10 Tips to Put Mojo Back into Your Blog

Freud divided the brain into three parts: the ego, the id, and the superego. When scientists started using brain imaging, no one was able to locate these three parts, so we assume he was speaking in metaphors.

Now that we can peak inside the living brain, scientists tell us there are 3 parts: the cerebellum (the snake brain), the limbic system (the rat brain), and the more evolved human brain or the prefrontal cortex.

What about your Mojo? Where’s that located? Some of you have lost it, maybe you had a glimpse of it back in 2006 and have been looking to get it back ever since.

I’m talking about motivation, drive, juice, however you want to call it. Mojo is something no one has yet located in any MRI’s or brain scans. We know it exists because we’ve felt it profoundly, some would say as profoundly as sex.

It’s what happens when we’re so lost in doing something we enjoy that we lose track of time. It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning and keeps us up late at night. It puts a smile on our faces, and a zip in our walk.

Flow

It’s called flow. It’s when you’re “in the zone.” Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote about this in the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Psychologist Csikszentmihalyi's famous investigations of "optimal experience" have revealed that what makes an experience genuinely satisfying is a state of consciousness called flow. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and a total involvement with life.

Csikszentmihalyi demonstrates the ways this positive state can be controlled, not just left to chance. He teaches how, by ordering the information that enters our consciousness, we can discover true happiness and greatly improve the quality of our lives.

What About Your Blog Flow?

So how do you find mojo if it feels like you're out of flow? Routines help keep us organized, but often work habits dampen creativity.This will slow down your blog writing quality when you get in a rut.

I propose that you can delibertly find your mojo and create blog flow on purpose. Why leave it to chance? While I'm not sure that greatly improving the quality of your blog will lead you to discover true happiness, it sure can't hurt. At the very least you will enter the realm of blog happiness and start seeing results.

1. Know your yourself and your business well
2. Write out 5 goals for your blog
3. Write out 5 categories or subtopics or keyword phrases you want to focus on
4. Get rid of widgets and old side-bar items that don't support 1, 2, and 3
5. Create and showcase 3 key content pieces on your blog: free, free for email, low fee
6. Write at least 5 days a week, always have a draft saved and almost ready to go
7. Hook up blogs to feed into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
8. Take one day off a week to explore creative ideas outside your usual niche
9. Spend time interviewing other people, asking questions, especially on social media sites
10. Monitor your moods so you know when you're entering the zone and getting excited: do more of what you enjoy

This last tip may be the most important of all. We have multiple times during the day that something gets us excited about our work. Be aware of when those times are. Make your work more like play.

Comments

[Vinod Srinivas]

Hey Patsi, I must say, this is an illuminating post on bringing the mojo back into blogging. I especially liked point 8, which I think is something all professionals need to do. Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own little worlds that we don't get to see the huge potentials of associating with other niches. Point 8 is a great tip for anyone who's looking at expanding their business.