How to organize your blogging week

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Do you feel like there is always too much to do and never enough time? Organizing your week can make all the difference. By organizing your time well, you can get more done in less time, feel less stressed and overwhelmed… and earn more too! Here’s how to organize your blogging week…

 

One of the huge benefits of being a blogger is that you get to be your own boss. You get to call the shots, make all the decisions, work when you want to work and take time off any time you want to. But with that freedom comes a massive lack of structure. There’s no boss breathing down your neck: telling you when to come in to work and when you can leave work, telling you what to do, setting you deadlines and scheduling meetings you have to attend.

This lack of structure can be wonderfully liberating, but paradoxically, it can also lead to a lot of stress, frustration and overwhelm. In fact, it’s incredibly easy to spend practically ALL your time working on your blog… and NEVER having the freedom to work when you want and take time off any time you want, that you originally dreamed of.

It’s also very easy to waste time doing lots of non-essential things, being constantly distracted and never really achieving any of your goals.

Worse still, it’s quite scarily easy to simultaneously do both – be perpetually busy and stressed out, feeling like you are on a never-ending hamster wheel, but never actually seeing the kind of success you had hoped for.

Sound familiar?

Sadly, this scenario is all too common in the blogging world.

Fortunately, there is a fairly straightforward solution and that is to better organize your blogging week. Organizing your week can make all the difference. By organizing your time well, you can get more done in less time, feel less stressed and overwhelmed… and earn more too! Here’s how to organize your blogging week…

 

1. Decide on your work hours and stick to them

This is crucial to success. Treat your blog as a business – even if it’s currently your side hustle – and schedule in set ‘work hours’. This could be a traditional 9-5, but it absolutely doesn’t have to be. The wonderful thing about blogging is you get to choose the hours you want work – hours that fit round your life, your current commitments, your family and your personal preferences.

It could be you work from 7pm to 11pm every evening, because you already have a full-time job in the daytime. It could be 9am to 3pm to fit in with your children’s school day. It could be you work on your blog from 5am to 8am every morning, as you are an early riser and work best at that time. Or it could be you work 10pm in the evening to 2am in the morning because you are a night owl and that’s when you are at your most productive.

It really doesn’t matter WHEN you work, so long as you set yourself designated work hours and stick to them. Don’t be tempted to watch TV or do household chores when you should be working on your blog. (Imagine if you had a brick and mortar business, like a shop or a café, and you often didn’t open because you ‘weren’t in the mood’ and fancied staying at home and watching Netflix – your business wouldn’t last long!) If you want your blogging business to be successful you have to treat it like a business and that means sticking to your ‘work hours’.

But don’t go too far the other way either – that’s also a recipe for failure. If it’s NOT your work time, DON’T WORK! Trying to work 24/7 is a sure path to stress, overwhelm and burnout. It’s one of the biggest reasons why bloggers become demotivated, fall out of love with their blogs and eventually give up. To avoid this, make sure you schedule in plenty of free time and plenty of sleep! Research shows that you will be far more productive in your work time if you are well rested.

 

2. Be clear about your goals

Before you can even think about organizing your blogging week, you need to get clear on your goals. One of the biggest reasons why bloggers can simultaneously be working super hard and yet still not seeing the kind of success they had hoped for is because they have never taken the time to first set clear goals.

You cannot hope to be successful if you have not first defined success!

One of my favourite productivity quotes is by Dr Benjamin Hardy, in his excellent book Willpower Doesn’t Work*. He says…

‘Success isn’t that difficult; it merely involves taking 20 steps in a singular direction. [The problem is] most people take one step in 20 different directions.’

If you don’t set goals, you will end up taking one step in 20, 30, or even 40 different directions but you’ll never actually GET anywhere – and consequently you’ll never see the success you’ve been hoping for.

Before you can make a start on organizing your blogging week, you need to get crystal clear on your goals… What do you actually want to achieve with your blog? What is your ultimate goal? What does success look like to you?

READ MORE >>> Why setting goals will make you more successful
READ MORE >>> Goal setting for bloggers

 

3. Turn your goals into an action plan

One of the most common mistakes bloggers make is that what they do on a day-to-day basis bears almost no relation to their goals. It is not enough to simply know where you are heading, you need to turn those goals into a clear action plan.

There is absolutely no point in organizing your blogging week if you don’t have a clear action plan. All you will do is make yourself more efficient… at doing the wrong things!

