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As a homeschooling mom who runs two blogs and one YouTube channel, I have learned some precious time management tips that will help you supercharge your blogging productivity within the next week. All you need to do is to implement the time management tips I will share with you by following the exact plan I will lay out in this post.
Top 7 Time Management Tips for Bloggers
I am not an organized person by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t like schedules and charts. As a younger woman, sticking up with projects was definitely not one of my strength. I was the kind of person who starts something but gives up as she loses interest. These time management tips are the key points that have helped me stay consistent as a blogger without having to create a fancy schedule or become super organized. They are simple and straight forward, but powerful.
1. Never Lose Sight of Your End Goal
Your mindset is extremely important as you learn to stick to your blogging schedule. The first thing you need to do is to clarify in your head why you are doing what you are doing. What is your end goal? Your end goal is sometimes referred to as your “why”. It has to trigger an emotional response within you. For example, if you want financial freedom for your family, you can think of the emotional safety you would feel if you didn’t have to worry about debt and if you had the ability to move to a different country should the need arise (I think you have an idea of what my “why” is now). Yours could be to fulfill a dream that you have always had like spending a year traveling the world or opening a business or an organization to help those in need. Spend some time thinking about it. Ask yourself these questions if you feel stucK:
- What would make life most fulfilling for you?
- How could making enough money blogging help achieve this?
- How much money do you need to make blogging to be able to achieve your dream?
- How would your life be different if you could make this happen?
As you ask yourself these questions, feel the emotions that thinking about your dreams being fulfilled trigger. Let yourself dwell in these emotions. This is what you need to always remember when you don’t feel like doing the work.
2. Break Up Your Work in Small Manageable Chunks
You may want to do all your blogging work on Saturday instead of doing a little bit of work most days. However, that’s not what I would recommend. It’s easy to find excuses when you are supposed to devote a 10-hour day to your work. Things come up and the chances of finding a way to justify not working on your blog will be greater if your work is not broken up is small chunks of time. It is much easier to find two hours to work no matter what else comes up than try to fit in a 10-hour blogging day in your week. I recommend dividing your work into two-hour chunks at the very most. One hour chunks might be preferable if you struggle with finding a two-hour time slot.
3. Do Not Let Anything Become an Excuse
After have decided how to break up your work in small chunks, you need to make sure that you don’t let anything become an excuse. It doesn’t matter what king of day or week you are having. You make it happen! You may have to wake up early on your blogging days or stay up late at night. You may have to squeeze it in during your lunch break. Whatever it is, do not EVER let anything detract your from the work you had planned to do.
4. Discover Your Own Fail-Proof Routine
Creating a routine will help ensure that you don’t let the unexpected keep you from getting your work done. An habit is an action you do over and over until it just becomes part of who you are. So much so, you find it almost impossible to stray from it.
Until most of your blogging work becomes a habit, a good time management tip is to plan a fail-proof routine that will increase your chance of sticking to your blogging plan. As you create your routine, take into consideration the other tasks you have at hand each day. Are some days busier than others, do you feel most energetic and creative in the morning or at night? Make sure you schedule your blogging work on less busy days during your most productive times. Keep reading, I will share my weekly routine to help you come up with your own.
5. Don’t Fall in the “Busy” Trap
It is pretty common for bloggers to fall in the “busy” trap. There are lots of little things that you may think you need to do to succeed as a blogger that are just “fluff”. Forget about the fluff! Focus on the tasks that are actually going to make a difference. Here are the important tasks that you should never put aside:
- Writing one weekly blog post: Of course, you can write more than one, the more frequently you write the more quickly you will grow your traffic, but at the very least, write one. Make sure you pick your blog topic wisely, do keyword research to ensure that your blog topic has the potential to bring you buyers and customers.
- Pin your blog post: Pinterest is still the main source of traffic for newbie bloggers and many veteran bloggers as well.
- Share your blog post on your social media platforms like your Facebook page or your Instagram account.
That’s it! If you only have one blog and write only one post a week, you should easily be able to get all your work done within 4 hours. That’s totally doable for anyone! No need to fall in the “busy” trap and spend hours curating your Instagram feed and creating top-notch content to share on Facebook or Twitter.
6. Don’t Be a Perfectionist
Being a perfectionist can be a huge stumbling block for new bloggers. As a newbie, you may feel a bit insecure about your work and feel tempted to revise everything you do over and over and over again. Don’t! It’s better to produce more B- content than to produce less A+ content. Only a small proportion of your posts will end up taking off and bringing the blog traffic that you need to reach your blogging goals. Once you see which posts are taking off, you can always go back to them and improve them. Until then, settle for B-.
Also, read my post about my Most Effective Tips to Get More Blog Traffic in Less Time. You learn more details about the specific tasks you need to prioritize.
7. Make Your Health a Priority
Protect your health. Make sure you take care of yourself. It’s important you make sure you eat well, exercise, and sleep well to ensure maximum productivity. Include some self-care practices in your weekly routine. Whatever refuels your soul and increases your physical stamina should be a priority. Maybe you can stream an online workout a few times a week, include a Bible study and prayer time to your daily habits, have a batch cooking day to spend less time in the kitchen or learn to cook simple whole foods that don’t require much time.
How to Implement These Time Management Tips Within the Next Week
In this section, I am just going to help you implement the time management tips I have outlined so you can reach your productivity goals within the next week.
Creating Your Weekly Routine
Until every essential blogging task you do becomes a habit, it has to be included in your weekly routine. As I mentioned already, you will have to look at your other commitments and plan around them. Also, it’s important to take advantage of your most productive times. Let me give you an overview of my weekly routine to give you an idea of what it can look like:
- Monday: Write blog post for my Fasting With Intention blog first thing in the morning.
- Tuesday: Write blog post for my Women Marketing Online blog first thing in the morning.
- Wednesday: Film my YouTube video for my Fasting With Intention YouTube channel.
- Thursday: Edit my YouTube video
- Friday: Shopping day
- Saturday: Social activities and activism
- Sunday: Church
I work out each either first thing in the morning or right after writing my blog post. Mornings are my most productive time, that’s why my most demanding tasks are planned for the morning. I work all the housework and homeschooling activities within the remaining hours each day. My blogging work takes less than 10 hours each week. It’s very manageable and I know you can do it too! Look at my weekly routine and see how you can modify it to suit your own needs.
Working On Your Mindset
As you work on your online business, you will learn that the biggest hurdle is in your mind. Finding excuses to not do the work, struggling with perfectionism, feeling overwhelmed and busy, failing to take action… That’s the beauty of our work! Success requires personal development and it’s very rewarding. As I was writing this post, I revisited a course that I took to help me improve my mindset and my productivity. It’s called Personal Development for Her. Read my review to see if you may be able to benefit from this course.
In Summary
To make my time management tips for bloggers as simple as possible: focus on the little tasks that will bring you blog traffic and an income. Break them into manageable chunks and include them and a simple weekly routine that you can stick to no matter what! That’s it! In two sentences, you have the key to success! Now, go and get her done! Don’t give up and don’t lose faith, you can make this happen!
