How Part-Time Bloggers Can Get More Done
*Updated: November 1, 2022
You don’t have to be a part-time blogger to want to get more done. But if you ARE part-time because your blog hasn’t made it possible for you to give up your day job, you need to discover ways to get more done in less time. In this article, we’re going to look at tips and tricks to help part-time bloggers like yourself get more done.
5 Tips to Help Part-Time Bloggers Be More Productive
Whether you’re a part-time small business owner or still working a day job, part-time blogging is a great way to earn enough money to cover the bills while still pursuing your pet blogging passion. But if you’re working full-time, that means you have to carve out pockets of time to pursue your true passion – to be an entrepreneur.
While there is no magic secret to getting more done, we do have a few productivity tips for bloggers that will help you make the most of your limited hours.
Know How You Spend Your Time
If you want to know where your money is going, you prepare a budget, correct? If you want to know where and how you’re spending your time when you’re not at work, you need to track your hours.
It’s easy to say, “I don’t have any time to write a blog post,” but if you look at your “time budget” you may notice you’re spending six hours a night watching television. Hhhmmm it’s hard to say you have “no time” if you’re spending that much time staring at the TV. This was my biggest downfall when I started my business. I’d been working my writing business as a side gig for close to a year and bemoaned the fact that I had no additional hours to devote to it, but when I looked at my schedule, I found I watched a LOT of television. I cut back and got a lot more done and my business went from side hustle to full-time entrepreneur.
ACTION STEP: Use either high-tech or low-tech to track your hours. Write down what you do over the course of a 24-hour day. From the hours spent at your job, to walking the dog, to grooming the cat, to cooking dinner, doing laundry, watching television, spending time with friends and family, and the hours you’re devoting to your business.
Track your hours for a week. It could be very eye-opening.
Use Time-Blocking for Critical Tasks
If you have tasks for your business that you have to get done every day or every week, you need to block that time in your calendar and make that a non-negotiable block of time. Time blocking is a great way to manage your time even when your available time is made up of short blocks between other commitments.
ACTION STEP: Create time blocks for your high- and low-priority tasks, for client phone calls, for blogging tasks, to create images for your blog posts, to post, share and comment on social media… and write it down. Studies show that you’re more likely to complete a task if you’ve written it down.
Plan Your Day the Night Before
When you know what you’re going to do the following day, you save valuable time. When you go to your workspace without a plan or a time-blocked schedule, you are more likely to “stare into space” or poke around on social media than you are to jump right into a necessary task.
One of the best blogging tips we can share is to start your part-time day by knowing what you need to accomplish in the hours you have set aside. Doing this will help you more consistently meet your goals and complete your tasks.
ACTION STEP: Get into the habit of planning your day before you leave your office that night. Use organizational tools to help you set yourself up to be more productive.
Establish a Routine for Success
Do you notice how some people: do laundry on Monday, vacuum on Tuesday, run errands on Wednesday, go to book club on Thursday, etc.? This is because routine is a powerful tool. When you know when you’re going to do something and it becomes a habit, your mind will begin to crave the routine.
To start, part-time bloggers will need to write down what days and times can be dedicated to blogging. You can then decide which days are best suited for each task. Your routine could be: write blog posts on Sunday, create images on Monday, fill in your editorial calendar on Tuesday, interview sources for a post on Wednesday, schedule your social media on Thursday, etc. Time-blocking will help you build routines and get more done.
ACTION STEP: Batch your tasks to get more done. Don’t write part of a blog post on Monday, then finish it on Tuesday because you have phone calls to make on Monday as well. See where I am going with this? Batch similar tasks and work through them without interruption. Interruption is the productivity killer of the part-time (and full-time) entrepreneur.
Give Yourself Grace
When you’re working outside of the home and then coming home and working on growing your passion project, you need to give yourself the grace of knowing there will be weeks that–no matter how well you have blocked your time–you just won’t get to it all. Don’t write off the whole week just because you have one day that gets away from you. Chalk the “lost” day up to life happening and get back into it the next day.
We need to remember that we aren’t just part-time bloggers (or full-time bloggers) – we’re also full-time people with many demands on our time!
Talk with any pet blogger who went from full-time employee to full-time entrepreneur and they will tell you they had to make sacrifices, but that it was worth it. I hope these blogging tips & tricks will help you get more done in less time so you, too, can be a full-time entrepreneur.
I’d love to know – if you’re a full-time pet entrepreneur, how you made it happen. If you’re still struggling to make it to being a full-time entrepreneur, where are your challenges?
About the Author: Robbi Hess is an award-winning author, full-time writer, newspaper columnist, writing coach, and time-management guru. She works with bloggers and solopreneurs and blogs at All Words Matter. If you’re interested in time blocking, email me and I’ll send you a sample page. (Robbi AT PositivelyWoof DOT COM)