To create an action plan, you first need to get clear on your goals and then you need to figure out HOW you will achieve those goals. For example, if your dream is to earn a full-time income working part-time hours. You first need to figure out the best way to earn money passively and then you need to work out what specific action steps will get you from where you are today to where you want to be.

For example, you may decide that the best way to achieve your goal is to create and launch an online course… and then build an evergreen sales funnel to make regular sales of that course on autopilot. In which case, your specific action steps may look like this:

• Market research
• Validate your course topic
• Build your email list
• Nurture your list
• Write your course outline
• Choose your course platform
• Create your course content
• Choose a price point
• Launch your course
• Build an evergreen sales funnel
• Write blog posts designed to get new leads into the top of your sales funnel

Once you are clear on your specific goal-focused action steps, you need to ensure that you plan them into your week (more about weekly planning below) and don’t let these tasks get crowded out by ‘everything else’.

READ MORE >>> How to turn your blogging dreams into an actionable plan
READ MORE >>> How to actually achieve your goals: The real ‘secret’ to turning your dreams into reality

 

4. It’s not all about blog posts

Another issue which I see a lot is bloggers writing too many blog posts. I realize this might sound counter-intuitive… after all, isn’t blogging all about writing blog posts? Well, yes and no. While writing blog posts is an important part of blogging, simply churning out blog post after blog post is not the recipe for a successful business.

If you spend the majority of your time writing blog posts, it leaves you almost no time for anything else. The truth is there are many other important factors that go into building a successful blogging business: doing keyword research, working on your SEO, improving your E-E-A-T, building your email list, updating old blog posts, figuring out your monetization strategy, optimizing your affiliate marketing, creating products to sell on your blog, building evergreen sales funnels, staying up to date with the latest blogging news…

This is why it is so important to first start by getting clear on your blogging goals and then turning those goals into an actionable plan. Without a clear plan, it’s very easy to spend all your time writing blog posts and doing ‘blogging stuff’, rather than doing the specific tasks that will take you from where you are to where you want to be. Of course, it’s likely that writing blog posts will be one of those activities, but it will almost certainly NOT be the only one!

 

5. Schedule time for ‘admin’

One of the biggest causes of stress, overwhelm and frustration to bloggers is ‘admin’. I class admin as ‘all the other stuff’ – those small blog-related tasks that definitely need to be done, but don’t directly earn you money or take you one step closer to your goals. Tasks like social media, replying to emails, replying to blog comments, filing, checking your analytics, doing your monthly accounts, and routine backend tasks like fixing broken and updating plugins.

One of the big problems with admin is that it can very easily take up all of the time you have available for blogging and leave you with no time to do the goal-focused tasks on your action plan. But if you spend all of your time doing admin, and therefore have no time to do the tasks that will actually take you one step closer to your goals, you will stay exactly where you are right now and NEVER see the kind of success you had hoped for!

There are two steps to overcoming this problem. First, you need to schedule specific slots on your weekly plan for admin and secondly you need to always schedule admin for AFTER you have completed your goal-focused tasks for the day.

One of my favourite illustrations is the ‘rocks and sand’ illustration…

In this illustration, the demonstrator fills a jar with sand and then tries to put some big rocks in the jar… and the rocks don’t fit. So the demonstrator tips out the sand and puts the big rocks in first, then pours the same sand back in and magically it all fits in the jar perfectly! How come? Because the sand sort of just ‘fits in’ around the big rocks.

The point of this illustration is that, if you prioritize the unimportant things in life, you’ll never find time for the truly important things. But if you prioritize the important things in life, the unimportant will somehow just ‘fit in’.

If you prioritize admin, by scheduling it at the start of your blogging time, admin will take up all your blogging time and leave you no time for your goal-focused tasks… and so you will make ZERO progress towards your blogging goals.

If on the other hand, you schedule your goal-focused tasks first, your admin tasks will somehow ‘fit in’ – just as the sand some how fits in around the rocks.

READ MORE >>> How to plan your day for maximum productivity

 

6. Make time for CPD

Something else that so often falls off the end of the to do list – but really shouldn’t – is Continued Professional Development or CPD.

Take a look at any highly successful entrepreneur and you will almost always discover that they have a high level of commitment to CPD – learning new things, expanding their horizons, finding new and better ways of working, and honing their craft.

