6 Lessons brain fog taught me
I really wasn’t sure about sharing this blog, even for me this seemed like a bit of personal overshare even for me, but as I learnt useful business lessons from it then I hope it may prove useful to someone else as well.
Things had been ticking along quite nicely at Busy Keys HQ. Then an unexpected family crisis happened; work had to go on hold. Luckily, my clients were all completely understanding of the situation.
At the time I felt no guilt about downing tools, maybe because we thought it would only be a 24/48-hour crisis (it elongated slightly). But mostly because family comes first and to deal with that work had to pause.
Photo credit David Colde via Unsplash. These poor creatures know all about unexpected crisis at the moment poor things.
Once everything had settled down and we were reunited at home, it was time for a bit of self-care. I had gone into superhero survival mode during the crisis and I completed that role well. Even if I do say so myself! Once it was over and my cape came off, I was exhausted. I needed to sleep and let my brain switch back to day to day life instead of high alert.
Again, all things considered I didn’t worry about this, there was no way I could do work any justice until I could think straight. I planned to ease myself back in gently, reply to some messages, do some of the smaller tasks for clients and by then I would be back in my normal rhythm or so I thought. The first few steps were easy but when it came to the day with my normal size “to do” list, I was stuck! Literally back in the brain fog, I couldn’t find a starting point or an idea to get me going anywhere in my head. Then the inner critic kicked in, “you need to get stuff done.” “People are relying on you.” “Just focus harder.” “You have lost all your momentum, what if it never comes back.” These were all things going through my head. It was a vicious circle, the more I put pressure on myself to achieve something, the harder it became.
I guess it’s like writers’ block. Coming up with regular content for marketing especially in the fast pace of social media timelines is hard. You want to find something to say to keep your audience interested and add value for them. In this case I think I was trying too hard.
Luckily, I knew I had one of my trusty spider diagrams of “blog ideas” around, so the first task was to find that and see if it still inspired me. I do love a brainstorm on paper. Writing down anything that pops up can help ideas begin to flow. Well that worked and from that spider diagram of ideas and recent personal events came this blog and an idea for a second blog topic, result!
If you have stuck with me this far then thank you, you’re probably wondering what the point of this very sharing blog post is, so here is what I learnt from this experience.
Unexpected events happen and can upset your rhythm but it’s not permanent.
Don’t hurry the self-care that might be necessary to get back on track.
Keep a spider diagram of ideas, no matter how random they might come in handy. Emptying your brain onto paper, helps to keep the hold of those ideas for future reference.
Even something tiny can spark inspiration, go with it, it will grow!
Use personal events and struggles or achievements to start a brainstorm of ideas. I believe keeping business content realistic to normal life makes it more relatable.
My last incidental tip is always having a way to record/capture an idea when away from your workspace. I lost a flash of blog genius once because it came to me when driving and I had no voice record option or paper to write it on once I parked up. I still kick myself over that as the idea never popped back.
I was so lucky my clients were understanding, and my current business situation allowed me to press pause and start again once the situation was settled. If you wouldn’t be able to press pause then do remember that if you get stuck outsourcing on an ad-hoc basis to a VA might see you through a crisis 😉.