Blogging Parents: What Are You Doing During the Summer?

Just curious, because I know many blogging parents. If you’re a full-time blogging parent… Do you put your kids in camp? Hire help (either for work, or for childcare)? Or do you just try to manage by working nights and weekends?

I’ve been considering camp, but today my son flipped about it. We’re a single parent homeschooling family (as I’ve noted) so I’m used to balancing work with my son Cedar. However, his dad is currently being stingy with helping out (it’s his busy season at work) and I did think day camp would give me a nice break; as in a little more work time. However, Cedar doesn’t want to go and has actually struck up a deal with me - odd for a seven year old, I know. We’re going to try out a new schedule; from 9pm to 11pm I get work time - uninterrupted work time. He says he’ll draw or sleep or play with toys and let me work. In his words, “I’ll try to remember you have to work.”

We’ll see.

Right now, we’re trying it out for a week or two, and then, simply because I need more work time, if he can’t manage being on his own for those two hours, he’ll do day camp a few days a week. Also, I’ve decided to quit one job. So, my summer schedule is semi-figured out. Is yours? If you’re a full-time blogging parent how do you manage to get it all done? Kids and work. Especially in the summer if your kids are normally in school. Let me know.

June 3, 2008 | Filed Under Stress, Time Management | 6 Comments 

If You’re Not Feeling A Post… Stop Writing

Just a quick tip. Sometimes I get a “brilliant” idea for a post, start to type, get stuck, and then sit and ponder what to say next. HUGE time waster. Sitting and staring seems like an easy issue to avoid, but I know lots of people who note that they do this.

Train yourself to simply hit save and move on when you’re stuck. Whether you’re stuck on wording, or how you feel, or for some reason you didn’t have enough info to write the post in the first place; just stop. Hit save. Go work on another post. You can always go back later.

Do you ever participate in sit and stare behavior?

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Time Management | 2 Comments 

Giving Each of Your Blogs Equal Attention

First, sorry to be MIA for 4 days. It’s been one of those weeks. “One of those weeks” by the way, is the perfect time to follow Deb’s advice on guest bloggers.

In Are You Playing Blog Favorites? I noted that I sometimes do play blog favorites, but honestly you should try and give equal attention to your blogs; within reason. I say within reason, because there are circumstances that can make it smarter to pay more attention to one blog over another. For instance, one blog I write has page view issues that aren’t my fault; it’s something on the client’s end that I can’t control. I do give this blog the attention I signed on for, but not much more. Since I’m paid partially by page views at this blog, and page views won’t be going up anytime soon (due to factors out of my hands) it’d be a waste of my time to give lots of special attention to this blog.

Aside from oddball situations like the one above, paying equal attention to all your blogs is a good idea. Giving equal attention means all your clients like you, all of your blogs earning potentials go up, and you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.

Solutions that can help you give equal attention to all your blogs:

Use a system:

  1. Post at your least favorite blog first thing of the day.
  2. Post at your least favorite blog last thing of the day.
  3. Switch back and fourth.

I like choice number three the best because it allows all of my blogs to get some attention and it’s like a tiny reward system - fun blog; less fun blog; fun blog. I do sometimes post first thing at my least favorite blog to get it out of the way; then it’s done, and I don’t have to think about it anymore. I almost never post at my least favorite blog last thing of the day, because it’s not a fun way to end my day, and I’m more likely to blow it off completely.

Quit wasting time on other things when you could be working. Things such as…

What else have you tried that allows you to give equal time to all your blogs?

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging for Others, Time Management | Leave a Comment 

Are You Playing Blog Favorites?

Most probloggers I know have plenty of blogs at any given time. In fact, most bloggers I know have five or more blogs. Right now I have about 8 blogs that are currently being updated, plus I also need to network them.

What happens when I don’t pay attention, is I start playing favorites. By playing favorites, what I mean is that at the blogs I like best I may…

Why I play favorites:

My reasons differ, but it usually comes down to one or more of the following…

Problem: If you spend all your time at one or two blogs, your other blogs suffer. As a blogger you really do need to find a suitable amount of time to give to each project. If you play favorites, it becomes tough to accomplish this.

Right now, I actually do have two favorite blogs (I’ll never tell which). I also have some solutions for how to deal when you clearly like one blog better than another. But I’ll do that post next. First, I’m curious, because I can’t be the only one; do you play blog favorites, and if so why?

May 19, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Time Management | 2 Comments 

Repeat To Self: Food, Sleep, & Exercise Are Not Time Wasters

We’ve got two major time wasters leftover from last week. I’m saving my worst sin, “Getting side tracked while posting” for last. Today let’s talk about work breaks and everyday life stuff, like sleep, meals, and exercise.

