We are now over three weeks into the New Year and things are getting harder. Everyone comes into January with new goals and new resolutions and a new commitment to improve on their follow-through in reaching those goals. Whether it's writing a post every day, writing 10 comments a day, or threading 20 times a day, whatever, they are all doable but the problem is, the vast majority of us weren't doing these things before the New Year, and now we're hitting a wall. It's not easy to stay this committed and this active. If it was, there would be one million of us using this platform every day rather than one thousand.
So what do we do? How do we get ourselves to break through the negative energy we heap on ourselves when we "fail" to do the things we know we should be doing?
I keep seeing people having this issue and I know I'm not alone in dealing with it, so I dug out a post I wrote a couple years ago that has some of the things that help me. Seems like a good time to bring it back.
Face it, we've all been there. You open up your browser, scroll through the headlines, and realize you just don't have it in you to do anything today. Maybe the markets are down and that depresses you. Maybe you look at a couple of the articles posted on LeoFinance and realize you've got nothing to add. Maybe you click on the pencil to try and write a post and nothing comes out. There's nothing for you to add to the conversation. It's all been said already. Everyone is making money around you while you sit spinning your wheels. It can be very disheartening. You're in the doldrums and as "easy" as it should be to comment and vote on a few posts, you just can't get yourself to do it.
It truly is one of the hardest things about being successful on this platform. No matter where you look, you always, ALWAYS see someone doing better than you. They write better posts than you do. More creative, more pictures, better sentences, better ideas, etc. And, of course, they are getting better payouts as well. You see posts reaching $100 or more while you struggle to even get to 100 Leo, or 1000 Leo, whatever your goal happens to be. Meanwhile, your posts get pennies or a few dollars and it seems like it will take forever to create the stake you want to have. Your votes are worth pennies, at best, while they throw out votes in the dollars or even tens of dollars. All the while, the excitement keeps building in the platform and #Leo / #Cub / #Hive keep going up making it even harder to get what you want.
Sound familiar? It should. Because, as I said, it doesn't matter who you are, there is ALWAYS someone ahead of you. Even the biggest accounts on here are looking "up" at someone wishing they could be there instead of where they are. It's human nature. I would even bet onealfa has a few people in mind out there he'd like to chase down at some point. Maybe not. But it wouldn't surprise me. (Actually, he doesn't. I asked. lol )
So what do you do? How do you get over the feeling of futility that can sometimes overwhelm our ability to act? I don't have a magic answer but I have a few suggestions and a few "tools" I use when I reach that point (which happens on a regular basis, by the way).
First, I repeat a couple of mantras to myself. One is to just "keep my head down and do the little things so that the big things can happen without even noticing." It is an often overlooked fact that people fear being too successful almost as much as they fair failure. Everyone has their own personal sense of "worth" and sometimes, if we start becoming too successful, we subconsciously put on the brakes.
It's like the temperature in a house. If it gets too cold (we're not doing as well as we feel we should be), we turn on the heat. But if it gets too hot (we're doing better than we feel we might deserve), we can also turn on the AC to cool us down. By just sticking to the game plan of doing the little things (curating, commenting, voting) we can keep taking little steps without feeling like we're getting too big for our own good. After all, making 3 cents on a vote or comment isn't going to make a difference, right? Over time, this allows us to create a new "comfort zone" where we aren't so afraid of our own success.
A second phrase I use that I'm sure you've probably heard before is, "Do now what most people won't, so that later I can do what most people can't." As I said, lots of people start fast and then fizzle out for whatever reason. The tortoise and the hare comes to mind. If you can keep doing the little things consistently, you WILL continue to grow and ultimately reach your goals. While other people are off doing other things, if I can just keep engaging consistently, I know I will get to where I'm going.
The last thing I do, and probably the most important, is I try to have, at a minimum, my "worst" day. My pastor at our church gave a sermon about his prayer habits. He wanted to be "better" at praying. So he came up with a plan that his worst day of prayer would be two minutes before he went to sleep. That way, when the same doldrums hit him, he would have something that he always knew he could accomplish, even when nothing else seemed to be going right.
