7 Mindsets to Combat Blogger Burnout

Bjork recorded this blog post as a podcast episode for the Food Blogger Pro podcast. Listen to the episode below or check it out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify:

If you’ve been blogging for a while, chances are you’ve experienced burnout.

Because when you’re living that solopreneur life, the process of starting and growing your blog can get overwhelming. The countless tasks, to-dos, and responsibilities can really add up over time, leading to a sense of fatigue and overwhelm.

And when those feelings of burnout hit, it can feel really easy to throw in the towel and get discouraged.

What is burnout?

While burnout is actually a diagnosable medical condition (learn more about that in this podcast episode), this post focuses more on the general state of burnout that many bloggers experience.

Essentially, burnout happens when you feel exhausted and experience a lack of interest in blogging. You may experience a sense of disillusionment with the work you’re doing and feel like you can’t really carry on.

While burnout can feel overwhelming, there are a few mindset shifts that might help you combat these feelings and start feeling motivated again. Let’s get into them!

1. Think about your activity monitor

On an Apple computer, there is a program called the Activity Monitor where you can sort all the different programs that are currently running by CPU percentage.

If your computer is working really hard, you can usually pull up the Activity Monitor and see that one program in particular is a major CPU hog. And if it’s something that shouldn’t be running, you can quit out of it and things will settle down.

And honestly, we all have our own personal activity monitors that are running each and every day!

If you’re not feeling excited about the work you’re doing, think about your personal activity monitor and start to analyze your work. What’s the one task that’s taking up a lot of your mental real estate?

Take some time and rank all the tasks you’re currently working on from largest to smallest. Oftentimes, there’s one specific task or problem that’s running, and if you stop doing it, it can help improve your relationship with your work.

2. Track the action, not just the result

Another way to combat blogger burnout is to track the action that you’re taking, not just the result.

We can get so wrapped up with results — Google Analytics, followers on Instagram, ad earnings — but oftentimes those results don’t come for months or even years down the line.

Because the reality is that it takes a lot of time and work to develop your craft and gain momentum with what you’re working on. But by tracking the action instead of the result, you can tangibly see how much progress you’re actually making.

So, instead of waiting and hoping for a pin to go viral on Pinterest, spend five hours each month really learning about food photography. Go through a few courses on composition for food photos, invest in a new tripod for your camera, and learn a few new tricks in Lightroom.

As you’re learning and growing along the way, you’ll feel the satisfaction that you were craving when you were just waiting on the result.

3. Spread some frosting on the cracker

When it comes down to it, we all have lots of dry crackers in our lives — the work that needs to get done that maybe isn’t enjoyable.

And how do you make a dry cracker more enjoyable? Well, you can spread some delicious frosting on top of it!

Because while you’re always going to have work that isn’t your passion, there are ways that you can approach that work to make it a little bit better.

For instance, a task that you might dread is end-of-year tax work. What’s a way that you can spread some frosting on that cracker and make it a little bit better? Go to your favorite coffee shop and order your favorite drink, then settle into a cozy booth and grind out the work.

By just making the task a little bit more enjoyable, you can change your relationship with the work and help keep yourself moving in the right direction instead of standing still.

4. Align to your journey, not your destination

Oftentimes, we can get too focused on the destination — where want to go and what goals we want to achieve. And we don’t feel fully accomplished until we’ve reached that destination.

But, a lot of times, you’ll work really hard, get to your destination, and then you just create a new destination. Lather, rinse, repeat.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed as you keep moving that destination out again and again, it might be time to think about aligning to the path that you’re on.

Here at Food Blogger Pro, we’re all about the idea of 1% infinity — making a little bit of progress, every single day, forever.

It can be helpful to switch your perspective from the big picture to small tasks that you can do each day. It’s less about reaching a huge milestone and more about asking, “What is it that I want to be doing today? How do I get better at that?”

So when you start to feel rundown and unmotivated, work on shifting your perspective and align your journey to who you want to be and what you want to focus on. That’s how you’ll work towards your goals more quickly and more effectively.

5. Highlight that it’s a highlight reel

When you’re looking at someone’s Instagram Story or reading through a blog post, what you’re consuming is a highlight reel.

While some people do live these incredible lives, it’s also important to realize that normal life is okay. And even if someone is transparent and honest about their struggles, it’s oftentimes just a glimpse into what they’re going through. Because when it comes down to it, is anybody really interested in consuming someone’s lowlight reel?

We are all collectively on this path of highlights and lowlights, wonderful seasons and difficult seasons… but you don’t see all that online. Oftentimes, all we see online is the best of the best.

So, spend some time thinking of how you can get yourself out of this comparison trap — maybe it means limiting your use of social media or focusing on your current wins.

When it comes down to it, all that really matters is your highlight reel.

6. Hang out with friends who don’t care

Not friends who don’t care — just friends who don’t care about blogging.

Oftentimes, you can have some of your greatest escapes with friends who aren’t involved with your work. They’re the friends who care about you as a person but aren’t super interested in what you’re doing professionally.

Maybe it’s your group of friends you play softball with. Or maybe it’s your group of friends who get together each month to chat about the latest Marvel movies.

When you hang out with these friends, they can offer different perspectives and provide a fresh take on problems you’re struggling with. Because honestly, it can feel so refreshing to spend time with people who don’t care about your work!

7. Take a break

Last but not least, it might be time to consider taking a break.

Sometimes it feels like we have to feed the beast and create content day after day, forever. But it’s okay to take a break and come back to the work later.

We know some bloggers who take an extended break — three months, six months, or even a year — and in some instances, they come back feeling reinvigorated and ready to double down.

And in some instances, they don’t come back at all. And that’s okay.

It’s equally as important to be in a place where you can continue to do something for a long time as it is to continually produce content each week. And if taking a break is what you need to feel that way, it might be something to consider doing.

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Whether you’ve been blogging for a few months or a few years, you will most likely experience burnout at some point. Because just because you love what you do doesn’t mean that you can’t fall out of love with the work that you’re doing.

So when those feelings of burnout arise, we hope that these small mindset shifts will help you stay motivated and working towards your goals. You’ve got this!

Let’s chat in the comments 👇: What do you do to combat blogger burnout?