Take a Detour to the Pitstop to Fill Your Content Bucket with Endless Inspiration
First, there are platforms. Then, we start creating content for the platforms. How do we get ideas to create endless content in the first place?
Life is a marathon. There are many days ahead of us. Yet, we work to compress one calendar year into a workday.
We tweet non-stop. We post on Linkedin non-stop. We write newsletters, articles, whitepapers as if tomorrow never comes.
Don’t get me wrong. Deep down, I embrace that mindset. I love to work. Working more and knowing I can contribute more makes me happy.
It does create a little peasy bit of a problem. The faster we extract ideas off our heads, the faster we run out of ideas. It is a Catch-22.
Therefore, we must think like an F1 racer. Stepping on the gas pedal is one thing racers do. They also learned to back it off and drive into the pitstop.
They recognize that the condition of the racing car is quintessential to their performance. That racing car to F1 racers is akin to our creative juice for content creators.
Knowing When to Drive into the Pit Stop
Of course, if you drive into the pitstop every round, you will definitely lose the race. The strategic balance is in play. The goal is to ensure we finish.
The icing on the cake holding a big trophy on top of the podium.
That is the big picture. The pitstop is part of the big picture.
“You need to take a break away from your work area so when you return you are more refreshed and ready to work.”
You should consider driving into the pitstop if you experience the following:
- Content fatigue — When you cannot bring yourself to create one more piece of content, even if it means typing 1 sentence on Twitter. Maybe, you do not even want to hop onto Twitter.
- Content on repeat loop — When you find yourself posting the same material over and over for the past 2 weeks. Make it the past 2 months.
- Content Impression Decay — When you get upset with a slight statistics decline. Or, maybe, when you start losing 1% of your subscribers.
In truth, creators know the above is part of the content treadmill game. But we are humans, after all. We want to do well, and we hate to see suboptimal results after a high.
Thus, we learn to seek inspiration to move on.
Author’s Note: It is common to experience the above, and there is no shame about it. We learn and become better. Everyone who suffers from a setback bounces back stronger and higher. I believe you can do the same.What Can We Find in the Pitstop?
In brief, we find fresh perspectives, interesting conversations, and people. Our immediate environment nourishes our minds and enriches our content minds.
I have a list of pitstops to visit when I am low on hustling energy. Every one of these pitstops fills my content journal with an endless list of ideas I can work on the next day.
Inspiration Pitstop # 1 — Cafes
- Interesting conversations — Visiting a café during the afternoon provides endless inputs about work, bosses, clients, prospects, and vendors. If you are lucky, you may catch a juicy gossip or two. This works if you write about #workplace relationships.
- Magazines — Cafes provide a stack of magazines for browsing. A stunning picture can trigger a wave of inspiration for #content marketing.
Inspiration Pitstop # 2 — Nature
- Clean and Green — Mother nature does a brilliant job at removing the stress blocks from our minds. I recommend a walk in a nature reserve if you are into #self-improvement or #mental health.
- Water, water, water — Get close to a beach. Sit at a bench and listen to the metronomic rhythm of waves slapping onto the beach. You appreciate #life and become in tune with the idea of work-life balance.
Inspiration Pitstop # 3 — Bookstores
- Success biographies — I enjoy reading how successful businessmen grow their empires from scratch. The 10X Rule, Invent & Wander, Principles are great books that inspire me to press on each time I fall.
- Books on communication — I read a lot on this genre. Deep down, I always feel that I lose deals because of my lacking communication skills. I am deeply humbled by the thousands of ways to improve our oral, written, body language proficiency. It gets me to think about the impression I project whenever I post one piece of content.
Author’s Note: You will have your pitstop for sure. Feel free to explore the list above if you need inspiration for new pitstops.Pitstops are littered with ideas and inspiration. That is if we are willing to explore one that we never had.
Summary
I know hamsters love their wheels. But hamsters do hop off too.
Content creators love our treadmills. We love to up the ante each time we hop on too. And we believe that we can keep running for hours without end.
But no. That is a sure bet for racing car breakdown before the finish line.
Have your eyes on the prize. That trophy and that podium finish are meaningful to us. Turning our side-hustles to our business, financial freedom, giving us an option to quit our 9–6 for good are options worth working for.
This journey is a fruitful one. And a long one.
Therefore, we need pitstops. Especially those that recharge our depleted mental and emotional batteries.
We can proceed to race again once our minds are filled with inspiration for work.
Or for content creation.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.