Breaks, sleeping, eating, and exercise are things I don’t have a lot of time for when I’m in full work mode, so I tend to consider them time wasters. However, they’re not really time wasters, are they? If I avoid them, my work suffers. Obviously we can function on very little sleep, food, and exercise when we want, but it’s just not healthy. Sometimes I’ll work so hard on the weekends, I’ll skip two mealtimes and not even realize it. Or at least I used to. Here’s how I’ve been running things for the last few weeks.

Rules I made for myself:

Never eat at the computer. Never. I don’t care if I have a deadline or not, if you’re going to eat, take a break and eat, then get back to work. Then you get to eat and take a break - double them up.

Set the timer for meals. Because I’m bad about eating on the weekends, I started setting my cell phone timer to go off at dinner and lunch. This has worked pretty well. Twice I turned it off, and since I was in the middle of something, went back to work, and forgot it went off, so I had to add in a new rule; when it goes off, I save what I’m doing and get up from the chair.

Exercise like it’s a normal day. On weekdays (when I don’t work full-time) I exercise in the mornings, plus my son and I usually go for a long walk each day, and in the evenings play soccer or Frisbee at the park. I never used to exercise on the weekends because there’s just no time. However, I realized that I feel more energized on the weekdays, and thought, hey, maybe it’s the darn exercise. That said, I decided to keep my regular exercise routines somewhat on the weekends. I cut out the long walk, but I do still ride my bike, and although my son is with his dad on the weekends, the ex lives next door, so I just go borrow Cedar for some evening park play on at least one weekend day.

Take normal breaks: It’s not smart to sit at your desk for hours on end. I will though, so I made up a rule that every four posts I get up and walk around for at least five minutes, but I aim for ten minutes. During my little breaks I’ll do boring stuff like throw in laundry or wash some dishes; dull but a good break from sitting. I also do some desk stretches.

Sleep: I don’t tend to sleep much on the weekends, and I haven’t been exactly successful at finding a way to make me go to bed. Really, I’d rather work than sleep on the weekends. Bad; I know. It’s also not productive, once you’re too tired, you’re just hitting the keyboard all helter skelter style. I’m one of those who can function well on very little sleep. Even when I’m super tired, I only sleep about five hours a stretch (at most). My current goal is simply to go to bed when I’m tired. Once I stay up past the point of tired I hit a new stride and end up staying up.

What’s working. Since I implemented my new eat, sleep, exercise, and break goals, I’ve been doing ok. Except for on the sleep issue. Since I’m not perfect, I have to take what I can get, and hopefully formulate a new sleep plan. Do you skip sleep when you’re in full-time work mode, or are you worse about skipping out on something else, like exercise?

What are your goals for a healthy lifestyle when you’re blogging full-time?

Actual time wasting activities you might be interested in:

May 18, 2008 | Filed Under Health & Wellness, Time Management | 7 Comments 

When Being Helpful Is A Time Waster

Last week I posted my time wasters (in case you forgot) and some solutions. Below are the time wasting activities; with solutions linked.

I haven’t mentioned forums yet, because my solution is pretty dull - quit visiting forums. Or at least really limit yourself. Forums have been a total time waste for me the last few months; mainly, I think, because I’m one of those helpful by nature sorts.

If you’re new to the world of blogging or freelance writing you can learn a lot by visiting blogging or writing forums. I’ve made many good friends at forums so I do appreciate them. However, if you’ve been writing or blogging a while, what happens is that you tend to offer too much help at forums, and don’t gain as much useful help back. Offering help is really nice, and not a bad use of time in general, but it’s also not a great use of time when you have work to get done.

When I frequent forums, I tend to get emails asking for personal help often. That’s cool. People helped me out when I was a newbie, and I do believe you should give back. It used to be I answered every single email I’d get from new writers or bloggers, but right now, my life is super busy. I just don’t have the time to answer every email. I wish I did, but I don’t. That said; I’ve drastically cut my forum time. I only visit three forums, and I never visit daily. I stop by once a week or so to see what’s new. Also, even when I do visit a forum, I tend to just read, not respond.

Being too helpful is not an activity that’s only attached to forums though. Along with cutting out most of my forum time, I’ve cut out answering emails from folks I don’t know, that don’t pertain to my blog topic. Say at Offbeat Homes. If you email about a house, it’s 100% likely I’ll respond. If you email asking for help about a blog, or how to find work, it’s unlikely I’ll respond. This is kind of a switch for me, a hard switch actually. I love to talk about blogging, I love to help people out, but there’s a point where being helpful is too draining, and that’s where I’m at right now.

Does this make me less nice? I don’t know, maybe. I actually do feel a little guilty when I delete emails. I tell myself, this is not about people I know, or friends I have already, this is about strangers emailing asking me really in-depth questions, that would take time to answer. Overall though, it’s tough not to respond. Since I have quit helping out so much, I do have more time to work though, so it’s a time management solution for sure.

