[LET’S CHAT] How Do You Find The Time To Blog?

I think we all know that blogging takes up a lot of our time.

I’ve talked about how I balance books, blogging, and life on my blog before, but never specifically about HOW I find the time to sit down and blog, especially with how stressful my life outside blogging can be. So, of course, I decided to chat about it (because that’s how I deal with things).

I’m pretty sure it’s a universal blogging problem that we just don’t know how to juggle everything as bloggers. As bloggers, we all love blogging, but it’s hard to juggle something that most of us consider a side hobby with other things in our life, depending on our personal life experiences. So how do we juggle it all without going crazy?

I think every blogger wants to know what the secret is to everyone else’s time management. There’s so much effort and thought and work put into blogging, and it takes up so much of our time, whether we like it to or not. So, why not talk about my own personal strategy.

Sometimes, I don’t even know how I find the time to blog.

I’m currently in my junior year of high school (which is just as stressful as I thought it’d be), so I don’t have time to be writing blog posts during the weekdays, especially since I get home pretty late. And then when it comes to the weekends, I’m exhausted from school and just want to relax and watch some TV or catch up on movies rather than write, edit, and comment back all weekend. So, writing all my posts a month before, though it would be nice, isn’t something I do much nowadays.

Nowadays, I still continue to work on the weekends since it’s my best time.

Nine times out of ten, I’m super busy on the weekdays since I don’t get home until six, and then I usually have to do homework, of course, so the weekends, where I usually have minimal homework except some studying, are the best for me. I have no idea if other people work on the weekends as well, but that’s what I do!

When it comes to actually writing posts, one thing that really helps me is writing outlines before I even begin to write the actual post down.

I find it wastes a lot of time if I just write a random post idea, open up a new tab in WordPress, and hope that something will eventually come to me, especially if I write out an entire post and find that I’m repeating the same things in different sentences or the post just doesn’t seem long enough. Writing outlines not only makes it much easier to write a post when I have the time to, but it also helps for when I come up with a great title for a post, but the actual material behind it isn’t coming out the way I want to when I’m typing out the outline.

I also now write posts weekly over doing it monthly.

I still plan out my posts the month before by writing out a bunch of interesting post ideas, choosing which ones I like the best, and making sure to get everything in order in one place on my phone, but I’ve found it much more effective to take a week of posts – which, for my blog schedule, is three or four, depending if I want to write next week’s Sunday post then or the Saturday before – and work on those Saturday and Sunday. I write the posts, completely edit them, make graphics for them, insert gifs if needed, and read over the full thing so on the day that I’ll post it, I just post it, promote it on social media, and that’s it!

I’ve also learned that, sometimes, it’s best to make some sacrifices.

Instead of watching TV or a movie, I might do something related to my blog, like writing a post or making some graphics or writing some blog post outlines (and I do this all while watching things that don’t really beg for my attention, like old Kitchen Nightmare episodes or late-night talk shows). I have the biggest problem with procrastinating, and it’s something that blogging has pushed me stop doing (unfortunately, not when it comes to school. Still suck at time management when it comes to that). I don’t think that making a sacrifice has to be something big, like writing, editing, and making graphics for a blog post all in one big go; doing something small can really help push you forward (and, sometimes, with a little taste, I end up working longer and harder than I originally planned to).

Depending on your blog schedule, I also think that taking it slow is the best way to go!

I know I personally do things quick, quick, quick (I get really bothered leaving things unfinished, and it’ll bother me all day, so I usually wait until I’m ready to work hard to do things), but, sometimes, for other people, taking things slowly is what helps! You can write a post one day, format it the next, make graphics for all your upcoming posts from the week before that, take a certain time period where you’re free to take bookish pictures, if that’s something you do. It won’t get things done quickly, but for those who get overwhelmed easily, I think this is the best procedure!

What is your strategy to finding the time to blog? 

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