Blog Overload, Blog Fatigue & Blog Burnout / Day 21 Make a Recommendation

May 21, 2008 at 10:39 pm | In 31 Day Comment Challenge, Blogging, Ruminations Blog, comment08 | 6 Comments
Tags: 31 Day Comment Challenge, blog, blog burnout, blog fatigue, comment08, Education Blogging, Education Blogs

Tired Woman sitting infront of a Computer I made the realization yesterday that while the 31 Day Comment Challenge has been a great learning experience, it has also been a bit more of a challenge than I thought it would be and realizing that I am devoting way more than 10 minutes to research and write a blog post.

I got to thinking about what leads to blogging overload, blog fatigue and blogging burnout and was wondering where I might be on the spectrum.

Blogging<——>Blog Overload<——>Blog Fatigue<——>Blog Burnout——> Blog RIP

These were some of the best definitions that I could come up with for these terms:

Blog Overload -When the blogger gets overloaded either by 1.) daily posts to his or her own blog or 2.) keeping up with reading and responding to blogs.

Blog Fatigue – When blogging becomes a challenge and the blogger gets tired of daily blogging and decides to take a break.

Blog Burnout – When blogging becomes too much of a chore or becomes a burden and the blogger decides to stop blogging altogether.

Five Stages of Blogging According to Kent Newsome and Jason Kaneshiro, The Five Stages of Blogging:

1. Excitement: While setting up a new blog, the blogger is full of great ideas, is inspired, and expectations are high.
2. Expectation: When starting from zero, little things mean a lot and progress seems exponential.
3. Frustration: Blogging meet diminishing returns, turns into inefficient work, and the blogger finds it harder and harder to get attention amid the multitude of other blogs.
4. Alienation: Rejection of the blogosphere.
5. Abandonment: A dead blog.

Paul Kedrosky offered the following insights as to why blog fatigue happens:

There are likely as many reasons as there are bloggers, but chief among them is the insidious way that blogging goes from a diversion to an obligation.

Consider: Many people start blogging because they think it’s a useful replacement for sending things around on mailing lists to friends.

The trouble is, most of the people reading such blogs are not friends, so bloggers start worrying that these people won’t understand when they take a few days (or weeks) off from sending things around.

Paul Kedrosky offered the following insights as to whether blog fatigue will ever go away:

Probably not. The economics of blogging (for most bloggers) will never be such that they can count on a large stream of income flowing in as a result of their musings. Those people are always going to be at risk for blog fatigue, if mostly because they inevitably wonder just what the heck they are doing this for.

They will either decide to

1.) Blog on their own schedule, not that of some imagined reader, or 2. ) Become “blog wood” — one of the myriad abandoned blogs floating around in the blogosphere’s many currents.

Preventing Blogging Burnout

Ideally I’d like to keep myself from getting Blogging Burnout, becoming one of the many abandoned blogs and ending up as ‘blog wood” or a Blog RIP (Rest in Peace) on the Blog Reaper. (The Blog Reaper publishes a blog of obituaries on dead blogs.)

Activity Day 21: Make a Recommendation

The activity for today was to make a recommendation for a resource in a blog comment and be sure to indicate why you’re making the recommendation. The resource could be a link to another blog or post or a link to a book or a video.

What I decided to do was to make a recommendation to the 31 Day Comment Challenge to look at the topics of Blog Overload, Blog Fatigue and Blog Burnout. In particular I’d like to read what seasoned Edubloggers and others recommend about preventing Blog Overload from turning into Blog Burnout and Blog RIP.

Accomplishments Day 21

Researching the topics of Blogging Overload, Blog Fatigue and Blogging Burnout

Trying to come up with some kind of definitions for these terms.

Deciding to share this information as my “Make a Recommendation” for today’s activity.

Posting the information on the 31 Day Comment Challenge Brainstorming Page for the Activities.

Writing and Posting Day 21 of the Challenge.

Reflections & Revelations for Day 21

I made the realization yesterday that I am feeling blog overload both from writing blog entries and from following blog posts from the challenge. Since I made that realization, I figured that I’d better try and do something about it, before heading into blog fatigue and blog burnout.

Hopefully this topic will be taken up as one of the final week activities for the challenge.

Sources:

Jason Kaneshiro. August 8, 2007 Navigating The Five Stages Of Blogging Fatigue. Blog Hearald.

Kent Newsome. June 29, 2007. From Creation to Abandonment: the 5 Stages of Blogging. Newsome.org.

Paul Kedrosky. November 2, 2004. Blog Fatigue Virus Takes Hold. Infectious Greed.

This blog post is part of The Comment Challenge, comment08.

6 Comments

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Hi Kirsti–I completely understand the feeling of being overwhelmed by the challenge. When we did the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog last summer, this is about the time that most of us felt like we were just going through the motions and were ready for things to be finished. I think this is a normal part of any exercise like this. One of the beauties of the web, though, is that this is all online for you to return to if/when you want. No need to kill yourself over it. Come back when you’re ready

Michele Martin — May 22, 2008 #
Michele

Thanks for confirming that I might not be the only one feeling overwhelmed by the challenge. It seems that writing about feeling blog overload yesterday plus having some easier challenges has helped. I’d hate to not finish my first attempt at joining a challenge.

drdyer — May 22, 2008 #
Hi Kirsti – Overload as Michele points out is definitely normal. Reality of this type of Challenge is you get out what you put in — you have been doing some really amazing work during the Challenge and have clearly learned a lot as a result.

“Seasoned Edubloggers and others recommend about preventing Blog Overload from turning into Blog Burnout and Blog RIP.” Wouldn’t necessarily call myself seasoned however realising that most readers are happy for you to post whenever and don’t unsubscribe if you reduce your blog posting takes a lot of pressure off.

Probloggers will often post several times daily as a method of increasing readership whereas most edublogger readers are more than happy if an edublogger posts only 2-3 times per week.

So I manage by having set routines on the number of posts I write per week; and if I feel like I’m becoming reluctant to write a post I will force myself to write only because I know I’m suffering from block.

Sue Waters — May 22, 2008 #
You have company here! I’ve been feeling totally burned out and both of the blogs I write for are suffering.

This challenge has also fostered discouraging side effects. Unhelpful thoughts and feelings of being uninteresting and not knowing how to write things people care about.

In the first challenge, Michele and Sue were the only ones in our group who finished all the tasks on schedule. The rest of us did them as we felt like it, there are some tasks I never completed. I still got a lot out of it.

Christine Martell — May 22, 2008 #
I must admit last weekend I was starting to get very fed up with the Comment Challenge and I had only got to Day 15. So I have taken a bit of a break and have been doing other things (still blogging though) and I feel fresh again. So my suggestion – have a change of scene, start a different project or just have a break for a few days.

Sarah Stewart — May 24, 2008 #
Thanks all for the validation that I was not the only one feeling overwhelmed.

Thankfully in addition to finding the last few activities a bit easier to complete, a few of my other obligations lightened up which has helped make it easier.

I think writing about feeling overwhelmed, plus the validation that I wasn’t alone and that others have felt this in the past helped the most.

drdyer — May 24, 2008 #