Now obviously, the goal is to be much better than that, but if you know that on your "worst" day, you still will be accomplishing something and taking positive action, you can at least feel like you're not completely stuck in neutral. Mine is simply to make sure I keep my voting bar off of 100%. I also want to comment on at least two posts, but absolutely worst case, I go find 5-10 posts or even comments that I can upvote. It takes 5 minutes.
Very few of us have the mental fortitude to perform at a high level every single day. I know I don't. But if I can at least have my "worst" day every day, I will continue to make progress and the good days will be that much better.
What tricks do you use to get yourself going when you get "stuck"? Let me know in the comments below.
As always, if you like the content, please consider an upvote and comment. I will happily reciprocate.
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I haven't really figured out what my worst day is but I have had a few bad days where I let my voting power overfill. It's something that I should try to avoid but I told myself, I will be back tomorrow during the day and I didn't. I guess I would have to say that it would be to use up my voting power or at least set it on auto-vote so that it doesn't overfill.
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Yes, that is my "worst" day. I always make sure that before I go to bed I at least get my voting power down around 90%. That way I'm not wasting time having it sit at 100%. I've added throwing out a couple threads to my worst day as well. Easy, quick, and it helps add transactions to the platform.
Yeah you are absolutely right. Working on hive is not easy because you have commented on others posts if your comment is meaningless no one upvote your comments. As I have been doing hyper work for two months no big member is still on my post or I put it daily and put it hard. We have learned in childhood that man will continue to work hard one day will achieve success. First one has to read people's post, then one has to comment about it takes almost 8 hours. As for new users, they don't even have much HB to vote and earn something from there.
Yes, if I was new to Hive/Leo, I would focus on commenting and threads. That is where you're likely to get the most exposure early in the game. Posting is something you should do for practice writing and to start figuring out what works and what doesn't. But, as you say, if no one knows who you are then you're not going to get many people reading it. It's a process and it certainly doesn't happen overnight. You have to keep your focus on the "effort" at this point because if you focus on the votes you can get discouraged. The effort is what you can control.
The other thing is that the hardest part is the beginning. Building the first 100 Hive or Leo is the hardest. The second 100 gets a little easier and so on. The key is to mark where you are now, and then look back in 3 months and see how far you've come. Then work for another 3 months and compare that to the first 3. You will see the progress if you widen your scope. You just need to keep doing the little things every day and slowly but surely it will build. None of the "successful" authors on here are in their first year, right? I've been here for five years and active every day for the last two. It takes times but there are many, many examples of where you can be in a couple years simply by putting in the effort.
Yeah you are absolutely right. Without struggle no one can achieve his goals and success. I will try my best and cant stop posting and commenting. But sometime i disheart because i have created a post full of my struggle and hardworking but no one seen my post. I will continue this journey like this and work hard day and night and one day I will definitely succeed. You are absolutely right, in the beginning every work seems difficult and it takes hard work, but when a person spends time on this work, it becomes easy for him. As you said you have been working for five years and you are active everyday. I will keep working hard and one day my HD will be more and I will support the new user's.
It is definitely a process. I remember when I started I would write what I thought were some really good articles, only to have them barely get any votes at all. In the meantime, shit-posters were getting tens of dollars on their "charts" or "bitcoin is higher today" posts and I'm like, "This sucks!" lol But, I've stuck with it and slowly but surely I've gotten better at writing and I've commented and interacted enough with people that my name now has some recognition. I'm still nowhere near where some of the top posters are, but I keep pecking away and growing. Name recognition and commenting are where it's at in the beginning. If you start commenting and interacting with other peoples' posts, at some point, they'll start interacting with yours. Like I said, it doesn't happen overnight, but it will happen if you stay consistent. Keep at it!
I appreciate your struggle. You are absolutely right if a person wants to be successful then first of all he has to work hard. It has taken you a long time to succeed, five years. I will do struggle day and night, every single day will definitely be successful. I reply to every comment so I can get to know people. Thank you so much for sharing your story with me. This has given me more courage and dedication.
