11 Time Management Tip – How I manage Work and Blog

Part-time blogging is one of the most difficult things to do or rather difficult to manage, especially when you have a family also to look around. I have a day job that takes away around 10 hours, stealing the time where I can be most effective. Even though it’s not easy, I do manage both of them and prepare for interviews and keep upgrading myself.

This is one of the most common scenarios which many bloggers face. As a part of a group writing project, I would share my 11 tips that can help you to manage both work and blogging activities.

1. Maintain a Diary: Keep a diary where you can write your daily things, i.e., things to do, random ideas, quick notes. This will help you save a lot of time, and you will never scratch your head to think what you were thinking before.
2. Make a Schedule: When it comes to managing more than one thing, a smart schedule is the only way. Decide how much time you need to give to a particular thing and stick to it. It might be difficult initially, but once you get into the flow, your productivity will increase.
3. Be Flexible: Sticking to a schedule does not mean you can’t spare another minute extra. If you need to give some more time for a particular project, go ahead. I had to change my timings depending on the article I have to write and balance it out the other day.
4. Read More than staring at your blog stats: This is one of the biggest mistakes many bloggers are making. Checking your stats is a good thing but looking at it every 10 minutes is pretty bad. I realized this 3 months back. Read more articles and good blogs to understand what and how they do. Here is What I used to do every 20 minutes and spent 3 hrs. PLEASE DONT DO IT
   • Checking My Adsense Account.
   • Checking Analytics/ 103 Bees Stats.
   • Checking Feedburner to see how many live hits I have.
   • Admiring how much money others are making and again checking my Adsense earnings
5. First Write Then Read what others wrote: If you learn something new to you, don’t try to find what others have written. There are 2 reasons why I am saying this. First, if you read others articles, you will lose your creative thinking. Secondly, you might drop the idea of even writing it, thinking it will be considered copying. NOPE, I suppose you might be wrong there. There is always a chance that you will come up with better explanations. So write at least a draft post and then go for exploring more. This will always give you a boost. Research only if you are very doubtful.
6. Make Your own Bloggers Toolkit: There are many plugins, firefox extensions, feed readers, and writing applications that can help you write or manage your posts faster. Please find out more about them, make a list which can be useful to you, and use it. This can not only save a lot of time but also allow you to more productive.
7. Have a Blog Management Day: Nobody wants you to keep writing articles every day, and neither will you lose if you don’t write one day. Set aside one day like Sunday or Saturday where you can give a thought on
   • What I had been doing this week.?
   • Do I need to optimize or re-check my articles.?
   • Do I have any pending emails to be answered.?
   • How is my site stats doing? Have I improved?
   • Do I need to read more about SEO and Designs?
   • What is my plan for the coming week?
8. Have some time separate for Social Networks: Blogging is not just writing an article. It’s like a life where you need to communicate. Participate in social network sites like Digg, stumble, delicious, and others. This will increase your points on them and allow you to see what kind of articles are selling hot.
9. Don’t waste your time on useless chatting: Networking is important, but nobody has time to waste. It’s a bad habit of many people to waste time chatting. Chat for fun but see what is important to you. Many people have suggested to at least turn your IM’s off when you are writing an article. It really helps
10. Don’t answer comments immediately unless… It’s not necessary that you need to answer a comment immediately unless it’s essential. Readers are always important, but then you are not always sitting there 24 hrs. The best is to answer them together after you get some comments or maybe after a day.
11. Make your own set of Time Management Scheme: What worked for me might work for you partially. So have your own set of rules which suits your work and environment but make it for sure. It will allow you to follow a self guideline of YES or NO.

So this is how I manage my blog and work. Many of them will apply to you, and it really helps. I had been following for 3 months now, and Now I spend only 3 hrs on blogging except Saturdays and Sundays.

How you manage your work and blog or maybe school/college. Share with us in the comments, and I will learn some tips from you.