20 Quick Time Management Tips For Bloggers
You’re a busy pet blogger, am I right? If you had a lot of free time, you’d write more posts, work on other projects, attend networking events, meet friends for coffee and lunch and get your dog groomed, your laundry done, and your house would be spotless. Whew! You may have read that sentence above and added your own to-dos to it and wondered, “When will I ever get this done?”
My advice: Take a deep breath and take a few minutes to read these 20 quick time management tips for bloggers. They’re short and sweet because I know you just don’t have the time for long and wordy! As with anything time management or goal management related you need to take those tips that work for you, implement one or two and toss the rest.
- Don’t focus on how much time you don’t have. Instead focus on the tasks you need to complete or the goals you need to meet and work on those rather than counting down the minutes available.
- Write the to-do list for the following day before you leave your office. This way, you will be ready to jump right in without having to worry about “what’s next?”
- Value your time and guard it zealously. If you fritter away your time, your friends, family and colleagues will not value it and you’ll find yourself running errands, cleaning house and taking on tasks that aren’t yours.
- Ignore your email. I urge you to not check your email first thing in the morning, whether that’s while you’re still lying in bed or when you turn on the computer. Diving into email first thing in the morning puts you into a reactive mode and can limit your productivity because you will be drawn into tasks that aren’t on your to-do list.
- When you do get into your email, read it and act on it. Don’t put emails into a folder to “do later.” Letting them linger simply means they are taking up space in your brain and your computer’s hard drive. Once you open it, you have touched it and you have to commit to acting upon it.
- Another email tip is to turn off auto notifications. Commit to checking your email once an hour, don’t let yourself get distracted by pop up notifications.
- If you’re procrastinating you need to figure out why. Do you simply not want to perform the task at hand? Do you need more resources? Did you say “yes” to a project that you didn’t want to for the simple reason that you can’t say “no”? Procrastination is a drain of your mental energy.
- Do. Not. Multitask. Studies have proven that multitasking means you are not completing either, or any, of the tasks you’re working on, and you’re also not devoting your energies to any particular task. Devote yourself to one task at a time.
- Get up and move around. Stand up. Do a few jumping jacks. Walk the dog. Meditate. Taking a break will give you renewed vigor to get back to the tasks at hand. Taking a break will also make you a healthier blogger.
- Know when your work day will end and stick to that stopping time. If you work from home it’s easy to take the laptop with you and work while you’re watching television or spending time with your family. Choose your “ideal” ending time and then choose a “drop dead” deadline for stopping work for the day.
- Use scheduling tools for your blog posts and your social media updates. You don’t want to have all of your social media updates go live via a scheduler such as HootSuite or Meet Edgar, but scheduling some updates will free you up to do other tasks.
- List your top priorities for the week. List your top five priorities for the day. Break them down into manageable chunks and get to work on them.
- Do you have any people, or tasks, that drain your time and energy? What can you do to eliminate them from your bogging life?
- Are you doing tasks for which you simply aren’t suited? What do I mean? For me a task that I am not suited to is bookkeeping. I know that. That’s why I work with a bookkeeper. She concentrates on my income and expenses so I can concentrate on what I do best – blog and work with clients.
- Set a timer. It’s easy to get lost in the world of beautiful pins on Pinterest or drama on Facebook or following trending topics on Twitter. If you know you do, invest in a timer, decide how long you want to spend on these social platforms and set the timer. Once it goes off, you need to get back to work!
- Do you know how long tasks actually take you? If you don’t know how long it takes you to write a blog post, how can you plan your day around it? If you think it takes you thirty minutes to comment on the blogs of others and it really takes you two hours, you will find that your daily to-do list doesn’t get done. Do a time audit.
- When are you most productive? Morning, afternoon or evening? Determine that and work on your most mentally intensive tasks during your most productive times.
- Factor in time on a weekly basis to prospect for new clients.
- Keep a log of blog post ideas (in your editorial calendar is the best place) so that when you sit down to blog you are ready to go with an idea.
- Celebrate your wins. Yes, taking time to celebrate your wins will keep you motivated and inspired to keep moving forward. Celebrating a win will also help you want to jump back in and get back to work because you just might get another one!
I’m speaking on time management for the pet blogger at the BlogPaws 2016 Conference and would love to know:
- What are your biggest time management issues?
- What are your biggest time sucks? Scheduling, getting ideas, networking, social media updates?
- What have you tried that you found really worked?
Robbi Hess will be speaking on Time Management For The Blogger at the BlogPaws 2016 Conference. She works with clients on time management issues as well as content creation and content strategy at All Words Matter.
Image: Jose Saavedra/Shutterstock.com