Glad I could help. Just keep at it. Make your worst day something that keeps moving you forward, even if you don't have the energy to put in a bunch of time. Get your votes in and maybe post a couple threads and then forget about it and come back the next day and try to do a little more. Just don't quit. That's the only way to guarantee failure.
Yeah i agree with you. If we don't give up and keep working hard, we will surely get success. Can't comment much on today as I have an injury in my right hand. After every night comes a new morning, I will continue to work hard. I also had to change my content so I will post daily even after changing. Will try to bring something that people like. Thanks for your great and helpful advice.
Thanks to this healthy dose of motivation, I felt a new kind of energy while reading your post. The line that really gets me into deep thought is this:
After reading this beautiful line, I immediately ask myself "have I done enough" or given my true best effort to achieve my goals (not just here in Hive but also in my personal life). I guess I'll have to think it through and hopefully come up with an answer in the coming months.
It's funny how this one line made me feel scared and excited (at the same time) about my future.
Yeah, we sometimes get so wrapped up in the bigger picture that we don't see the little actions it takes to get there. We just need to stay focused on the "little things" we can control and the bigger ones will happen without us even realizing it.
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What you said here reminds me of this quote:
"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out."
This for me is very applicable in my Hive journey and in my personal goals too.
My goal at the beginning of this year is to collect the busy bee badge as much as I can, I knew it will be hard every single week so I set my worst month to one.
Starting this January I already got one, something I never get in all my time on the hive. Now I just have to strive and get one more to know I have had a great month. With time I intend to increase the number of my worst badge per month.
This has helped me to write more frequently and easily as well, I felt the improvement.
Taking things bit by bit, then increasing my efforts as I progress helps a lot.
You've been doing great! Keep at it. It is amazing how much momentum you can generate by simply doing the little things every day. They become second nature and the big things just happen organically.
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I can say today was my worst day because I had plans to come up with a post idea for tomorrow or a fiction story for the Inkwell prompt. I can assure you I am not getting headway at all.
But I do love point two because no matter what happens, we shouldn't be too fast so we don't the details on the way. And we have to always remember that it's the slow and steady that wins the race. Which obviously reminds me of one of the laws of power, 'Never seem to be in a hurry. Hurrying portrays a lack of control over time'
Most importantly, we should never forget the magic of time. Time makes all things better, if we wait. While waiting, let's do the little that we can do.
Thanks for sharing.
Make your "worst day" a day you still accomplish something. Even though you haven't come up with an idea yet for your writing, you are still moving forward by reading and commenting. Because of that you'll get votes and you'll probably also come up with that idea just from participating on the platform. Good luck!
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The worst day you had was not so bad after all. I get the feeling. I paused on hive activity twice in the last two years for more than six months. That shows how draining hive engagements can be. I do not have answer and that’s the reason I hibernated. When I am active I go back to good old Actifit posts. They are easy,less demanding and will help you kickstart. That’s my trick 💁
Find a "worst" day and just do that every day. Like I said in the article, for me it's just keeping my voting power off the 100% mark. If I'm not at least voting, then I truly am stuck at nothing. By voting, at least I get half of my vote, plus I help the platform with transactions, plus I'm giving other people votes and encouragement, plus I usually can't help myself and need to make a comment or two. If I at least do that every day I'm always moving forward, even if it's only a little. But I'm still here seeing what's out there which allows me to get reengaged just through osmosis. lol
It's okay to take a couple days off completely. Just don't let it turn into a week, then a month, then 6 months. You're wasting money.
ha.ha!
Not today, Satan!
Hm yeah def have been there though.
2023 is going to be an extreme wildcard year.
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Some of us are there a little more often than others. :-)
That's probably a really good way to put it. Starting solidly in a bear and then...? Who knows? But I'm not gonna lie, it's nice to have a couple green weeks just to rekindle a little hopium. These winters are looonngg.