7 Time Management Tips For Bloggers

Let’s face it, blogging takes a lot of effort. This is especially true for those of you who hold down a full time job, coach your son’s little league team, and are involved with your church on the weekends. Can blogging ultimately give you the freedom that you deserve? Absolutely Yes! But as Zig Ziglar says you have to pump that handle on the well for a while before the water starts to pour out. Once it begins to pour out you can ease up on the handle.

If there is one thing that frustrates most part-time bloggers, it is having a 2 hour block of time to actually work on your blog and not knowing where to focus or you work for two hours on your blog and wonder what you have accomplished. In an upcoming Blogging Your Passion Webinar we are going to focus an entire 2 hours on time management strategies for bloggers. Both Bob Lotich and I are going to share how we spend our time each day and where we put our focus. We would love to have you join us. For now, I just want to share 7 of my favorite time management tips for bloggers.



1. Pay Attention to Your Daily Habits. As bad as you may want to change your life or your situation, you life will never begin to change until you change what you do on a daily basis. It really does not matter how much knowledge you have about blogging if you are not taking action.

2. Appreciate Small Successes. We often overlook small successes in the life of our blogging. Did you get a new comment recently? Did someone re-tweet your blog post? Did you add more Facebook likes on your fan page. Did you get some new email list sign ups? I remember early on being discouraged about not getting more email list subscribers everyday. After awhile I forgot about it and then a few months later I logged into my account and saw that I had over 370 subscribers. Small things done on a consistent basis can have massive results.

3. Take Action As If It Were Virtually Impossible to Fail. I have said this before: If I had to start all over again from scratch, I would take much more action on my blogs then I originally did. There is a belief in the system at play here. Sure, no one wants to waste their time and it is important to take the right actions, but once credible people share with you the path to blogging, you need to do it with abandonment. It is like a story about a gymnast I once read about. She was having difficulty with the uneven bars and the coach was sensing that she wasn’t really dedicated to her routine. He told her, “Throw your heart over the bar and the rest will follow.” The same can be said with following your passions and working in your strengths.

4. Understanding the State of Flow. Just like a sports athlete can get “in the zone” you should be discovering this in blogging. There is something to be said about putting all your concentration, energy, and focus into just one task. When I am writing a new post, that is all I am focused on. I want to get in the zone and let my ideas, thoughts and passion come out in the way I write.

5. Have a Get It Done List. This is different than a to do list. I actually use a small whiteboard so that it is staring right at me all day long. This list is the shorten version of my to-do list. I only allow up to three items to go on there and they MUST get done today (no exceptions). In fact, right above my list it says:

“If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be satisfied?”

This helps me to determine what makes it on this list. There is nothing more satisfying then accomplishing my “get it done” list before I break for lunch.

6. Set a Prime Time Schedule. This can be true for both full time bloggers and part time bloggers. You need to understand the difference between “profit hours” and “non-profit hours.” During profit hours there is no internet browsing, watching of videos, learning new techniques about blogging, reading other blogs, or wasting time on social media sites. During my “non-profit” hours I do allow myself to do all of the previously mentioned things. Just not at the sacrifice of what is most important.

7. Develop a Study to Action Ratio. I shared this with our current partcipants in the Blogging Your Passion Webinar Series, but  I want you to understand this important principle as well. Never learn or study longer than you are taking action. So, if I spend an hour learning about blogging then I have just obligated myself to spending an hour taking action in some way on my blog. Eventually, it would be ideal for you to spend twice as much time taking action as you spending learning.

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