Bloggers: 5 Simple Tips for Good Time Management -

“Time! Time! Who’s got the time?” asked the Mad Hatter. Don’t ask the White Rabbit, he’s forever late. It can feel like that sometimes, that no matter how early you get out of bed, there are never enough hours in the day to finish

Create a Schedule

This is possibly the most important tip for time management. Timetable your time. I know, it reminds you of school and that might not be a good thing, but how do you think they managed to cram so much useless information on which to test you without a timetable? Timetables are the bastion of order. Trains, wars, sports competitions and governments run on them and guess what, things get done. Ok, the trains may not turn up on time, but it’s coming. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

Scheduling your time forces you to get things done. If you have to write five articles today, then aim for one an hour. That’s five hours of focused writing in a day. Aim for one an hour, which you could do in one sitting, or spread across the day; whatever suits you best.

Stick to the Schedule

Schedules are like workout routines; they only help you when you actually use them. Blogging is your job and you should treat it like one. And there may be days when everything goes array and the schedule is sitting in the corner with a gun to its head. Don’t worry about it. Forgive yourself and come back tomorrow.

The worst time suck on earth is Facebook. Twitter comes a close second. Why? Because it’s constantly updating. Not necessarily with anything interesting, but something new is coming through on your feed and you’ve gotta hang around to see what it is. Oh, one of your old school friends is undergoing something embarrassing at the doctors. Did you need to know that? No. Then, why do we care?

It’s the promise of something interesting that keeps us hanging on until such a time that the workload is screaming at us from the other end of the room and we are forced to give it some attention. But it’s not the kind attention it deserves because a small part of your mind is still occupied with your school friend and their embarrassing procedure.

Taking a moment to check Facebook, or any other social media platform you use can break your concentration to such an extent that it takes a full half hour for you to regain your focus. How many half hours do you spend trying to regain your focus?

But I can’t stay off Facebook!! Me either, so schedule time for it. The first hour of my working day is spent catching up with my social media connections. This is the equivalent of my morning newspaper and I treat it as such. Once it’s done, I won’t go on to a social media platform again until lunch time.

Make Working Smarter Your Business

Time management isn’t just about how you watch the clock. It’s also about how you go about making money. As a professional blogger, you might also have an offline, real world job to keep things ticking over. There’s no shame in it. But would you put your “offline time”, to work for minimum wage while you build your online empire?

You shouldn’t. All you time is equal and must be treated with the upmost respect. So, how do you safeguard it when the cash reserves are low? How do you make money, while making the most of your time?

An example, Tom’s a pro blogger. He makes a modest income; just enough to live on; but he’s not hitting the big time yet. Tom signs up for a paid medical trial. The very reputable company are offering £2000 for two weeks of Tom’s time. He gets to sit in hospital blogging and generating future articles for his blog, while being paid £1000 a week. He also signs up for some interesting affiliate programs he’s interested in. Tom finds the experience so fruitful he decides to sign up again and fulfils the maximum number of trials per year: four. Tom makes an extra £8000 essentially doing nothing.

You don’t have to be running around like a Mad Hatter, or a White Rabbit to save time, or make extra money; you just need to put some thought in to the best way you can maximise your own time for your own benefit.

About The Author:

Sally Shaws is a freelance writer who frequently blogs about ways to make money online and creating an income from blogging. She also writes about volunteering for clinical trials at volunteers.gsk as another means to boost your income.