, then why not go ahead and change?”
So with any of the stuff that we’re talking about here today, my encouragement to you would be to think about doing all of this as an experiment, not something that is always and forever going to be true. So keep that in mind as we talk about these other ways to keep it fresh and to stay engaged with the work that you’re doing.
Number two, this is important, and we are at this time in the year, take time off. This doesn’t mean that you’re quitting, it doesn’t mean that you’re giving up, it just means that you’re taking time to unplug, and to reset, and to refresh. And that allows you to come back to your work in a way that you feel renewed. And the thing is, the work that we do, it’s interesting because it is different than a lot of jobs or careers. Or, even entrepreneurship. I was talking with a mentor yesterday and he was talking about somebody that he knows and he’s a truck driver.
He said, “The busy season is the summer and it slows down in the winter.” I was like, “Oh, yeah. There are jobs out there that are like that.” But for what we do, that doesn’t really exist, and summer might be a slower season, in general, for online businesses like ours. But for the most part, we are having to churn out content, to think about building, to think about growing year-around. And that doesn’t exist for other people and it’s important to think about how you can integrate that into your routine, in order to come back to what you’re doing with a renewed energy and feeling refreshed.
A couple ideas for that and a couple different takeaways. One of our favorite trips that Lindsay and I did in recent memory is the trip to Austin, Texas. For those of you in Austin, who have been there, it’s just an incredible city and a really fun place to go. And Lindsay and I talked about this idea of the four-day trip. It was kind of this like little branded thing that we tried to think about developing, that we could integrate into our life. The four-day trip being, it’s not like a week vacation or a two-week vacation, but it’s a trip that goes over a weekend.
So you would leave on, let’s say a Thursday, and you would come back on a Tuesday, and you’d have four-full days in between Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And the important thing that we added onto that is like, “Okay, if we’re going to be leaving on Thursday and coming back on Tuesday, we want to make sure that when we are flying on those days, that the plane has a wifi,” which is never awesome. But it allows you to get work done, so you view that Thursday and that Tuesday as a workday and then you have four days, of which two are only workdays, and then a weekend to unwind and to refresh.
Now a couple things. If you are going to use this, if you’re going to think about intentionally taking time off, some things that I want to encourage you to think about.
Number one, turning notifications off on your phone. And this would be something I would encourage you to do, in general, with your phone, is to turn off those notifications. There’s very few things on my phone that I get notifications for. One is, we have Nest, so a Nest doorbell and a Nest video thing in the back, and then also, a Nest camera that we can watch Sage, our dog Sage, inside. So we get notifications for that. I get phone calls and text messages, notifications for that. And then other very infrequently used apps, like Venmo, or things like that, I’ll get notifications.
But for the most part, there aren’t apps on my phone that I’m getting notifications for. Definitely not social media. I actually don’t have any social media accounts on my phone, which I’m going to be talking about a little bit later. But if you are somebody that likes having notifications on, I would encourage you to turn those off when you are going on vacation, if you are doing some intentional time off, to make sure to turn those off.
And I would also say sign out of all of your social media accounts, as well. So don’t just turn off notifications, but also sign out of your social media accounts. So it’s harder to jump back into them when you have that downtime, that half an hour in-between, doing an activity, where you’re thinking, “Okay, what am I going to do?” And you have that moment where it’s like flip your phone on and without even thinking, your thumb, or pointer finger, whatever you use, goes to that app, pulls it up, refreshes.
If you introduce even just five seconds of an extra step, it’ll remind yourself, “Hey, is this something I want to be doing right now?” And for some of you, it might be. You might love the idea of using social media and it’s a way for you to unwind, but for a lot of people that listen to this podcast, social media also connects to work. And you get into social media with the intent of giving your brain a break, but what happens is, it triggers thoughts, and ideas, and stresses related to work, which then take away and remove some of the benefit of that intentional time off. So just a couple thoughts to think about.
If you say, “Hey, you know what? In the next two months, I want to intentionally take some time off. Maybe I’m going to do that four-day trip, where you have four solid days over a weekend, and then you’re leaving on Thursday, coming back on Tuesday, booking a plane with wifi.” And on that trip, you’re intentional to unplug from social media, to sign out of your social media accounts, and maybe even to sign out of your email.
