Sean’s Blog

I’ve been getting burned out recently.  I just don’t seem to have the enthusiasm that I i previously did.  Not at work and not for blogging.   I’ve noticed that this occasionally happens and I usually have some good tricks for dealing with it.  I though since I’m going through one of these periods, I’d share some and hopefully get out of my rut.

Take some time out - It’s been over six months since I’ve taken a vacation.  Now for a lot of people this would be no big deal, but I’ve gotten myself on a schedule thanks to a pretty generous vacation policy of going on a trip once every three or four months.  This year with buying a house, planning a wedding, and Jess doing her student teaching, we just haven’t had the time or the cash.  Generally a good vacation will reboot me well enough that I can start fresh.

Get more active - When I find myself lazing around like I was on Thursday, I will break out my list of things that I’ve been putting off.  Between Friday and Saturday, I hung new blinds, cleaned and mopped the entire downstairs and (after 3 trips to Lowe’s and a lot of cursing) fixed a leaky tub faucet.  It didn’t help with my lack of motivation for work or blogging, but it definitely helped me feel like i didn’t waste my weekend.

Don’t sleep so much - For some reason I find that when I’ in a rut, I sleep alot.  Making myself get up earlier really seems to help me get moving.  Sleeping in until 10am usually leads to a lazy day, whereas if I force myself to get up at 7:30, I can relax a bit as well as get moving on projects that I need to take care of.

Power through it - Sometimes the only thing thing to do is just force yourself to get back on the horse.  I find that once I start writing or working on project, even if initially it is hard to really get started, sometimes just starting to write or work on a project that I’ve been putting will start the creative juices flowing and it will become easier.

Hopefully some of these may be useful to you.  Just writing this post has helped kickstart me a bit.