Are you helpful to people you don’t know? How much help do you offer at forums? Where do you draw the line about who to help out, and who to let go?

May 13, 2008 | Filed Under Blogger Etiquette, Time Management | 5 Comments 

Twitter - Not Quitting Anytime Soon

This week I’ve been talking about time wasters. So far I’ve covered personal time wasters, email time savers, and my editorial calender.

Today Twitter.

This post will be real short. Twitter does waste some of my time. Some tweets on twitter are totally useless. Will this be a time waster I cut?

No.

Twitter sends a fair amount of blog traffic my way. Also I stay current on many of the blogs I enjoy via Twitter, which translates into less time spent clicking around, visiting my favorite blogs to see what’s new. Overall it’s a positive service with some time wasting qualities, but it gives enough back so that I feel it’s justified.

What do you think of your Twitter time?

May 9, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Traffic, Time Management | 7 Comments 

The Argument for Posting Ahead

Whenever I talk about posting ahead, the biggest argument not to is time. "I don’t have that kind of time, Deb. I only have time to do my daily allotment each day." I’m here to tell you posting ahead can be a huge time saver, and can also save you from having to play a catch up game later.

Let me explain…

Recently I accepted a lucrative offer from one of my clients. The money was such that I couldn’t refuse, but my workload, of course, grew. And by grew I mean more than doubled.  Though I made some minor adjustments (dropping a difficult client, for instance) I kept all my network blogs. The problem is that it’s hard to post once or twice a day when you’re working almost full time for someone and maintaining your own busy blogs. So I took a few hours over the weekend to post ahead to my b5 blogs ( I have four of them). On Monday there was no denying the benefit of this as it enabled me to fulfill my other obligations without having to worry about finding the time to post to my other blogs. By Tuesday I was learning another major benefit to posting ahead.

Expect the Unexpected

The flu caught me by surprise this week. I started feeling slightly under the weather Monday night but by Tuesday morning I couldn’t function at all. Tuesday and most of Wednesday were spent on the couch or in bed. Though I probably would have taken a sick day today if  I worked in the real world, the truth is I can function in the blogosphere. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t post ahead of time. Trying to catch up on four blogs for two or more days would have put me far behind. Taking the time to post ahead proved to be a very good investment.

Now before you bombard me with comments and emails telling me there’s no time for posting, I have a few suggestions. Perhaps one will work for you?

Finding the Time to Post Ahead

Wake up an hour earlier or go to bed an hour later: You know why I get so much work done? Because I wake up a couple of hours before the rest of my family. I know waking at four doesn’t appeal to everyone, but for me it’s only temporary. School is a full day next year and then I won’t have to wake so early. My partner Jennifer Chait likes keeping very late hours, by the way.

Switch off with a spouse: My husband and like to switch off on the weekends. I’ll take our son to the park so he can get some work done around the house, and he’ll take him for a hike so I can work as I need to. This also frees us up to spend time as a family.

Make a sacrifice here and there: Give up on that hour of reading or tv watching one day a week to get a little extra work done. When you see how much time it saves during the long run, you’ll be happy you made the effort.

Posting ahead saved me this week. If I didn’t do this on Sunday I would be in a panic because I’m so far behind. Even one or two posts can save you in the event of illness or an emergency. Do think about it…

May 8, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Time Management | 6 Comments 

Save Time By Finding Your Perfect Topic Schedule

The other day I posted my personal biggest time wasters while blogging. First I posted some possible time-saving email solutions and today I’m posting some solutions related to my issue of not knowing what to blog about first.

Notice I did not say “I have no idea what to blog about” - it’s actually very rare that I have no clue what to blog about. My brain is always on idea overload. However, too many ideas, can be just as bad as not enough.

I actually realized I had this issue a few weeks ago, and started a plan that has helped immensely. I made a darn editorial calender.

For a long time, at numerous blogging blogs, I’d see the following tip,“Make an editorial calender for your blog to speed things up.” I never listened because I’ve always been more a spur of the moment blogger. Free to blog what I want, no topic or editorial schedule to speak of. I thought an editorial calender sounded sort of lame. But, with no topic schedule, my brain is always hopping, “What to blog first! I’ve got 100 topics in mind! Hmmm….”

Waste. Of. Time.

I decided to make a weekly editorial calendar. I already have a normal weekly schedule so I simply added topics to it. For example, on my schedule I always list all my blogs plus the numbers of posts needed per day. Now with topics added my schedule looks like this:

thf-schedule.jpg

Above is a clip of my schedule - this is part of my week-long schedule for Tree Hugging Family, but all the rest look the same. The post topics in non-bold font never change from week to week. The items in bold do. When I first tried an editorial schedule I made it too rigid. It had no free post times and I felt overly confined (what if a news story pops up?). That said, I now leave 2-3 free spots per day. If I have a special feature going on I add it in bold. As you can see we’re doing a weekly special on green feminine products and a month long green wedding event.

