Image by BigBlue via Flickr

So much to do…So little time. How do we overcome the time trap?

I don’t know about you, but this trap has plagued me from the get-go. Time management is a very important part of being successful online. Without proper time management skills you’re setting yourself up for failure.

With any home-business the hardest part of staying on track, and making money is keeping focused. With blogging this is intensified by a factor of 32,548 give or take, because you have the biggest distraction known to man right at your fingertips – the world wide web. Learning time management skills is a must, if we are to succeed at becoming a professional blogger.

Before we discuss ways to combat time management pressures, lets discuss the cause of the problem.

First off we have life distractions such as: Baby, Dogs, Hunger, Potty, Phone, Tv, Radio, etc…

Second we have online distractions such as: Twitter(BIG ONE!), facebook, myspace, google, blog feeds, email, 25,352,520 different things to do online, and then some….

With all of these distractions it’s becoming easier and easier to lose track of time. It’s now more important than ever to take control of your day, and learn time management skills.

I don’t know about you, but I have 200 TV channels. I find it very hard to pick one that I want to watch there’s just too many choices. Same goes for the internet, first you browse, then you find something else to browse, and it keeps going until you’ve spent an entire 8 hour day browsing sites, and not working.

I’ve done this many times myself. Sometimes we like to see what someone else is doing to be successful, and that leads us to other successful blogs, and all the while those successful bloggers are writing new posts, which draw you back, and you spend all your time reading, and no time writing.

Well today we’re going to take a stand against distractions. I want you to say aloud: No More Distractions! I’m going to Blog like a pro!

Go on – Say it aloud. Make it your mantra!

No More Distractions! I’m going to Blog like a pro!

Now for the meat and potatoes…mmm potatoes (stupid low carb diet, lol)…thus we see how easily I am distracted. LOL!

Step 1 – Focus on the tasks that are the most important.

In order to better manage your time – you need to make a schedule and commit yourself to sticking to it. The easiest way to do this is to write down all the important tasks you have as a blogger.

For me my important daily tasks are:

• Check Email – No more than 3 times per day.
• Check and star items in feed reader for the day. I come back to these items when I am having bloggers block, to gather ideas for new blog posts.
• Check for updates / comments / messages on twitter, facebook, friendfeed, and my blog.
• Stumble 15 blog posts – I usually choose the best posts from my feedreader.
• Write a daily pillar article. This is a hard one, because somedays I just don’t have a pillar article in me – but I try hard, and if I don’t make a pillar article I at least make a really decent post that will draw in a little traffic from my network.
• 30 Minute Lunch & 30 Minute Walk.
• Add my daily limit of friends on facebook.
• Add friends on Twitter. Adding friends is a good way to get new followers, it’s the same method used by Robert Scoble,
  

  Image via Wikipedia

  and Jason Calacanis

  

  Image via Wikipedia

  It does work – just don’t spam your followers.

• Add friends on friendfeed. Friendfeed is a great way to share the conversations that you have online.
• Write 2 mini-posts. These are decent blog posts but easier to write than a full out pillar article. The more blog posts that you have, the more google juice your blog will carry – just don’t publish crap. Make sure your blog posts have a point. I was actually surprised by ProBlogger Darren Rowse last week when he posted this crap post most likely with the intent of getting iphone traffic from google. It’s not what I’ve come to expect from ProBlogger.net; In fact it would’ve fit much better on twitter or plurk.
• Comment on 15 Blog Posts. I use comment hut to make this a lot easier – it searches for blog posts that are relevant to the keyword you’re looking to target.
• 15 Minute Snack Break.
• Post 5 posts on 5 of the top forums related to my blog. That’s 5 posts per forum, or 25 total posts.
• Record a podcast / video.
• Other tasks as they come up…

Now that I have my tasks labeled, I need to prioritize which ones are most important, and which ones are secondary tasks.

My most important tasks are (IN order of importance):

1. Write 1 Pillar Article per day.
2. Write at least 2 small but informative posts.
3. Record podcast / video and submit it to the appropriate directories.
4. Comment on 15 Blog Posts.
5. Add friends on facebook / twitter / friendfeed.
6. Stumble 15 Blog Posts from my feed reader.
7. Check for updates / comments / messages on blog, email, and social networks.
8. Submit 25 posts to forums online.
9. Research new ways to brand my blog / business online.
10. Devote time to web design if needed.

Next you will need to decide how much of each work-day you will be spending on each task. Example: I spend 1.5 hours on my pillar article, if I go past the alotted time I continue writing the post tomorrow.

Which brings me to another bullet point: Know when to quit. In other words know when you’re done with a task for the day, it’s okay if you don’t finish the task at hand. It’s better that you stick to your schedule, and finish the post tomorrow than it is to go over schedule and get behind schedule.

Keeping your tasks and time in order is also a very good stress reliever. When you know what you’re doing and have a plan, it essentially makes it a lot easier to accomplish your goals.

Step 2 – Write down the tasks and time devoted to them.

It is very important when developing a time management plan to write down your tasks, when you’re going to do them, and how much time you’re going to give yourself for doing each task.

Outlook has a good task manager / calendar that you can use, and there are also many great software programs available out there, my favorite is Essential PIM.

Writing down tasks also increases productivity by decreasing thought-load in relation to task management. For example, say you finish one task, now it’s time to figure out what else to do, in this ‘limbo’ between one task and the next you have a few options.

First you can just choose an activity at random, which does require a little brainstorming and may waist maybe 5 minutes a day, do this 10 times a day and you’re looking at at a waist of 50 minutes. Just from the process of deciding what to do next.

Let’s go one step further with this – 50 minutes waisted per day equals 4.1 hours in a 5 day work week, or 216 hours a year. That’s 5 work weeks. Imagine having an extra 5 week vacation every year. If you were working for someone else you’d be losing them about $2,160 per year if you only earned $10 an hour.

