Becoming a content creator: How to find the right mindset
Being a content creator can feel daunting.
Content creation usually starts with a stack of really great notes and your brain… but you still face the blank page and the idea that you’re starting from scratch.
Here are some tips on how to find the right mindset to create more content.
Blogging is a huge blank canvas where anything is possible. That vision is both exciting and terrifying all at once.
In blogging or any new project, there are generally two personality types or approaches. Neither is completely right or wrong, and both have their plusses and minuses.
Two ways to tackle a project
Let's think about the artist for a second.
If you're an artist, a blank sketchbook feels promising, more so than a stack of scrap paper or a ream of copy paper. The fact that it's bound together with a hard cover makes it feel official and permanent.
The Doer
In the early days you may bring it everywhere and sketch everything in site, whether you produce drawings that look like something real or that look like a 5 year old's scribble.
This scenario illustrates the doer. The doer will jump into a project without looking and will produce for quantity's sake, without thinking of the consequences. Doers often get labeled as extroverts, messy, and reckless. But they get stuff done.
The Dreamer
On the flipside, you may let the sketchbook let sit next to you at your desk, completely untouched, while you try to connect with it via osmosis, and promise to start sketching in it — soon. Days, weeks, or even months may pass. You may crack it open a few times, only to wonder whether to start sketching on the very first page, or generously start several pages in to protect your work. You may even finally complete a sketch, and then let the sketchbook sit there untouched for several more weeks.
Does this sound like you? You're the dreamer. Dreamers get pegged with labels like perfectionist, uptight, and meticulous. But, dreamers are excellent planners, but sometimes to a fault.
Questions to ask yourself before you start blogging
The goal for starting any project is to fall somewhere between the Dreamer and the Doer. You want to make sure to have a well thought out plan of attack so you end up with a tangible and sensible blog, but you also don't want to analyze so hard that the blog never comes to fruition.
If you're thinking of starting a blog, there are several questions that you need to be able to answer for yourself:
What do you want to blog about?
Why do you want to blog?
Will anyone even read my blog?
How often can you blog?
How do you avoid failure?
How do you make sure all of your ducks are in a row?
What ducks even need to be in the picture?
What's your biggest setback with blogging?
Whether you're just starting to think about blogging or have been blogging for a while, everyone runs into roadblocks that can leave you feeling uninspired or stuck.
You may have found that you have so much old content that doesn't fit in to your future blogging vision. Or, you may be so jammed in the planning phase that you don't have anything to show for all of your hard brainstorming work.
What's your biggest block with blogging right now? Are you the doer or the dreamer? And can you answer the blogging questions above?
Cover photo by J. Kelly Brito
