Finding time to blog when you are already juggling with work, family, and other commitments is one of the most common challenges bloggers face – including me.
This week I’d like to share eight tips and strategies to help you get the most out of your time.
1. Work out your life priorities
Time management has a lot to do with sorting out your priorities. But before you look at your blogging priorities (which I’ll get into in a moment), I think it’s important to look at your life traits.
As a young adult, I completed a time management course as part of my studies. And one of the exercises we had to do was record what we were doing every minute of every day for an entire week. Every 15 minutes I would take out the piece of paper I was carrying and write down what I was doing.
It was pretty confrontational
At the end of the week, I added up the time I had spent on the various activities. And I was amazed at how little time I spend on things related to my priorities – my studies, my career, and my relationships. Instead, I spent most of my time watching TV, playing computer games (I was a young man), and drinking in the pub (I was also a college student).
Yes, I had a great time and enjoyed my independence. But I was still amazed at how strong the separation there was between my priorities and the actual time it took.
I like to think that I spend my time much more productively these days. But I’m sure if I did the same exercise today, I would still confront the results a little bit.
How do you spend your time If you’re not sure, there is a similar exercise you can try. You can use the pen and paper method I used or install something like the RescueTime tool.
And when you have some results, see how they stack up against your priorities. Are they pretty in sync or is there a break? And what can you change
2. Work out your blogging priorities
Now let’s look at the priorities you have for your blog. Figuring out what to do can be difficult because you have so much could do at any time, such as:
- Write posts
- Read and reply to comments
- Post to your social media accounts
- Optimize your design
- find new readers
- Monetize your blog
- Creation of media kits
- Check your statistics in Google Analytics.
Whenever I get overwhelmed with all the tasks I have to do (yes, it still happens), I try to remove them immediately by asking myself, “What are the most important things I have to do?”
In other words, what are my blogging priorities?
For me there are four main areas:
- create great content
- Find readers and promote my blog
- Building a community and commitment to my current readers
- Monetization.
These are the four non-negotiable things I have to do with my blog. Chances are, your blogging priorities will be similar depending on what stage you are at in your blogging journey. However, you can’t prioritize them if you don’t know what they are.
For some people, just knowing what to do is enough. Personally, I create dedicated times on my calendar to focus on each one. That way, I know I’ll always get them done.
What are your blogging priorities? And how do you make sure they get done?
3. Include “batching”
In the early days of my blogging career, I sat down and wrote a post. When I finished, I published it and then went to social media to promote it. After that, I would respond to any comments I received. And I’m sure I would do a number of other tasks for this one post.
And for the next post I would repeat the process again. And so on.
It seemed pretty logical at the time. But nowadays we all know that multitasking makes us less efficient. Now I concentrate on one task at a time and do everything in batches.
When I sit down to write a blog post, I am actually writing three or four of them. When I do social media, I take half an hour to keep them busy with social media. I try to allow larger blocks of time for these activities.
I do the same with social media. I will sit down for half an hour at the end of my morning. I will allow half an hour to schedule social media posts on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, etc.
Setting blocks of time aside and getting things done in batches instead of jumping from job to job made me a lot more productive. (I even wrote a post about that.)
So why not give it a try?
4. Try to blog mentally
When I started blogging, I didn’t have much time to sit down and write. I worked three part-time jobs and studied in the evenings. I was also newly married and lived in a great area so we went out a lot and had fun.
That gave me half an hour before work, my lunch break and some time late in the evening.
One of those part-time jobs was working in a warehouse, and most of the time I had pretty simple chores done. And while I was doing these tasks, I was planning my next blog post in my head. (I also wrote a few words in my notebook when my boss wasn’t watching.)
Which meant that in the half hour between finishing work and starting my studies, I could create a pretty decent blog post based on what I had written in my notebook and composed in my head.
Of course, these days we can use things like Evernote instead of having to carry around a notebook and pen. You can even say what you want to write and record out loud. But no matter what system you have, it is still a useful thing when you are short on time to actually sit down and write.
5. Take the time to generate ideas
I wasted a lot of time coming up with blog post ideas. I would take my time to write, but then spend half of it deciding what to write about. And quite often the idea didn’t come up and I had to come up with another one.
Nowadays one of the jobs I “pile up” is coming up with blog post ideas. I’m not trying to write anything. I just spend the time coming up with as many ideas as possible about what to write about. Sometimes the idea is nothing more than a word. In other cases it can be a title and a few point points. But I’m not trying to blog post so there is no pressure to make one.
And if it is When I have time to develop one, I can just choose one of my ideas and work with it.
I use a mind mapping tool called MindNode which is available on Apple devices. But you can do the same thing on a whiteboard or a piece of paper.
These days I’m going a step further and adding some of the ideas to our editorial calendar. That said, I not only have the idea, but a deadline that really adds to my productivity.
So take some time to brainstorm without having to blog post at the same time. Chances are they’ll come a lot easier.
6. Cancel the big jobs
Writing a blog post is a relatively small task. It may take a few hours or even a few days, but the finish line is never too far away.
However, some tasks – writing an eBook, creating a course, redesigning your blog – are quite extensive. And it can feel like you never do see the finish line, let alone reach it.
How can you complete these tasks without being completely overwhelmed? By breaking them down into lots of small jobs and then tackling them one by one.
How much you split them up and how many small jobs you create for yourself is up to you. Personally, I try to break them down into jobs that I can do in 15 to 30 minutes. That way, I can easily get them done by freeing up some time in my day, be it by getting up earlier or doing something else.
And every little job I do brings me one step closer to the big one.
So, if you’ve postponed a large task because it seems completely overwhelming, see if you can break it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.
7. Include slow blogging
Many bloggers feel that they have to post a certain number of times a week. It can be every day, every weekday, or maybe every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. They may also feel that they need to post something on their social media channels just as often (if not more).
I’ve felt the same way at times over the years. Once we posted on ProBlogger 14 times a week. I would see sites like Mashable and TechCrunch pump out story after story and feel the need to do the same.
You need to post more.
You will lose your traffic.
But now I realize that less can be more and that slow blogging is fine. In fact, our traffic has grown because we spend the time creating quality content.
I am not saying that you should definitely go back to one post per week. But don’t think that you have to post more often than you want to. Just posting a post for a deadline can do more harm than good to your blog in the long run.
8. Take time for your own wellbeing
The last thing I want to talk about is taking care of yourself. You need to take time to rest, exercise, and eat healthily. And don’t forget that you need to take care of both your mental and physical health.
Since I took the time to take care of myself, my productivity has increased dramatically. And I think that’s mainly because I take time out for my health, my social life, and my learning.
We need to give our body and mind time to relax, recharge, and renew.
What changes are you going to make?
Did I give you ideas on how to make the most of your time? Let us know in the comments what you will be doing differently.
Photo by Kunj Parekh on Unsplash