I see it so often in the online business world.

Heck, I’ve even fallen into this trap.

The desire to connect with your audience.

To share your thoughts and knowledge so that those amazing people can learn and grow, too.

Then thwap… the words just don’t come.

The thoughts about what to write are gone.

The idea well has run dry.

One day, after my coaching from my coach, I realized that writing my blog is about connection.

It is about sharing.

It is not about divine inspiration about what to write.

Holy fork!

So how do you push through the inspiration trap?

You commit to doing it.

Just like any other business task that you want to do but don’t totally love all of the time, you say you’re going to do it and then put your butt in the chair and type away.

Give Yourself a Carrot

The trick is figuring out what carrot you’re going to dangle in front of you to get you to complete that business task.

With something as boring as invoicing, the carrot is pretty clear – getting paid!

But with writing, you have to be more deceptive because we don’t have the more immediate gratification.

For me, I made a deal with myself – I must write my blog post by Monday morning and I can’t check my inbox until it’s done. Since I don’t check email over the week, I will have essentially been offline for my clients since Friday. That’s my internal motivator!

But maybe you work best with external expectations, so find yourself an accountability partner who will check in with you each week and make sure you’re getting your words out into the world.

Or perhaps you just can’t get your head around blogging because you have questions about how it actually feeds into your marketing strategy. Figure out what your questions are and get them answered so that you can be totally on board with the “why”.

Or it might be that you like to buck the traditional ways of doing things. If so, find your own way of getting your newsletter out once a week, which could be turning your blog into a vlog.

Give Yourself Permission to Not Be Great

Then, once you know what you need to put in place for yourself to write each week, tell yourself that your blog post and newsletter only need to be good enough.

It doesn’t need to directly sell your packages like a sales page.

It needs to engage with your audience, be helpful to them, and remind them that you’re here and this is something you’re jazzed to talk about.

You want to keep up that connection.

Give Yourself a Time Limit

That’s right – a specific time container to complete the task in.

A funny thing about time containers is that the time it takes to complete a task will typically expand or contract into the container we give it.

So if you give yourself five hours to write, edit and schedule your blog post and newsletter for the week, it’ll likely take you all of those five hours.

But five hours can feel like a drain or just simply like a lot of time, especially if you’re aiming to work 20 hours or less each week.

Let’s revisit that scenario where now you give yourself two hours to do the exact same steps. It’ll likely take you those two hours, and be just as note-worthy to your audience.

Then remember to give yourself the go-ahead to have your blog post and newsletter be good enough.

If you need someone to give you that permission slip, consider this post it!

Some weeks you will knock it out of the park. And some weeks, it won’t be your best content.

All of that a-ok.

Because your honing your voice and building the habit so that when it comes time to sit your butt in the seat and type away on your keyboard, you’re able to get past the discomfort and inner resistance of putting your words out into the world so much faster.

You just do it, cross it off your to-do list and move on.

When you go to write your weekly blog post and newsletter, what goes well and what goes not-so-well for you? Tell me about it below.

Photo by Nigel Tadyanehondo on Unsplash