I do detour sometimes from a topic, but overall, just having to look down and see a topic is way easier. Now I just glance and think, “Oh, it’s time to blog about natural gardening.” I can blog anything about natural gardening I want, but knowing my goal is to get a post on this exact topic done helps.

But my blog’s not so diverse. I can’t have all these topics…

It doesn’t matter. With the green blog, I can have a lot of variety but with say, my organizing blog, I don’t go by topic so much as space. Take a look:

orgsched2.jpg

If you had a baking blog, you could do topics by item; cookie, cake, muffins, etc. Or if you have a blogging blog you could do it by tips; traffic, how-to, comments, etc. This sort of editorial schedule works for any blog. One last thing. What you see above is from this week’s schedule (no holidays) on a week with a holiday, I’d add that for the week on whatever day. I also add contest announcements, theme days, and general issues like that.

By the way, if you have no clue where to start when developing topic themes, I’ll tell you how I got mine. One from stats. The topics you see in my schedule are the most popular I write on. Two, at both these blogs I had polls up that asked readers what they wanted to read more of. The winning topics are also included on my schedule.

In any case, I’m kicking myself for not listening to everyone sooner. This has saved me more time than any other time management trick I’ve tried so far, because I’m not always wavering about trying to focus on a topic theme.

Give it a try, I bet you’ll save time too. Just don’t forget to leave a little flex room.

Have you tried a blogging editorial calender? What did you think?

May 8, 2008 | Filed Under Time Management | 8 Comments 

Spend Less Time On Email & More Time Blogging

The other day I posted my personal biggest time wasters while blogging. Today I’m posting some solutions I’m considering for email and moderating blog comments. I’m tacking these two time wasters together, because blog comments are one major source of email for me.

How I already save time on email: 

Have decent email: I use Gmail for my major email account. I.e. anyone that matters gets my Gmail account. Gmail is very good about clearing spam (knock on wood) and so far I’ve never had an issue with them, like I have with other email providers. At first it was tough for me to get used to the whole forum-like thread on Gmail, but now, I really like it. If you have an email account that passes too much spam through, consider changing providers.

I don’t respond to everyone: I used to respond to everyone, even if it wasen’t that useful to me personally, like a PR person with a tip I couldn’t use. I’d email to say thanks anyhow, but no thanks. Now I’ve pulled back a bit on email etiquette. I respond if it’s important, if you’re a friend, and often if it’s someone with a question about blogging, but that’s it.

New ideas I have to save time on email:

Don’t answer every email right away: There are some people who say that you should only check your email if you’re ready to respond. I used to do that. Problem was I’d check my email 3+ times a day. Now I don’t answer all my emails right away. I’ve been saving them up. I still do check my email maybe 3 times a day, in case there’s some sort of client emergency, but I’ve been trying to answer the bulk of them at night.

Check your email once a day only: This is too hard for me to do, but I’ve been considering bucking up and trying it. The issue is that on weekdays I’d have 100s by nighttime if I didn’t do a sweep a couple of times a day. What I do currently is fly in, and scan for unimportant emails , which I delete, and toss everything else into labeled folders.

Delete all blog comments right away: It’s not always up to me whether I get comments emailed or not; sometimes my clients or networks have them sent to me. However, what I’ve found is that if I read and respond to comments when I see them in my inbox, it wastes a lot of time. My new system that I’m working on is simply reading my comment panels once a day at all my blogs. I’m not too good at this yet. I like to read comments as they arrive, but it does waste more time than dealing with them all at once.

Deal with special groups of emails once a week only: I get lots of emails from people asking me to do product reviews or giving me tips on topics. I’m saving all these in a PR folder that I sort, read, and answer once weekly. I’m also part of a stumble email group, so I’ve been labeling and saving these as well.

I started working on my email problems last week and so far it’s been better. It takes time to develop new habits though, and most days I really want to go comment at my blogs right away, or respond to stuff that’s not a dire emergency. If I follow through, I think the above ideas are really going to help me.

Obviously I’m not the best person to be giving email advice (it is one of my issues) so I decided to search out a few links you can read that address email nightmares:

12 Rules for Getting a Grip on Massive ProBlogger Email - great tips, some I’ll be trying out.

Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload - an older article, but had some nice tips surrounding how to send better emails, and how to let people know that you’re not an email slave.

10 Tips for Managing Email Effectively - excellent pointers about all areas of email management.

20+ Firefox Plugins For Managing Email - extra plugins tend to make my world more difficult, not easier, but these may work well for you.

What’s your best tip for managing email overload?

May 7, 2008 | Filed Under Blog Tips, Time Management | 10 Comments 

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