That’s been something that I’m doing and I use the Gmail app on iPhone. And my … I don’t have social media, but my trigger when I have downtime is pulling up my email and just doing a refresh on it. And one of the things that you can do with the Gmail app is, you actually even have to sign out, but you can uncheck the automatic sign in on the account, so it introduces that little trigger. That little five second gap where you have to think, “Is this something that I want to be doing?”
And that’s been something that’s been really beneficial for me, if I know there’s a space in my day or week, that I don’t want to be mindlessly checking email. So that’s number two, take that time off, take time away. It doesn’t have to be a vacation. It can even be an intentional
… take time away, it doesn’t have to be a vacation. It can even be an intentional block of time, maybe it’s a day, two days to refresh and reset.
Number three, this is one of my favorite ones. Work from a new place. The space that we work in is really influential in how we think about the work that we do, and the impact that it has on how we feel about our work.
For a lot of us, I would assume that we are working from home. We have a little spot at home that we work from and maybe we have a laptop or a desktop computer that we’re sitting down at and doing that work, and that can lead to specific behaviors that are repeated. An example would be for me, when I sit down at my desk, I know that to my right is a basket of physical letters and things that I need to process, which is a little bit of a trigger for me. I look at it and think, okay, I need to do that.
There’s also things around the house like recording this podcast right now, I had to pause and get up and let our dig Sage in, because she was barking at who knows what in the backyard.
Those work behaviors lead to us working in a certain way, or thinking in a certain way and can lead to us feeling the monotony of our work being the same and looking the same, and can also lead us to work in a certain way.
At home for me, one of the ways that I need to pushback again so that as a reality of working at home is that there’s more distractions here. I try as much as possible, and it probably ends up being three out of five days, or four out of five days that I work from a different space, and as much as possible I try and make that a new place, which if you live in a small town, or don’t have access to a lot of that it’s hard to do. One of the things that I’ve found is I can go to the same place, but work in new place at that place.
An example would be, there is this incredible park that we have close to our house and there’s a coffee shop connected to that. I go there and I have a favorite spot that I sit there, but one of the things that I like to do when it’s nice out, is actually work outside. I go and sit outside in a chair and the weather’s nice, which isn’t always true in Minnesota, it’s not always weather that you can work from outside, so it’s especially nice here in the summer when I can go and sit outside.
What I find is that I am approaching the work that I’m doing with a new perspective. It allows it to be fresh and new even if it’s the same thing, because I’m doing that in a different place, it feels different and that’s what we’re going for here is breaking up the routine, having something that feels a little bit different, approaching what you’re doing from a different angle, and that’s extremely beneficial.
Some tips that I’ve found, this is kind of geeky, nerdy stuff but it’s helpful, some tips that I’ve found when it comes to working from a new place. Number one, as much as possible make sure that it’s a place with fast WiFi. So there’s some coffee shops around the Twin Cities that are great, but they have terrible WiFi.
The negotiation that you could do with your self, or the in-between that you could do in a situation like that is to, if you have hotspot on your phone, you can do that. I know there’s some coffee shops that I love going to that allow me to switch things up, have a new perspective, feel a little bit different, but they have terrible WiFi, so what I do is on my phone I have a hotspot, which means that essentially you’re connecting to your phone instead of the WiFi. It’s actually a little bit safer as well, because you’re not using the public WiFi in the coffee shop, and that’s a really great way to go somewhere that doesn’t have great wife.
If you don’t have a hotspot, make sure that you are going somewhere that has decent WiFi if you’re going to be working online. Maybe you’re not doing work online and in that case it doesn’t matter, obviously, but that’s one of the things that I always check for and think about.
You can look at the reviews for the different places that you’re going to see, a lot of times people will leave that, and sometimes it just takes going there to see and once you do that you’ll get a better idea of it.
