How to maintain your blog when life gets busy

by Paul Flyer

Writing a website or blog part-time is full of hazards. The number one hazard is time. Time to write, time to read, time to think, time to design.

The last few months have been tremendously busy and stressful for me. As I headed into this time of busyness, I thought I was prepared to continue to maintain this site. I failed. A post here, a post there. Nothing consistent.

So what makes the difference?

How can a part-timer maintain a blog even when life is bursting at the seams?

As I reflect on the last few months, I found at least three main ingredients necessary to maintaining this blog.

First, is organization. Are you organized? Do you have a list of things you want to write about? Do you have a list of things you want to read? Do you have a plan for your blog writing? If you attempt to sit down and write everyday for your blog and do it from the top of your head, you will fail. When the busy times come, your efforts to maintain your blog will be severely hampered. Knowing the NEXT topic to write about helps tremendously. Even if you know you cant write every day, at least you can be working on the next post until you have it written. If you are organized, you know what the next post after that one will be, and the next. This makes blogging so much easier!

I was organized. I have all my stuff categorized and planned out for the most part. But I still failed to maintain a good writing rhythm.

Enter commitment. Are you committed to your blog? Seriously. Ask yourself that question. If you are committed, then you will get yourself organized. You can see where I am headed. However, you can over commit. I thought I would be able to maintain at least 5 posts a week. I wasn’t able to do it. I ended up writing nothing because I was paralyzed by my over commitment. I should have lowered my goals to once a week. I could have done that easily.

My big downfall though was not on the commitment front. Tired from work, then stressed by my personal life, I found I lacked one thing: energy. I would sit down to write, gather my notes and thoughts, look at the screen and…nothing. Blah. Zippo. Nada. I found it easier to surf than write when I was tired. Now sometimes there is not much you can do when you find yourself at the end of the day and you have no energy. However, go back to the commitment issue for a moment. What if I had committed to writing just one post a week but I “scheduled” some time to do it? Instead of waiting till the end of the day to write, I could have schedule a lunch break once a week. Lunch is in the middle of the day. I would have energy. I would even be awake! The best way around the energy issue is to schedule your writing time during a part of the day when you HAVE energy. Plus, limiting your goals makes attaining and meeting your scheduled times much easier.

So here is to organizing and committing around a time of day where you have energy…cheers!

06.25.2007 @ 3:40 PM — Filed under: