“Time is what we want most, but… what we use worst.” ~Willaim Penn

I admit, I’m guilty of unproductive behavior and wasting time with nonsense everyday, but I know when, what and how to work better then most people. Time is nonrecoverable, so it’s best to make every second count, it’s one of the few things money can’t buy and in the case of bloggers, if used improperly leads to poor performances (i.e. low earnings). Here’s a few tips on how to prioritize your activities, choosing which things deserve your attention and which don’t, setting a posting pattern and other general advices that will help your work faster and better.

1. Stop spamming your time!

Ok, you wake up early in the morning and what’s the first thing you do when you reach your PC? You check your mail, reader and stats. What do you do 30 minutes later? The same things; dude stop! It’s not like your adsense cash or affiliate sales are growing if you check them constantly. Just reserve half an hour early in the morning and another half an hour late at night, before going to bed, for these particular activities. You’ll find that you’ll a lot more time at your hands and you’ll feel more rewarded at the end of the day.

Same thing goes for any other useless time consuming crap you may do during the day, like watching soap operas, video games, porn etc. Try to limit yourself as much as you can, everyday until you’ve eventually push them out of your system. I’m not saying you should work all day; you should definitely take the time to relax and get some leisure every 2 hours or so, for about half a hour, you’ll feel really refreshed afterwards. It’s important to build a balance between your work and life, spending more time with your family and loved ones helps. I myself enjoy taking a walk or a run in the park, I actually kill two birds with one stones: I’m more relaxed/carefree and fit in the same time (8-10 hours in front of a computer everyday isn’t any good for your health you know …).

2. Prioritize!

Often you’ll find yourself overstacked with work, most of time you don’t even know where to begin. What you have to do, to actually get some work done is to organize yourself and schedule your work for the day. Write down on a sheet of paper what you believe are the core tasks you need to accomplish today and afterwards expand the list with subtasks and other miscellaneous things. It’s a good idea to think about blog posts subjects a few weeks in advance, thus granting the ability to prioritize and classifying your posts by importance and time to elaborate.

3. Create a posting pattern

When you know what and when you’re supposed to do a particular job, it’s fairly logical that you’ll finish your job faster and more efficiently then otherwise. Same thing goes for blogging, when you have a specific time of the week or month, when you dedicate a post on a particular subject. It’s really a lot easier when get used to write about something every given period, you don’t have to stress to much about finding new subjects either.

4. Write!

When writing it’s easier and faster if you organize yourself like this:

• Brainstorming (come up with blog post ideas), be sure not spend to much time in doing so and depending on your niche you should look around you for post subjects. Read other blogs archives, magazines, go to a library, and try to seek inspiration for your work. If you pick up of a already used subject, then analyze it and try to improve it as best as you can.
• Researching. I’m a perfectionist in nature; I like documenting myself about a subject before and during writing posts, often building my content from ten different sources, leading to better posts at the cost of time. Keep in mind to aim for quality, not quantity. It’s often better to write a few excellent, well documented posts a week the a lot of terrible, unreliable posts a day. Learn when to draw the line.
• Actual writing. When doing so it’s important to learn how to type fast. As a blogger you’ll need to write hundred/thousands of words a day and that can be really time consuming. This isn’t really a problem, if you’ve been around the internet and around a PC for long enough, you should have form a fast typing technique by now.It’s important to keep focus on your post at all times, thus while writing try to minimize your interaction with anything that might disturb your work. That means no IM(YM,MSN etc), no music (most people don’t focus to well when writing with music on the background, I myself can’t write anything if I don’t have my winamp playing, but then again I’m sort of a music geek), no phone and most importantly no internet. That may sound stupid, but the biggest distractive element is your internet connection; simply open up any material you need for your post research in tabs in your browser and then unplug your network cable. It does wonders, believe me!

These would be the most important tips you should follow, when seeking to improve your writing and productivity. How much time do you spend blogging ?

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The Prioritize Your Activities And Save Time In 4 Easy Steps by Tibi Puiu, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.