This is a really small thing, but it makes a big difference. When you’re going to places make sure it’s a good place to sit, it’s comfortable and that they have stable tables. If you go to one of those places, and everybody can relate to this, that has a wobbly table, or a wobbly chair and you’re trying to work on your computer, it’s just the worst, is it not? Sometimes you can adjust them, but then it’s like okay, that becomes an entirely different thing on its own where suddenly you’re adjusting coffee shop tables and trying to make them fit really well.
I’ve pinpointed some coffee shops here in the Twin Cities that have terrible tables and I don’t go there anymore. So, that’s one thing to be aware of and be intentional with.
This last one would be a pretty big takeaway and an important thing for those of you that want to be more mobile as a way to continue to stay refreshed and to not get burnt out, but it’s hard to do because you have to unwind everything that you’ve set up at your home office and then reset it up somewhere else.
What I’ve done is I’ve created a little kind of travel kit essentially for any time that I’m traveling to a coffee shop, or a library, or anything like that. What I’ve done is essentially in a small way replicated what I have at my home office in a backpack, so the only thing that I need to do is put my laptop in the backpack and then I head out.
It’s pretty simple for me, what it is is a mouse and it’s the same mouse that I use on my desktop computer, or on my desk when I’m sitting at my desk with my laptop. There’s also a charger that is always in my backpack, so I have two chargers, one for my laptop on my desk and then one for my backpack. So, I never have to unplug my charger and then put in the backpack and sometimes if I would do that I would forget it and I’d leave it back at home and then I could only work for a certain amount of time.
I have a mouse, I have a charger, and then I also have a phone charger. When I go to one of these places, I never have to worry about, oh, did I remember that? All I have to do is put my laptop in, which I’ve never forgotten before, that’s the one thing that’s easy to remember, and all of that stuff is in my little travel kit that I can just take in my backpack and go. I don’t have to worry about bringing any of that other stuff.
Now obviously, that comes with an expense and you’re having to purchase two of those things, but I found it to be really beneficial and really helpful, because I work remotely, or mobilely like that so often.
Number four, we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but this is a really important thing to think about if you want to stay engaged with your work, if you want to keep it fresh, is to create a, what I want to do or what I do and what I don’t want to do, or what I don’t do list. I’m going to say that again. Create a what I do and a what I don’t do list.
Now, this is an important thing because when you are in the early stages of this, and even as you’ve been doing this for a few years, what you learn is that you are the person that is doing a lot of different things. If you’ve worked with a big company or in a corporate position, you know that your job might be pretty specific.
You work in accounting, or you work in HR, and you have a specific task of things that you do, but in the early stages of building a blog and building a business, you do all of those things, but the thing is a lot of those things are things that you don’t like to do, that you’re not super excited about doing, and probably aren’t super capable.
It feels like we have to do those things and in some cases we do, maybe it’s accounting, that’s really important, right? There might be other things like, okay, you have to create content, that’s an important piece of it, but there are other things that people say you should do and they say, hey, this is really important you have to do this and so you do it, but you hate the idea of doing it. You don’t enjoy it when it is happening and there’s a really good chance that you don’t actually have to be doing that.
What I hope for this little section, number four, the what I do and what I don’t do list, is that you are able to think about the things and really pinpoint the things that make you excited, that give you life, that you’re excited about doing, and you also start to develop a good understanding of the things that are not as exciting for you. The things that drain life from you, that make you feel exhausted after you do them.
To clarify what those things are, because that plays into the fifth thing that we’re going to talk about here, but before we do that I want to give an example. One of the things that’s kind of interesting about what I do and what I don’t do when it comes to the business building that I’m personally doing, is that I’m not super involved with social media. I talked about that a little bit in the beginning where I don’t have any of the apps on my phone and I check social media occasionally on my computer, but not often and that’s because it’s just not something that I’m super excited about.
I don’t really look forward to scrolling through social media and I find that after I use it that I don’t feel great about myself, or just like in general I feel worse after using it than better. Part of that is because I haven’t intentionally curated a feed. I don’t have a real strong intent, or purpose when I’m using it, and just for me personally, it’s not a great fit.