But the fact is as a blogger you’re working for yourself, each minute waisted is a minute you cannot get back. Each minute we spend waisting time is time that has been thrown away. Life is precious, and waisting time is losing out on precious moments you could spend with those that matter most in your life. Each minute for a blogger is priceless – which is why it is imperative that we take actions to increase our time management skills today. Don’t wait till some future day, take action now.

Back to choosing an activity at random – if you would’ve written down your tasks by priority, and scheduled them out you would’ve not only saved the frustration of thinking ‘what’s next’, but you would save 216 hours of lost time. Over a life time you will have reclaimed a whopping 8,640 working hours. Over 4 years worth. I know many on their deathbed who’d give the world for 4 more years, yet we frivolously just throw out time away.

Also when we automagically know “what’s next?”, we can smoothly start our next task easier and more efficiently and are more likely to finish that task, because we didn’t have to waist time thinking about it.

Step 3 – Stay Committed to your Schedule.

In order to stay on track you will need to stick to your schedule, it’s not always going to be easy, and if you find after a week that there are certain high priority tasks not getting done, don’t be afraid to rearrange your schedule. You can add more time or take away time from one task and apply it to another, just as long as you’re only doing what’s written down.

A great way to stay committed is to make it a game. Try to see how many tasks on your list you can get 100% completed in a given week. As you accomplish more and more you will feel much better about your online business, and you’ll also start seeing a lot of results that will keep you motivated for the long haul.

Part of staying committed is to facilitate a conversation with your family and friends about what you’re doing, you can even blog about it – many of these tips are things that I’ve come across and found myself as I’ve been trying to get my time in order.

By bringing your loved ones on board, they will be able to support you better, either emotionally or by just not distracting you during your scheduled work hours. Also by staying committed to your schedule you will be taking the first step towards running a successful business. Success is about equal consistent effort on a regular basis.

When your spouse / loved ones know your schedule they may even help keep you motivated by keeping you accountable, I know my wife does. With her help, I’ve become much better at time management.

Step 4 – Keep a small journal of your successes and failures in Time Management.

I can go on and on about ways to do this or that, but sometimes it does come down to the fact that each of us is different.

Everyone has their own way of doing certain things. Keeping a journal of your successes and failures with time management will help you improve your own time management plan. Some things may work for you, some may not.

A journal may also give you new ideas on how to improve your time management. Just don’t spend all your time planning your time management plan and no time on following it.

Step 5 – If there’s an easier way – do it!

Each day we do many tasks over and over. My favorite part of successful time management is coming up with quicker ways to do everyday tasks.

For example, each day when I turn on my computer I usually load about 5-10 different tabs in firefox. To make this easier, I created a bookmark group for when I ’startup firefox’. I automatically load Gmail, Twitter, Plurk, My Blog, My Blog Admin, My Feed Reader, Google Adsense, Facebook, etc…

I found this list on ZenHabits it’s a huge list of articles just on increasing productivity it’s definitely a great place to start when trying to manage your time.  Here’s the meat and potatoes from the post:

• Lifehacker: Top 10 Email Productivity Boosters
• Lifehack.org: Top 10 Firefox Extensions to Improve Your Productivity.
• 43 Folders: Merlin’s top 5 super-obvious, “no-duh” ways to immediately improve your life.
• Dumb Little Man: Productivity Ninja: 101 Ways to Rock the Keyboard.
• LifeDev.net: 10 Ways History’s Finest Kept Their Focus at Work.
• FreelanceSwitch: 46 Must-Read Productivity Tips for Freelancers.
• Life Clever: 5 simple steps to greater productivity.
• Wise Bread: 5 Efficient Ways To Boost Productivity.
• Scott H. Young: Twenty Unique Ways to Use the 80/20 Rule Today.
• Cranking Widgets: 6 Ways to Limit Interruptions at Work (That You Can Use Right Now).
• Pick the Brain: 7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit.
• Zen Habits: Top 10 Productivity Hacks.
• Life Optimizer: Top 10 Ways NOT to Become a Productivity Ninja.
• HD BizBlog: 3 Essential Tools for Productivity.
• Matthew Cornell: 10 GTD “holes” (and how to plug them).
• Ian’s Messy Desk: 10 Resources to Help Overcome Procrastination.
• Instigator Blog: Over 100 Great Productivity Tips.
• Stephen Aitchison: 8 Ways to get out of the rut.
• Organize IT: The Top 10 GTD & Productivity Sites/Blogs.
• Dumb Little Man: The 20 Biggest Online Time Wasters, and 6 Strategies for Beating Them.

GTD is a term you might see used a lot in terms of time management – it means ‘Get Things Done’ and is an action management method devised by David Allen.

The key is: Find the easiest fastest way to accomplish the most tasks. A couple tips to accomplish this includes:

• Learn to use firefox addons, if you haven’t already – and use them – there are many that make life a lot simpler.
• Learn to use a feed reader, again this is also crucial to succeeding online. My favorite is google reader, but there are many other good feed readers, find the one that works best for you.
• Subscribe to the blogs that you visit most often – don’t waste the time visiting their site – view their newest posts in your reader, this saves a lot of time. I also like to star the headlines of articles that look interesting, and ignore the rest, then I come back and read the starred articles when I’m having writers block. You can subscribe to this blog here.
• etc….

To recap the five biggest productivity and time management steps that I can offer are:

1. Focus on the tasks that are most important.
2. Write down the tasks and the time allotted for the tasks.
3. Stay Committed to your Schedule.
4. Keep a journal of your time management experiences.
5. If there’s an easier way – do it! Find ways to increase your productivity.

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