Oooo it’s been a little while since I did one of these hasn’t it? *rubs hands* Okay, so today I thought I would talk about something that I could clearly improve on - and that is scheduling and time management. Actually, I am being a little hard on myself. I go through moments where I am very organised and on top of things and am the scheduling queen. And then other times where I just fail at life in general and even doing up my shoelaces is an effort. You know those days. We all have them! haha The aim of scheduling and managing your time is to help you take more advantage of those times when you are on top of everything - and then you’re not carrying around “bloggers guilt” for not posting during those “failing at life” times that inevitably come around every so often.

Have a blogging routine

I know routines aren’t everyone’s thing, but trust me when I say it makes running your blog so much easier when you’ve got regular features or weekly posts that you know you have to be on top of. For instance, around BNR we have a routine - that being said we’re flexible enough to change things here and there, or skip posts some days, but the general gist is that Mondays will be a review, Tuesdays are Blogging 101 posts, Wednesday is our WWW Wednesday meme, Thursday is also a review, Friday is reserved for our Feral Friday discussions. Then the weekend. Saturday is our Stacking the Shelves post and Sundays are usually something a bit fun - usually an ‘Inspired by Fiction’ post.

Routines help enormously. For instance, at the top of the week, Kristy and I both have a clear understanding of what day we each need to have a review ready to post, so we can manage our reading time around this. It means there’s no surprises (generally! lol) or last minute having to race around trying to put bits and pieces together for an impromptu post that one of us has sprung on the other. Now that doesn’t mean we don’t have our fair share of times where we ARE writing and posting at the last minute (now for instance), however the content of the post is never a surprise. Honestly.. one of these days I’ll be more organised. ;)

Schedule ahead of time

Some of our posts (like our Sunday feature) we can actually have scheduled via WordPress and ready to go ahead automatically on Sunday morning. This is the amazing thing about blogging these days, is that you can have a full time job, a busy social life and things happening in your life at the same time as running a successful blog. You don’t need to be sitting at your computer for hours at a time (although I warn you that Kristy and I still do this a fair bit at times - it doesn’t eliminate this, but it can help reduce it!) but rather pre-write your posts at a time that suits you and schedule them for different days and times during the week to ensure your readers constantly have something new to read each day.

You actually give yourself back MORE time in your day the more organised you can be with this!

Granted, not all posts can be scheduled ahead of time. Posts like our Stacking the Shelves meme on Saturday is very much dependent on books we received during the week, and since we won’t always know what we got for the week until Friday night, this is not really the type of post you can schedule in advance. But by scheduling in all the posts that you KNOW you can do ahead of time, it takes the burden off you for the other posts you need to write on the day.

Manage your time effectively

Oh this is a work in progress for me. I sometimes start a post, and then 45 minutes later am still “working” on the same post, and yet there’s 5 words on my screen because I got sidetracked googling Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball memes again… *sigh*

So I guess what I am saying is that when you’re sitting down to post, make sure you’re in the right frame of mind to write. Focus on what you’re doing and you’ll be able to smash out a good quality post in no time. Easier said some nights when you’ve had a solid night at work or school and you come home to write. But again, this is where scheduling ahead of time can be a wonderful thing. You can write the posts when you’re in the mood to, and schedule it in for later on.

And I think in the new year this is definitely going to be one aspiration that Kristy and I will be aiming to become better at. Whilst we schedule some things, I think we’re able to do this more effectively ourselves. Going into a new year, it’s not a bad idea to start thinking now about what you want to do in the new year as far as your blogging habits go too! :)

How good are you currently with scheduling your posts? Do you have any parting wisdom or advice? Or like Kristy and I, are you working on improving this yourselves? Let us know!

If you have any questions or ideas for topics we can discuss next week leave them in the comments below and Kristy or I will make sure we answer them for you - possibly in a new post next week!