It’s not something that I’ve ever really done. I’m super fascinated by it. I love the idea of following along with changes that are happening on the business side of things. I love reading about changes at Twitter and Instagram, and Facebook and Pinterest and all of those things. Personally, I’m really interested in it as business, but not personally interested in it from using it as a business-building tool.
Some people are great at that and it’s a huge part of what they do, but for me personally it’s not. So it’s on my, what I don’t do list. The thing is for the businesses we have, it’s still a really important piece of the puzzle. It’s still something that we have as a part of our businesses, but it’s just not that it’s me doing it, that’s Abby who is our great social media manager that is doing a lot of that content and organizing those different areas.
Now, for a long time we didn’t have somebody that was doing that and we would have some areas that were active, from a social media perspective, but even before that there was a really long chunk of time where we just didn’t have a super active Facebook account, or a Twitter account, or Instagram account, all of those things. They were just kind of dormant.
If you follow really closely with Food Blogger Pro you know that, and you’ve maybe seen that transition over the last year or two years as we’ve started to ramp those up, but the reason we didn’t do it is because I wasn’t super motivated to do it. It was on my, what I don’t do list and now that we have the capacity and the ability to bring somebody in to help with that, we’re starting to pick up steam with that and put some effort and resources behind it, but for a long time it was just something that I didn’t do and that’s okay.
There might be those things for you that are on your, what I don’t do list, that you are actually doing which brings me to number five. Another way to continue to stay engaged and excited and to not burnout is to not do the things you don’t want to do. That is the most important thing when it comes to burnout is being aware of these things that are probably on your, what I don’t do list, but are things that you’re still doing.
There’s really two options when it comes to this. Number one, would be like I talked about before, not doing them. I would say there’s probably three options. Number one, is not doing them. So you’re just saying, okay, this is something I don’t enjoy, I’m not going to do it.
Number two would be finding somebody else to do it and what I would say for this, there might be ways you can really creatively think about bringing somebody in. You could do some type of trade. Maybe you don’t have the budget for it, but you have time and you’re going to say, okay, I have a friend who does accounting and bookkeeping, I’m going to ask them to do this and in exchange I will make them two meals a week, and maybe you create your blog meal and that you want to photograph, if you’re a food blogger, photograph that meal, you make it for your blog, and then you also bring that over to them. You’re making two meals for them, that’s a really exciting thing for them and they’re doing the thing that you don’t want to do.
If you have a budget for it, you could hire somebody. Those would be … Option one, would be not doing it. Option two, if it needs to get done it would be hiring somebody and/or trading with them to get it done.
Number three, would be you continue to do it, which is the least exciting option and the option that we’re trying to get away from. If you continue to do something that you’re not excited about doing, that drains the life and energy from you.
What’s going to happen is you’re going to feel burnt out when you think of this thing that you’re doing, business building, blog building, whatever it is you will start to view it in a negative light instead of a positive light. That’s why this number five is so important to not do the things you don’t want to do, or to stay away from the things that you don’t want to do is because we’re trying to keep it fresh and we’re trying to be excited about the work that we do.
After you do number four, which is create the what I do and what I don’t do list, number five is to strategically look at that what I don’t do list and categorize those and say, is this something that-
Do list and categorize those and say, is this something that I can just stop doing or is this something that I need to have somebody else help with, and if so, how am I going to do that? As you’re doing that, you want to make sure that there’s a next action item along with that. Let’s say that you categorize something as this is something that needs to get done, I don’t want to do it, so somebody else needs to do it, then what is that next step? The next step might be reaching out to somebody that you know that is delegating that to somebody else and saying how do you do that, can you give me some advice on how you found somebody?
The next step could also be following up with somebody that you know who does do it. Ask them, say, “Okay, I know you do this. I know that you are in accounting or bookkeeping.” I use that as an example because that’s one of the first things that we outsourced, and asking them what would that look like to hire you to help out with this. Make that next action item, and a lot of times it can be something really simple, email, phone call, something like that. That’s number five. You’re looking at the I don’t do list and figuring out do I not do this or do I need somebody to do it, if you need somebody to do it, what’s the next action to connecting with somebody that can help you do it.