I am 100% sure that my success to date is down to my commitment to investing in my Continued Professional Development.

Or in other words, in order to be able to stay ahead of the curve, find new and better ways or working, and increase my revenue, I invest in books, courses and other trainings to help me hone my craft and grow my business.

And it really is an investment in the truest sense.

When you invest, you put a small amount of money and/or time in and get a lot more out the other end.

And that’s exactly what happens when you invest time and money in resources that will help you grow your blogging business. The more you invest in learning, the more you will get out the other end, in terms of better ways of working, increased revenue and a better work/life balance.

Instead of allowing CPD to fall off the bottom of the to do list, schedule regular time for it on your weekly plan.

 

7. Plan in life admin and chores

One of the biggest distractions bloggers face is life admin and chores!

So many bloggers find their carefully crafted blogging plans derailed by these non-blogging tasks.

Instead of allowing your blogging time to get eaten up by life admin and chores, include them on your plan as well! That way you won’t feel like you just ‘have’ to scrub the bathroom, do the laundry or clean out the guinea pig’s cage when you should be working on your blog… because each of those tasks will have a specific set timeslot on your plan.

This might sound a little draconian, but it’s actually incredibly freeing – you’ll no longer feel like all those household tasks are hanging over you, instead you’ll be able to relax and focus on your blog, safe in the knowledge that your life admin and household chores will get done at the appropriate time.

As a bonus, this will also stop you using household chores as a procrastination tool!

 

8. Write a weekly to do list

Most bloggers have what I call an ‘everything’ to do list. In other words, a to do list of all the things they need to do, want to do, feel they ought to do and might one day do!

A to do list like that is extremely unhelpful. It’s totally unachievable and one of the biggest reasons why bloggers feel overwhelmed, stressed and frustrated. It’s also one of the biggest reasons why most bloggers don’t achieve their blogging goals.

Instead of an ‘everything’ list, I recommend writing a weekly to do list at the start of each week. Your weekly to do list should only include the things you want to have achieved by the end of the week – and nothing else.

Use your weekly to do list to plan out your week, ensuring you are prioritizing goal-focused tasks and keeping admin to a minimum. Decide which days you plan on doing each task and give each task a specific time slot and deadline. Giving each task a specific time slot and deadline will massively increase how much you will achieve each week AND, if you prioritize your goal-focused tasks, it will also ensure you make regular, consistent progress towards your goals.

READ MORE >>> 7 things to do on Sunday evening that will make your week way more productive
READ MORE >>> Daily, weekly and monthly blogging to do lists
READ MORE >>> How to write an effective to do list

 

9. Have a weekly routine

To make weekly planning quicker and easier (and to ensure you are not re-inventing the wheel each week!), I recommend creating a regular weekly routine. This is just a simple document that lists out exactly what you plan to do, on what day, and at what time each week.

Your weekly routine should prioritize your goal-focused tasks, while still ensuring you have adequate time for CPD, blog admin, life admin and household chores. Having a weekly routine will also ensure you don’t forget anything crucial!

Having a weekly routine might sound very restrictive, but it’s actually quite the opposite – it’s incredibly liberating. It allows you to fully be in the moment and focus on the task you are working on right now, safe in the knowledge that ‘all the other things’ WILL get done in their allotted time slot.

This means you don’t have to worry about anything but the task you are working on right now. This improves your focus, which in turn improves your productivity, the quality of your work and your work satisfaction. It also massively reduces decision fatigue, overwhelm and stress. Try it – you will be AMAZED what a difference it makes!

For an example of my weekly blogging routine, see the end of this post.

 

10. Write a daily ACTION PLAN – the night before

Once you have a weekly to do list/routine, you can then use it create a Daily Action Plan for each day. Your Daily Action Plan should only include the specific tasks and action steps that you need to do TODAY, rather than a whole load of ‘extra’ things that it might be nice to do or that you have assigned to a different day.

If you have already done your weekly planning, writing a Daily Action Plan should only take a few minutes of your time. But writing a Daily Action Plan will make a huge difference to your productivity and help you progress much faster towards your goals.

Each day you will therefore have a short, achievable, step-by-step plan which allows you to focus just on what needs doing TODAY and which allows you to ignore everything else, safe in the knowledge that ‘everything else’ you need to do that week has been planned in for a different day and you don’t need to worry about it today.

Finally, I highly recommend you write your Daily Action Plan the night before. This has three brilliant consequences: first, you will be less inclined to work longer than your set blogging hours; second, you will almost certainly be able to enjoy your non-blogging time better and sleep better; and third, you can start each day off to a flying start knowing exactly what you need to do, rather than faffing around ‘procrasti-planning’ for the first hour or more of your allotted blogging time.

READ MORE >>> How to plan your day for maximum productivity

 

11. Don’t over plan and be flexible

Whilst is true that I am the queen of planning and to do lists, I would be the first to say that not every week goes to plan! Projects run over, kids get sick, the car breaks down, unexpected opportunities or appointments come up… and so on.

I recommend you deal with this in three ways. First of all, don’t over plan your time… leave time in your plans for the unexpected. For example, if you work a 5 hour day, only plan for 4 hours. Secondly, be flexible – your plans can always be adapted and adjusted. But thirdly, don’t be tempted to throw out your plans altogether. If something comes along that messes up your plan, write a new plan!

I say this with one caveat: if the thing that threatens to derail your plan is a new blogging opportunity, don’t jump straight on it. Instead, go back to your goals and ask yourself honestly if this new activity is a better or quicker way to achieving your goals, or is it just a ‘new shiny object’ – something that sounds good, but is actually a distraction won’t ultimately help you achieve your goals.

Of course, if it is a genuine opportunity that will help you achieve your goals better or faster, then that’s wonderful – rewrite your plans, removing something else to make room for the new opportunity, and go do that thing!

But if it is just a ‘new shiny object’ and won’t help you achieve your blogging goals, then don’t get derailed by it… just say no!

 

12. Automate or delegate as much as you can

In order to get more done each week and to help you achieve your goals faster, constantly seek ways to automate or delegate blogging tasks.

One of the biggest game-changers for me was getting CoSchedule*. I use CoSchedule to schedule all my social media posts (and it also automatically reschedules at set intervals every post I ask it to). Before I started using CoSchedule, social media took up at least an hour per day – often two. Now social media takes less than 15 minutes per day, freeing up more of my time to work on tasks that will actually move my blogging business forward. Better still, CoSchedule has taken away one of the most boring and hated parts of my week – a real win-win!

Another game-changer for me was outsourcing my food photography for my food blog, Easy Peasy Foodie. Food photography and editing used to take up around 5 hours per week, now it takes almost no time at all. Better still, the quality of photography on my blog is now much better and I can use the 5 hours I’ve freed up to work to spend more time on my goal-focused tasks.

Work out which of your regular weekly tasks could be automated or delegated and do everything in your power to remove from your to do list all the tasks that someone or something else could do, so you can focus more of your time on what you do best.

This could involve getting a virtual assistant, using a social media scheduling tool like CoSchedule, or just working out how to do a regular activity in a more efficient way.

It could even mean delegating a non-blogging activity, so you have more time to blog. Could you get a cleaner or pay your kids to do more household chores? Could you get your partner to help out more? Could you pay for some childcare, so you have extra blogging time?

READ MORE >>> How CoSchedule can help you get more done in less time on your blog

 

Sample weekly plan

This is an example of how I organize my week, so that I can focus on growing my business and achieving my goals, while still having plenty of free time to spend with my family and enjoy the rest of life. I typically work from 8.30am to 6pm Monday to Friday with a 60 minute lunch break and an hour off in the middle of the day for exercise.

You’ll notice that the first 4 hours of my day are dedicated to ‘focus work’ – this is the time when I work on the goal-focused tasks that are on my Yearly Action Plan. These are the tasks that actually drive my business forward and take me towards my goals. I don’t allow myself to do any ‘admin’ until I have completed my 4 hours of ‘focus work’ each day. That means no social media, no emails, no blog admin, no life admin and only the bare minimum of household chores (I get breakfast ready, clear up after breakfast, put the dishwasher on and make sure my kids get off to school with everything they need!) Prioritizing my ‘focus work’ tasks every day allows me to make huge strides in my blogging business and hit my goals much faster.

You’ll also notice that I have very specific slots in my day for email, social media, other types of blog admin, life admin and household chores. This is to ensure that I keep on top of those things, but they are kept to a bare minimum. This is because, while these tasks are generally necessary, they are not tasks that will help me achieve my goals. It is so easy to let this type of activity rule your life and take over all your available time. By placing these activities AFTER my focus work time and by giving them strict time limits, I can avoid this problem.

