Managing Life and a Blog {Guest Post}
Tuesday night after an awesome #fitblog chat I was doing my daily blog hop. I stumbled upon a post so great I just had to share, in fact it was so great I sent Katy a message immediately asking her if she would like to do a guest post here on Life Off the D List! Sometimes life can get so overwhelming that blogging tends to get pushed to the back burner, here are some great tips not only for blogging but for balancing priorities in life period.
Hi everyone, my name is Katy and I blog at The Singing Runner!
I am so excited that Misty has allowed me to share the following post with you, which I originally posted on October 11, 2011. I have been blogging for just over a year now and I love it! However, it can be very time consuming and it wasn't until recently that I figured out how to balance blogging with my everyday life. I hope you enjoy the tips and find them useful!
How I Balance- Blogging
October 11, 2011Let’s face it- we are all busy people! Between work and/or school, family, social obligations, exercise, and blogging, it can be difficult to balance everything.
I often get asked how I balance everything- school, sorority commitments, graduate school prep, exercise, etc, and still have time to blog. My answer- time management!
Admittedly, my time management skills were awful until last semester! This may come as a surprise since I am an organized person, but I often bite off more than I can chew.
However, taking 21 credits last semester (never again) changes everything. I had a lot on my plate and wanted to accomplish a lot, so I had to shift around my priorities.
It wasn’t pretty, but I had success- and I was still able to blog!
Here are my tricks and tips on how I am able to fulfill all of my obligations and still blog daily!
1) Schedule Your Week: Every Sunday, I plan out what I am going to write each day of the week. I put it as a “sticky note” on my computer for reference throughout the week.
2) Keep A List Of Potential Topics: I know I’m not the only blogger who does this, but I like to keep a list of topics to write about in the future. I’ll admit it, I am constantly thinking about topics to blog about and when something sparks my interest, it goes on “the list.”
3) Budget Your Time: This came as I blogged more and more, but when I first started blogging, it took me forever to compose a post. For some of my more picture heavy posts, it could take me up to two hours to write, edit, and post! Now that I have been blogging for almost a year, I have become more comfortable with my writing style and can plow through posts in less than an hour.
On weekdays, I give myself an hour to write a post- and no more. Most of the time, I don’t even take an hour. On weekends, I give myself a little more time. I think of the time I spend blogging as “me time” and my time to decompress and relax before bed.
4) Plan Ahead: This can sort of go with #1, but when I know that I have a busy week ahead, I will pre-write posts on the weekend for the following week. This alleviates the stress of writing during the week when I don’t have the time to. I also LOVE guest posts and welcome them at any time. (Hint, hint.
) 5) Blog To Live, Don’t Live To Blog (Have Balance): When I started blogging, I would stress out if I didn’t blog one day! I thought that I needed to have a post everyday even if it was of poor content/ quality.
Life happens and we ALL understand that blogging (for most of us) is not our full time job. I do not hold it against a person if they don’t post one day and I hope that people don’t hold it against me if I miss a day. I love to blog because it is an outlet for me, and I have only missed a handful of days in the 363 days I have been blogging, and when I have missed, it has been for good reason (travel, life, etc).
I think that it can be easy to let blogging take over our lives (I’ve definitely been there!), but it is more important to live life outside of the blog, verses blogging our lives away. We want to share our lives with our readers, but we won’t have anything to share if we are at the computer 24/ 7!
These tips are simple, but they have allowed me to keep a balance with school, exercise, a social life (even if it is limited) and blogging. I know that as my life gets even crazier over the next few months, these tips will allow me to relax and continue blogging for the long haul!
How do you balance blogging with your everyday tasks? Do you have any tips to add?
If you have any questions feel free to come by my blog and say "hi", send me a tweet, or post on my Facebook page!
A big thanks to Katy for letting me share the awesomeness that is this blog post with all of you here on Life Off the D List! Make sure to check out her blog!
Peace, Love and Happy Blogging
M
Great guest post, Misty. I enjoyed reading it, especially since I just started my own blog a few weeks ago. I love it, but I don't want it to take over my life! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteAwesome post! It really is about balance. I used to stress over not having blogs go up every day and trying to squeeze a post in on a 12+ hour workday and I concluded as Katy did that living in the real world is more important.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this!