Number six, we’re coming to the end. We have two more. Take an in person course or go to a meetup group. This is something that I’ve done for probably three years now. There’s a couple different meetup groups here in the twin cities and I’ve found that I anticipate them being somebody who likes to be at home by myself. I would consider myself an ambivert, so I don’t mind being with people, but I also really liked just being at home, which is good for somebody that does the kind of things that we do, a lot of computer time and a lot of computer work. What I find is that I get stuck in my own routines and my own way of thinking, and one of the best ways to break out of that is to take an in person course, go to a conference or attend a meetup.
Now all of those are going to have varying levels of cost. Obviously, if it’s a conference or an in person course, it’s going to be a little bit more expensive. There’s going to be a dollar amount that’s probably attached to that, but a free avenue for that in person interaction is going to be meet up and that’s literally meetup.com. If you go to meetup.com, you can search for different types of groups that meet up in areas that are close to you. As an example, I pulled this up here in Minneapolis and there is this meetup that’s called the Library Meetup, bring your own coffee and snacks. It is the twin cities podcaster’s meetup group and one of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is, hey, how do we strategically grow the podcast?
We have a lot of people that listen and a lot of people that had a huge impact on their business and blog and we’ve heard from those people from the podcast, and so that’s encouraging to us, but we want to grow even more in reach even more people. I’ve been thinking about that. I kind of feel stuck with it. I don’t know what the best way to do that would be and don’t really have clear ideas right now and haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about what are the ways that we can grow the podcast.
This would be a great example to hear some outside ideas of people that have a really good understanding of podcasts that speak that language, and just interacting with and rubbing shoulders with those people will undoubtedly create ideas and inspiration and will allow me to look at what I’m doing from a new angle. The conference, the course, the meetup, the important thing with any of these is that these are in person and we experience content and conversation and learning differently than we do when we’re reading online or watching a video, and that’s why this is so important. We’ve also heard that with people that have attended a photography workshop and Lindsey has put on a handful, quite a few, maybe 20 or 30 photography workshops.
For a lot of people, they’ve heard the content, they know it, they understand it, but when you are in person, when you blocked out the day, when you’re not distracted, when you’re sitting down seeing somebody do something, hearing how they do it, you’re going to learn in a different way. I would encourage you to check out any conferences that are close by or that you would travel to. Maybe you can mash up the take time off number two with a conference where you schedule some days to just unplug and unwind, and then also bump that up next to a conference or an in person course, or if you want to take it a little bit slower, on ramp a little bit easier and a lot of times not have a cost associated with it.
Check out the meetup.com, see if there’s other meetups that you could attend in areas that you’re interested in; podcasting, blogging, EO would be a big one. All of those have meetups and oftentimes they are within driving distance to wherever you live. That’s number six. Do something in person, whether it’s a course or a conference or a meetup. Number seven, this would be my general encouragement to you is just switch it up. Find something that you can do that’s a little bit different than how you normally do it. One example would be this podcast. I’m doing a solo podcast today and it’s switching it up.
We’ve done a lot of interview podcasts and so it’s taken some time and saying like, “Hey, what is it like to do a solo podcast? How does that feel? How does that a switch and change make me feel from a podcast producer standpoint? What are the differences between a solo podcast and an in person conversation that we’re doing?” Switching it up, an example would be with Lindsay, so she was feeling stale and stagnant with our content creation and so she said, “Hey, on the blog, what are some ways that I can switch it up?” One idea she had was creating some artificial constraints for the type of content that she was producing, so she started to have these little sprints where she would only create content in a certain subject, so one example would be low sugar or no sugar recipes.
Doing a sprint of content that is a in a certain category and switching it up and saying like, “Okay, I’m not just going to randomly publish recipes that sound good, or our seasonal, I’m going to create a little campaign or a little sprint around a certain piece of content.” All of those things allow you to or force you to get out of your routine a little bit and to do things a little bit differently. If you’re feeling burnt out, if you’re feeling like things are kind of stale, think intentionally about the ways that you can switch it up, and to go back to number one, viewing all of it as an experiment.
