Disclaimer: The tips I share in this post are geared to losing your passion for a project. If you’ve lost your passion in marriage or a relationship, I recommend that you speak to a counselor or trusted friend!
Somewhere along the road of life, we all lose our passion. This happened to me recently. Hopefully as I share my story it will help you!
Three years ago I started a blog for our local community. I had high hopes that it would reach the masses and help our community save their hard-earned money. The first year I was super pumped to share the deals in our community. I added in new features like free local events and even business spotlights.
Last year I began to get burned out. I had been working on this blog for two years, spending multiple hours a week with nothing to show for it. As much as I wanted it to, the numbers just hadn’t grown much since the year before. After talking to a blogging friend, I decided to try some new things to see if I could draw in the masses (we live in a large city and if even a fraction of the people in our city visited the blog I would have been excited).
One year later, I was again burnt out. I had tried everything I knew to make the blog appealing, but nothing had changed. I knew it was time to do something different and earlier this month I made the hard decision to take a step back from the blog.
Here are a few steps that have helped me with this decision as I walked through this journey. Hopefully, they’ll help you if you’ve lost your passion for a project:
1. Take A Break
Last year when I started to get burnt out, my blogging friend encouraged me to take a break from this project. I took two weeks off and it was refreshing. Stepping away for a couple weeks gave me the renewed energy that I needed.
2. Re-Evaluate
In the two weeks that I took off from blogging, I re-evaluated what I was doing and how I was doing it. I decided to try a few new things to draw new people from our community in. After my two week break, I came back, not only with renewed energy, but with a renewed passion. Because I had re-evaluated, I was more passionate about this project.
3. Walk Away
I don’t know about you, but it can be difficult to walk away from a project, especially one that you have poured your heart and soul into for three years. But at the beginning of this month, I heard the Lord clearly tell me that it was time to let it go. As I said before, my passion was gone and I was burnt out. It sounds horrible, but I dreaded opening the computer and finding deals to share. It was time to walk away.
I decided to stop sharing the daily/weekly deals. The site now focuses on deals that don’t change very often (weekly dining specials, kids eat free, etc.) It has been a very freeing decision for me and I don’t regret it one bit.
Losing your passion for a project doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll eventually walk away from it like I did. Perhaps you just need to take a break or re-evaluate the situation.
If you do decide that it’s time to walk away, I don’t recommend that you leave anyone hanging. If you’re working with someone else, give them plenty of notice so they’ll know how to proceed.
Now it’s your turn. What do you recommend someone do if they’ve lost their passion?
Photo Credit: Lynn Friedman cc (added title text box and ThriftyTsTreasures.com to original photo)
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