7 Stellar Productivity Tips for Stressed Out Bloggers
Blogging can become a stressful activity. The constant demand of new content, social media interaction, product development, link building and community interaction can stress bloggers out to the point of many of them quitting and giving up on their blog. However, before you ever reach this point there are several stellar productivity tips you can utilize that will help you avoid the burn out and get more done in less time; here’s how …
Tip #1: Develop an overall strategy
Blogging without a mission is like a chicken with its head cut off; you don’t really know where you are going and how you will get there. To avoid wasting time aimlessly heading down paths which don’t ultimately improve your blog you will need to develop an overall strategy.
Your strategy should include a short term and long term projection for where you want your blog to be. Developing a strategy, for your blog, allows you to see the major hurdles you must overcome along with the milestones you must reach to complete each leg of the journey.
You can outline your strategy using tools like Mind mapping software, spreadsheets or simple pencil & paper. Write down the types of posts you plan to create, products you’d like to develop and the community you wish to reach. Having everything laid out in a logical fashion will make sure that every action you take will be productive.
Tip #2: Plan out your daily actions
Your success will be determined by the daily tasks you will be able to complete to culminate into accomplishing a larger goal. A common mistake that bloggers make, however, is their nature to overload themselves with too much to do each day.
Rather than cramming a months worth of work into a single weekend you should space out the months work into smaller chunks that won’t have you feeling stressed out. Getting stressed slows down your work progress as everything seems to feel as if it has built up so rather than finishing the hard work you put off everything for a later time; this continues to build up until you fall so far behind that you give up.
Create a to-do list with only a few “must do” items each day. Keep your list to a bare minimum; only the actions that will have the greatest results such as writing a new blog post or building backlinks. All other activities can be done in your free time; focus on accomplishing the main tasks first thing in the morning and you will surely get more done in less time.
Tip #3: Focus on one task at a time
Avoid, at all costs, trying to multi-task. Multitasking is a myth you wish to believe but is something the body and mind simply can’t do. Even though you feel you are accomplishing more by bouncing between your work you are actually slowing the progress because you aren’t staying focused on a single item at a time.
Get into the habit of setting aside specific time to do only one of your daily tasks and nothing else. Do not bounce between what you are working on. If you are writing a blog post than put all of your energy into completing it before ever moving on to the next item; this applies to other activities in blogging as well.
Additionally, try not to prioritize your tasks. Prioritization leads you to do the easiest items throughout the day. Instead, start the day with your hardest and most valuable task. Once you’ve completed your main work you can work you way down throughout the lesser items of importance so even if you don’t get these items completed you still did the main thing that will give you the greatest results.
Tip #4: Leverage your work
The work you’ve previously completed does not have to sit idly by after it’s been published and completed. You should always be conscious about using your existing work to your advantage whether that being a new post that can reference an older one or referencing outside content to convey an idea.
Your job, as a blogger, isn’t to push every bit of information into a blog post (although you can certainly try). Instead, you should be focusing on helping someone complete a single task and reference other work if they need additional information.
Leveraging your work (and others) lets you create a proficient method to blogging. You will begin to utilize tools that quickly save time rather than reinventing the wheel. Efficiency in your work is the true power when building a productive habit during blogging.
Tip #5: Reach out to fellow bloggers
Blogging is much more than just creating content and being active on social media. In time, you will begin to work on larger projects which begin to creep out of your skill level. Rather than letting these projects go to the wayside because you don’t have the skills you can reach out to fellow bloggers for help.
You could either spend hundreds of hours trying to learn a skill to complete a task or ask someone proficient in the skill within your blogging community. Investing a bit of time and resources to connect to fellow bloggers could save you a massive amount of valuable time of your own.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help because there is always someone that is willing to help; you could also consider paying freelancers for this same reason. In all, your network will become one of the best ways to stay productive because they will keep you motivated and help out when you drop the ball.
Tip #6: Remove the major distractions
Cut out all of the major distractions when you are working on your main blogging tasks. Shut down your social media programs, log off of your email account, close your web browser and turn off your phone. When you try to work on your tasks you cannot afford to be distracted.
A single distraction, while working, can derail your thought process; responding to the distraction may not seem like you’re wasting time but it almost always leads to significant amounts of your productivity being cut throughout the day. Distractions are cumulative; a few minutes to check your email ever hour can lead to a full out by the time you done with the day!
Like work, set a time block where you will only be working. The period of your work will not include any distractions from the outside world. In this work period, you will focus on completing your major tasks and won’t stop until you are done. Keeping a work schedule and cutting out the distractions will help save you hundreds of hours throughout the year and build a greater habit in productivity.
Tip #7: Build and keep a momentum
A rarely discussed productivity tip is the idea of keeping up your momentum. In time, when blogging, you will hit a tipping point where your blog begins to take on a life of its own. Your community will begin to help you develop new content ideas, traffic will come naturally through people sharing your information and online income will scale with the new flood in traffic.
The momentum you eventually hit will keep you accelerating forward which means you can begin to scale back in some areas of your work. You will begin to see which actions result in the greatest return; this can be found by examining your analytic and how your community reacts to your content.
At this time in your momentum, you should go back and revise your overall strategy to align to your speed and direction. You will notice areas where you need to pick up the slack and others that take care of themselves. The tipping point takes the longest to get to but anything afterward will be a massive amount of time you can devote to new, important actions.
Conclusion
All in all, you’ve learned several different productivity tips for blogging. It can be very stressful when you are active in the blogging community but it’s vitally important that you set a schedule, develop a strategy, remove the distractions and get things done. In time, you’ll see your success grow and notice that your actions are developing great habits; each hour you shave off your time is another that can go toward building a successful blog – you can do it!
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