Not saying that this is something I have to do forever going forward, but to be flexible and to be willing to engage in something new, knowing that might not last forever, but it’s something that you want to try and do a little bit different. Those are the seven things that I have for you. Just a quick little recap, the seven things for keeping it fresh, making sure that you continue to stay engaged and interested in the work that you’re doing, viewing everything as an example, number one. When you need to take time off and we talked about that idea of the 4-day trip. It doesn’t have to be a massive long vacation where you go to a cabin for two weeks. It can be something kind of short, but intentional and making sure to disconnect during that time.
Number three, working from a new place and even if you are going to a familiar place, maybe there’s a new spot in that place that you can work just to change it up and feel a little bit different. Number four, create your what I do and what I don’t do list. Number five, look at that list and say, what are the things that I don’t do and now what do I do with those, and that could be either you stopped doing it, which is okay. Even with the things you stopped doing, it doesn’t have to be forever, it could be just for a short period of time.
Or number two, if it’s on your don’t do list and you need to get it done, then what’s the next action with that, who are you going to connect with, what are the next steps are going to take to figure out how to get that done without you having to do it and without you getting drained of your life and energy by doing that. Number six, take an in person course, conference or meetup. Making sure to rub shoulders and spend time with people that are doing similar things but are approaching it from a different angle so you can learn from them. Number seven, this would be kind of the umbrella over everything, switch it up. Be willing to change your routine to do something a little bit different, to not feel stuck in the thing that you are doing, and viewing it as an experiment.
It doesn’t have to be forever that you switch it up, but being willing to do things a little bit differently in order to stay committed to what you’re doing for a long period of time. That’s what this is all about. Like I said at the beginning, so much of this is committing to something over a long period of time, continually showing up, continually getting better, and we talk about that a lot as 1% infinity and to love what you’re doing and as much as possible implementing these things allow you to as much as possible work towards that goal which is a loving what you’re doing and showing up as Warren Buffett said. I said this in an interview that I did recently showing up, skipping to work.
You want to be excited about what you’re doing and to be engaged with what you’re doing, and the best way to do that is to intentionally think about things like we talked about on this podcast today, to intentionally think about things that you’re doing and to approach that intentionally, and to not let yourself be okay, being not okay with the work that you’re doing. That would be my hope for this podcast is that it allows you to fall in love with what you’re doing and to be excited about what you’re doing. Really appreciate you guys, so excited to continue to do this podcast and to continue to connect with you.
Like I said at the beginning, would love it if this was an in person time where we could sit down and just you and I one on one and have a conversation, but I’ll take the second best which is talking to you here through this podcast. We appreciate you, we’re excited to stay connected and we will see you back here next week. Until then, make it a great week. Thanks guys.
Alexa Peduzzi: Hey friends. We really hope you enjoyed that solo episode with Bjork. I know I got a lot out of it. Social media is also on my I don’t do list. It does not make me excited, it does not get me to skip. I’ve actually just started looking for someone who will do my social media for me, and that’s something that I have been putting off. I haven’t pinned anything on Pinterest in a couple of months and it’s making me feel guilty and just not excited about my work anymore. That’s how I know that there needs to be a change and there needs to be someone who will do it, so that’s just a takeaway that I got from this podcast and I hope that you got something out of this podcast as well.
Now it is time for our reviewer of the week and this one comes from Katie from Healthy Seasonal Recipes and it says, “I look forward to listening to this podcast more than any other. I’ve been blogging since 2009 and I always learned something seriously, even if I think the topic isn’t pertinent to me. I loved New York Style and the fact that he makes sure that any technical jargon is explained and we’ll ”chase rabbit trails.“ I also loved the diversity of the guests. I recommend it to food bloggers who are just starting out and to those who have been doing it for years.” Thank you so much Katie. We so appreciate that review.
If you’re interested in leaving your own review and possibly getting featured on the podcast, you can leave a review on iTunes by going to iTunes, searching the food blogger pro podcast, and then leaving us forever reveal. So thank you so much for tuning in guys. We appreciate you so, so much and from all of us here at FBPHQ, make it a great.