How to Make Twice As Much Time For Your Blogging Business

I  saw many times that like a dramatization of what’s played out in my life probably dozens of times and I hear from people all the time there’s so much going on in my life it seems like I can’t make time and when I do it. I just can’t get my blogging business done and so what I’ve done is I’ve invited Anna she’s like our personal management guru she’s like the most disciplined person at income school probably by a mile or two. And so Anna’s going to walk us through she’s got kind of a system that she uses to be able to fit in all the amazing things. She does that the rest of us just don’t seem to make time for well thank you Ricky.

I appreciate that intro well so some of the things that are really important to me are the ability to meal prep and work out every single week things that take time take a lot of time and it takes commitment. So I realized that I have to make those things a priority in my day every single week in order to make them happen and it’s the same idea for your blogging business. You’re going to have to make these things a priority or else it won’t just you know write itself. We have a strategy for you to do that and the first thing that you’re going to want to do is a time audit you are going to work yes. We are giving you homework so you’re going to write down every single thing that you do in your day in your entire week. And I mean every single minute so the moment you wake up to the moment you go to bed those are things like.

According to NVQ coursework, let’s admit it we all scroll on our phone a little bit in the morning or at night or you know things like brushing your teeth walking your dog getting yourself ready for work that day getting your kids ready for school that day maybe you’re taking care of someone you have a full-time job. So those are just examples plus you have your other activities to take care of yourself right the meal prepping the working out whatever you like to do on your free time. Maybe you like to watch football games write it all down whatever you do that week.

So the next step after that after you’re done with your week take all of those things that you do throughout the week and I want you to take a piece of paper and draw a line down it. And write non-negotiable and negotiable and you’re going to be putting all of those things into one of those two categories. Just list them all out thing by thing by thing so like phone scrolling that’s actually a negotiable believe it or not. So that’s going to go with that side there’s a lot of things that we do that really are non-negotiable and that’s okay so yes .And so this means this doesn’t mean like you know take out activities that you have to do like going to church those are still non-negotiable for a lot of people. Obviously your full-time job you cannot take that out your boss would probably not be very happy. If you took that out things like you know walking your dog you’re going to have to walk your dog that’s an important thing but like those activities like scrolling through your phone. However many times a day or watching that football game um those might be in the negotiable side for now and that that’s what we’re really saying is these are sacrifices that you might have to make just for now. Until you get your online business your blogging business going okay.

So after that fun activity what I want you to do is use your calendar in your phone or maybe you have a physical calendar that you like to use it doesn’t matter really. If you were still using a franklin planner and I think that’s fantastic that’s totally okay the point is just write it down. So put all of the non-negotiable activities back on your calendar so you can see it physically. Now before you put any of those negotiable activities back on the calendar this is where you look at the space in your calendar and see where you can fit the time to work on your blogging business. And write right so that might be the morning or the evening for you yeah just whatever works for you it could be for a while for me it was lunch break right I could take an hour.

If I brought food to work and I didn’t have to go anywhere I could just pull it out and while I was eating like while you’re chewing you’re writing you know and I did that for quite some time and that works just fine. And then after you’re done with that that’s where you can start fitting in those other activities on top of that and you’ll see that yes you might have to make a couple sacrifices and some things might just have to wait for now. But you have to realize that your online business your blogging business is a non-negotiable now you might not be able to watch every single NFL game every single week for now. While you are getting your blogging business up and running but it’s not forever just realize that the amazing thing is how much you can fit back in when we prioritize those big chunks first of the non-negotiable.

You may have seen this analogy and it actually works really well like if you fill a whole jar with marbles and then pour in sand around it. You can fit quite a bit in there but if you took the same amount of marbles in sand you pour it back out and separate them put the sand in first all the little things. And then try to pour in the marbles half the marbles don’t fit the non-negotiable things are the things that we have to prioritize and put in our calendar first. And then there’s oftentimes a lot of room for stuff around it and maybe instead of watching the whole game. I can watch some highlights in a five or ten minute break that I have where normally maybe I would just be scrolling through social media. If that’s something that’s important to you. So you can fit in maybe a version of that or a summary of that that’s going to allow you to still at least get to enjoy that aspect of your life to some degree.

