You have set-up your blog a while ago and now you want to grow your blog and become a super productive blogger.
Weeks are passing by at the speed of light and you have no idea how to juggle writing blog posts, promoting it and being part of an online community. Added to which, you have a job and endless responsibilities at home.
Your sanity has packed its bags and is at the doorstep to leave.
I feel you.
I’ve been there.
Blogging is no joke. Aside from working out, being a plant parent, creating postcards and art products, I have to juggle clients, my blog and ofcourse my full-time job.
24 hours just isn’t enough.
But if you implement a few hacks, believe me… you’ll be sorted.
Before we begin, answer me this; Did you spend every minute, every second of your allotted blogging time working efficiently and productively? Did you maximise every nugget of available time? Or did you spend some of that time dithering, daydreaming and mindlessly checking social media when you ‘should’ have been working?
I think all of us (yes, even me!) would have to say YES to that last one.
From organizing your content schedule to learning new skills to finding the right tools for the job, there is always a way to do more with less time. Remember time saved is time gained.
If you don’t already have a blog, you can read my step-by-step guide to start a blog from scratch or take one of my workshops that will teach you the blogging fundamentals required to set up a money-making blog.
Here are the 10 hacks that will make you become a super productive blogger
Time your social media
Yes, social media is huge huge time killer. It was designed to do so. Mindless scrolling on Instagram can easily suck productive hours of your time.
I’m a huge sucker for learning new things. You may think that this is a good thing, but it’s not if I’m delaying my work to read fan fiction work of whether the Professor got caught in Money Heist.
Easiest way is to check how many hours you’re spending on social media by checking their activity settings. Allocate 1-2 hours max a day to go through social channels. Instagram lets you know if you cross that threshold, so you know you have to get back to work no matter what.
Set Goals
Unless you set yourself goals, being super-efficient with your time is pointless. You can be amazingly organised and a whizz at your time management, but if you are doing the WRONG things, you are not being productive!
To be truly productive you must first set your goals. What do you want to achieve out of your blog? Once you’ve set your goals, you need to work out how you are going to achieve those goals and make an action plan.
Once you have an action plan you can then apply all the other tips in this post to your action plan to make sure you do those things as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Here’s how you can set goals for newbie bloggers: Goal Setting for Bloggers in 2020
Make most of your mornings
This is cliché, but it really is important to get dressed in the morning. Seriously. To keep on a schedule and stay sane, it’s essential to start your day just like if you were headed to the office.
Finish the most daunting tasks early in the morning because that’s when you are filled with a lot of energy! By afternoon, we generally tend to work less effectively, so you can focus on the less-important tasks toward the end of day.
Stop Trying to Multi-ask
My resume still has multi-tasking as a positive personality trait and honestly it can help when you’re doing few mundance, routine jobs.
But when it comes to anything related to creativity or content production, stop trying to multi-task! When you are flitting between activities really quickly, your brain is constantly having to re-warm up to each activity every time you pick it up again.
The result is that, far from making you MORE productive, multi-tasking makes you MUCH LESS productive – every activity takes longer, because you spend so much time in that warm up phase. Focus on ONE TASK AT A TIME. Give all your time and attention to just one task, see it through to completion (or as much as you had planned to work on that task for today) and then move on to the next one.
Plan your time
Plan out your tasks for the day and the week. Work in blocks of time where you don’t switch tasks. I follow Pomodoro technique to work productively. I use a system of working for 25 minutes then taking a 3-5minute break. After doing 4 sets, I reward myself with a longer break of 15-30minutes. Whenever I can, I try to get out for some fresh air during my breaks.
It makes such a difference in my mood and energy level and improves productivity.
Use Grammarly
I seriously detest proof-reading my posts. It’s such a huge waste of time. And this post is all about saving time.
Save yourself from oodles of embarrassment (and dreaded hours proofreading) by using a nice editing software like Grammarly.
Limit your mails
Sure, it’s intriguing to keep receiving mails. Everytime you hear a ping on your phone, you would want to open and read it. Might be a potential client or a PR company reaching out for a feature. Trust me, you don’t have to read and reply the very minute you receive the mails. Keep aside an hour in the morning and an hour in the night to go through all your mails and respond to them.
Use a content planner
Using a content planner can be helpful in ways unimaginable. Use Asana or Trello to create digital checklists and keep your content schedule accessible at all times.
For those who like physically writing things down, you can create your own content planner or download a content planner template and use them. This will leave you organized and super-duper ready to take on your to-dos!
Keep your ideas in one place
This one method will save your life in ways unimaginable
See?
I have a Blog post titles, Instagram caption notes, art curation ideas, collaborations to work on, video lists, pages that I love and need to come back to, Ideas to work on etc
It saves me so much time because my notes app is just one click away (on my system) and it syncs to my phone. This makes it easy for me to have all my ideas in one place!
Set up a work desk
Having a separate work space is super important to get into the mood. You can’t sit on bed and keep doing your work throughout the day. At some time, the bed is going to lure you into sleeping on it.
So set up that work table or a work corner in your room. Keep only what you use everyday on the table. The rest of it can go into drawers and cabinets.
This encourages you to be more productive. The less stuff you have to work with, the more focused and mentally stimulated you become.
That brings us to the end of the article. Let me know which of these hacks you found it to be super useful.
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