3 Bright Ideas to Reduce Blogging Related Stress

If you are yet to have a day when you felt like dumping your laptop in the waste bin, then you must be one lucky blogger.

Sometimes we get that feeling when we know we are grossly behind on our schedule and there seems to be little we can do about it.

Have you been there lately?

Well, the three secrets I will share in this post should bring you up to speed as far as productivity as a blogger is concerned. Applying them will reduce the blogging associated stress, after all if you are anything like me you started blogging to run away from the stress associated with your 9-5 job.

Bright Ideas to Reduce Blogging Related Stress

Set clear goals

This one should be obvious, but surprisingly a lot of bloggers operate on an ‘everyday will take care of itself’ principle. The most interesting thing about the internet is that it is like a Pandora’s Box.

Full of surprises, it is only natural for you to drift away from the task you had on hand, say read updates from ten blogs you follow, to check out some pretty neat stuff you just stumbled on.

This will not always be Farmville or , sometimes it can come disguised as part of your work – a great plugin you just need to add to your blog, or powerful about page copy that makes you want to review yours – but as long as that was not the task at hand, it is a distraction

Set clear goals for your blog. That way when you stumble on these great plugins, you can review them against your blogging goals to see if they fit into your big picture.

If they do, instead of abandoning what you had scheduled to do at that time, bookmark the page to come back to it. If it really matters, you will make out a time block for that particular task.

Create To-Do Lists

Without a To-Do list your day can suddenly grow wings and take a direction of its own.

So now you have set goals, create daily tasks that take you closer to those goals.

While this may sound childish, believe me, mapping your day in this way can help you hold yourself accountable. This is a great way to stay focused on what needs to be done.

If you have a To-Do app installed on your mobile phone, use it to map out your daily tasks. I use the Any.do: To-do list, Calendar, Reminders & Tasks application on my Android Phone and it works just fine for me.

If you prefer organizing your day using a Calendar, that is also great. While you are at it, you may want to organize your week and month to see the big picture about where you are headed.

How much time do you spend on Social media like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus? How often do you check Whatsapp messages and Emails? Map a specific time segment for every task you do, from writing your blog posts, engaging on Twitter, replying emails and so on.

While those tasks are important for your business, they can suddenly become distractions if you allow them to. I check emails twice a day and despite the temptation to look at my stats daily, I only check Emails once a week.

Do you really need to do any of those more often?

Hold yourself accountable to keep to time. If a task was supposed to take twenty minutes and it looks like it will take forty now you are at it, abandon it and move to the next task. Do not allow one task deny you closure on other items on your To-Do list.

Think Long Term

It is important to plan ahead as a blogger. At times that would mean realizing you just cannot do everything you set out to do.

What is your blog to you? Is it a business or just a way to while away the time? If you have long term goals of turning your blog into a source of full time income soon, then it may pay to hack your routine in favor of staying organized.

If you are anything like me, you have two To-Do lists. One for the tasks you have to do daily, and the second for the tasks you hope to be able to add to your first list soon. To succeed as a blogger, both lists are important.

Establishing a routine and getting everything done every day is easy as a beginner blogger, but you will notice that as time goes on, your To-Do lists are getting longer and longer with every passing week. You see bright ideas on someone’s blog and you add it to your future list. Then you stumble on a plugin you would love to try out someday and you chuck it in there too.

And the two lists are growing, side by side and before long you realize that your business is growing too alongside your lists. Your blog is making you money now and you are getting traffic coming in from all over the web and there is still so much to do, but just one you.

Is it time to pack up? You bet not! Now is the time to start hiring some employees to help you take care of your daily To-Do list so you can start focusing on the big, bright future.

What do you make of these ideas? Tell me in the comments below.