But this leads to a big question for me which is if this is going to be taking away maybe some of those negotiable and this is going to be a priority that’s going to take up time while we’re building it up to success do you really want to waste two years doing it the wrong way. I certainly wouldn’t want to and I would have loved it when I first got started. If I would have more of a system and people to help guide me through that that’s why we created project 24. We’re helping people find success the first time within six months or a year they’re just getting there in many cases after spending years not getting there and so we invite you to come join us in project 24 go check it out at incomeschool.comproject24.

However, I would love to hear your ideas if you have tips for how to make the best of time you know time management tips share them we’d love to hear from you and it’ll count as an entry in the comment contest. When you add it up in your day you may find that you spend like multiple hours every day on social media the problem is though that won’t work as your block of time for writing because most of us don’t do it in an hour straight usually it’s a matter of scrolling throughout the day. We take out our phone we spend five minutes on it because we got a few minutes maybe we’re at the doctor’s office waiting in line. Maybe we’re just sitting on a bus whatever it is we find ourselves with a couple minutes to spare and we go do that my recommendation is to use that time for better things there are things we can do in those three to five minutes that’s when i like to do a lot of my research believe it or not.

 I am able to learn a lot about various different niches various industries simply by watching YouTube videos put in a pair of headphones watch a video for just a few minutes. I’ll pause it and then I’ll come back to it later find other videos to add to your watch list listen to a podcast listen to a book use that time to immerse yourself in your niche. so that when it is time to write the research process is very fast most of the work is done and all you have to do is type the first tip that i have for you is habit pairing and that’s a lot like it sounds it’s pairing a habit with your blogging business

So for example I like to go work out every single morning so I paired my riding time in the morning before I get to go work out so it’s a reward for me to go and I don’t feel right. And I don’t go work out until I am done with my block of writing time the next tip that I have is to decide how urgent and important the tasks that you are doing actually are .So for example this is coming from the Eisenhower matrix and what it is it’s basically a quadrant where you can decide if these tasks are really worth you doing in that moment or not so if it’s urgent and important then it’s probably best that you do that in a timely manner. But if it’s urgent and not important that could mean that someone might want you to do something for them and you might just not have time to do that right now so you might have to wait or delegate that out if it’s important but not urgent that’s something that you can plan to do later on so looking at each task that you have in those kind of quadrants will help you a lot to determine whether you should do them right now later on or maybe just not at all.

 When you’re trying to decide what to spend your time on with your business it’s easy to categorize things like Anna mentioned into negotiable and non-negotiable. but sometimes you have to realize that sometimes things in your business will fall into either the negotiable or non-negotiable category it’s not all non-negotiable there are a few really important things that you can do with your business to really move the needle .and then there are some things that just aren’t going to move the needle that much for example sitting down and writing content is one of the things that’s really going to move the needle because without content on your blog you’re not going to get anywhere.

However the logo on your website you could go a year on your website without a logo and it would probably be just fine as you’re trying to figure out and structure your day try and figure out what’s negotiable in your business and maybe it’s just negotiable in the short term start with what’s the most important. then plan your time accordingly plan for the things that are that have to be done right now and then give yourself a little bit of time that maybe later in the next week or two weeks or months. you can plan to do those things that are just a little less important and then to dive a little bit deeper into the writing portion Anna mentioned that you need to really structure out your time and decide in your day what’s the most important to do and one of those things for me is writing content.

 now when i sit down to write content i need a block of time and writing in that block of time is going to help me be most productive. if i try and sit down for five or ten minutes at a time to write a blog post. i’m just not going to get that far but if i can actually sit down for an hour or two hours at a time and actually write my content in that block i’m going to be so much more productive without all of the little interruptions of the day.and so a couple things that you might do during that uninterrupted time is silence your phone put it on airplane mode uh if you have to turn off your wi-fi .so you’re not worrying about facebook or any other social media and give yourself some rewards as you go along if you can sit down and write for 45 minutes or an hour take a five minute break but don’t break up your time with things that are just not that important just focus on the writing you.