Content Creation: How to Inspire Yourself When You’re Tired

This tired feeling has been stealing all my creativity lately, and maybe it has been stealing yours, too. Writing sometimes feels like an obligation. Even though we know that blogging is good for our websites, sometimes our personal lives take precedence. Things like napping suddenly seem so much more important. Ever since I returned from a trip overseas, I’ve been wanting more and more naps. Darn that jet lag!

I’ll tell you what has worked for me to help with the tiredness.

Write a Bunch of Headlines

I spent four hours creating headlines, so that when I go into my blog now, there are 26 topics (one for each remaining week of the year). That way, I don’t have to rack my brains trying to figure out what to write. And if you don’t think writing headlines is a lot of hard work, you haven’t read Headline Writing: Ten Reasons It’s a Pain in the Asterisk. Yes, it’s from 2015, but it’s still a pain in the asterisk in 2018.

Photo by Thomas Leuthard

Think Like Your Customer

Find four topics that your potential customer might like to hear about. Write those down on an index card. Now write about those things. Chris Lema suggested that at a WordCamp Orange County conference, and it was very helpful. By the way, if you don’t know Chris Lema, go and read his blog for some wonderful ideas.

Take a Walk

This wakes up the little gray cells. And you could even take up the tradition that Aristotle began of taking a walking meeting, rather than sitting. After all, sitting is supposed to be as bad as smoking these days. Here’s an article and Ted Talk about walking meetings: Walking meetings? 5 surprising thinkers who swore by them. There are lots of ways that walking can boost your creativity, and I talked about those ways here: How to Unleash Your Creativity with One Simple Trick.

Journaling

If you’ve never tried journaling, I highly recommend it. Now you might think that journaling is something that you’d only try for personal reasons, but it can be highly effective for business reasons as well. Free writing, doodling, and drawing are three ways that you can gain access to your creative side. For more about journaling, see: 7 Ways to Use Journaling for Creativity.

How Do You Get Into a Creative Zone?

Do you have a secret for getting into a creative spirit? Let me know in the comments! And thank you!