On the weekend I got ‘speakers block’. I had to do two speaking gigs and a couple of times in my preparation ‘hit the wall’ when it came to creative ideas on how to make my presentations to the next level. Luckily I’ve been speaking in public for around 12 years and have developed a few techniques for breaking through such blockages – many of which are applicable to the dreaded ‘bloggers block’.
So I’ve decided to adapt what I do to break through the dry patches in my speaking to tackle the question of how to battle against bloggers block. I’ve come up with 20+ short tips which I’ll share over the coming week as a series. As I add them one by one on the main blog I’ll also add them to this central page so you can have one place for the complete series. Feel free to chip in in comments as we go with your own bloggers block busting tips.
1. Change your Blogging Environment
Put your Hands in the air and step away from the Computer!
On Saturday when I came to the end of my inspiration I got out of the house for a couple of hours and went for a long walk. I often find that when I change my environment that inspiration comes. I walked down to the main street near our place and sat in the sun for half an hour and ‘people watched’. Somewhere along the way the ideas began to flow.
Getting away from your computer and blog can definitely help but so can blogging from a new location. Some of the places I’ve blogged from in the last few months include:
- friends houses – I have a mate’s house who I occasionally spend the day at so that we can work in the same room – it’s nice to have the company – even though he’s not a blogger I find our conversations lead me to try new things on my blogs
- net cafes – I did this for a day recently when my broadband went down
- public libraries – I did this for a week 18 months back and it totally gave me a new perspective on blogging – once I got past the frustration of having to book a computer and blog in one hour blocks of time
- other rooms in the house – I have a bit of a daily rhythm now where I move rooms during the day to keep things fresh – bed, office, couch, kitchen table, back yard – wireless is my friend
- local cafes – I have one cafe that i regularly take my laptop to. They don’t have wifi but I just write there (offline) and upload later. I find it’s a great place to blog without the distractions of incoming email and IM.
Change up your blogging environment and you might just find that it gives you a fresh perspective on blogging that will unleash some blogging creativity.