Finally, you’ll notice that I have a 60 minute slot for CPD each day and a 60 minute slot for exercise. This is very important. If I did not schedule these things in each week, they almost certainly wouldn’t happen! But, as I’ve covered already, CPD is hugely important for driving my business forward. I can honestly say, I wouldn’t be half as successful in my business if I wasn’t so committed to CPD, and that’s why I give it so much time and schedule it in every day. Equally, exercise is also vitally important, not just for my health, but also for my productivity and success. (Research shows that regular exercise improves productivity, concentration, memory, creativity, motivation and work satisfaction, while reducing feelings of stress and overwhelm.)

I’m certainly not perfect and it doesn’t always work out exactly like this. Sometimes life gets in the way or a project overruns. But I really do achieve close to this every single week…

 

Monday 

8.30am: Write two recipes to send to my photography team*

9.30am: Write two blog posts for Easy Peasy Foodie*

10.30am: Format and schedule Blog Post 1, schedule social media posts in CoSchedule, write this week’s newsletter*

11.30am: Format and schedule Blog Post 2, schedule social media posts in CoSchedule, write next week’s newsletter*

12.30pm: Lunch and household chores

1.30pm: Reply to emails

2.00pm: Read SEO/blogging news (I do this to keep current and also to share in my weekly newsletters.)

2.15pm: Life admin/household chores

3.00pm: Exercise (I typically do a weights-based workout: either a Jillian Michaels DVD* or something on YouTube)

4.00pm: CPD

5.00pm: Blog admin

5.30pm: Check social media

5.45pm: Write tomorrow’s Daily Action Plan

*This is what my Monday looks like every other week. On the alternate weeks I use the 8.30am to 12.30pm slot for more focus work.

 

Tuesday

8.30am: Research and write a blog post for Productive Blogging*

10.30am: Format and schedule that blog post, schedule social media posts in CoSchedule*

11.30am: Write this week’s Productive Blogging Newsletter

12.30pm: Lunch and household chores

1.30pm: Reply to emails

2.00pm: Read SEO/blogging news

2.15pm: Life admin/household chores

3.00pm: Exercise

4.00pm: CPD

5.00pm: Blog admin

5.30pm: Check social media

5.45pm: Write tomorrow’s Daily Action Plan

*I don’t write a new blog post for Productive Blogging every week. On other weeks I use the 8.30am to 12.30pm slot for more focus work.

 

Wednesday

8.30am: Focus work (Whatever is on my Monthly Action Plan)

12.30pm: Lunch and household chores

1.30pm: Reply to emails

2.00pm: Read SEO/blogging news

2.15pm: Life admin/household chores

3.00pm: Exercise

4.00pm: CPD

5.00pm: Blog admin

5.30pm: Check social media

5.45pm: Write tomorrow’s Daily Action Plan

 

Thursday

8.30am: Focus work (Whatever is on my Monthly Action Plan)

12.30pm: Lunch and household chores

1.30pm: Reply to emails

2.00pm: Read SEO/blogging news

2.15pm: Life admin/household chores

3.00pm: Exercise

4.00pm: CPD

5.00pm: Blog admin

5.30pm: Check social media

5.45pm: Write tomorrow’s Daily Action Plan

 

Friday

8.30am: Focus work (Whatever is on my Monthly Action Plan)

12.30pm: Lunch and household chores

1.30pm: Reply to emails

2.00pm: Read SEO/blogging news

2.15pm: Life admin/household chores

3.00pm: Exercise

4.00pm: CPD

5.00pm: Blog admin

5.30pm: Check social media

5.45pm: Write tomorrow’s Daily Action Plan

 

Over to you

I’d love to know how you organize your blogging week! Let us know in the comment section below.

 

Blog smarter not harder

Want help with organizing your week? Then download my ebook Blog Smarter Not Harder. This free productivity guide for bloggers takes you step-by-step through the process of goal setting and creating an action plan, as well as weekly and daily planning, so you can get more organized and achieve more in less time.

 

More on this topic…

• How to turn your blogging dreams into an actionable plan
• How to get more done in less time on your blog
• 10 ways to be a more productive blogger
• How to juggle blogging and holidays
• 7 things to do on Sunday evening that will make your week way more productive
  

 

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