How to organise your blogging week

I may get paid commission for purchases made after clicking a link in this post.

Blogging is so much fun and such a great way to earn good money from the comfort of your own home…but there is always so much to do! And always so many things you want to be able to do too! Yet never enough hours in the day. But organising your blogging week can make all the difference. By organising your time well, you can not only get the things on your to do list done, but also get those extra ‘ideal world’ things done too. Read on to find out how to organise your blogging week…

 

Blogging is fab, it’s great to be master of your own destiny – able to call the shots and make all the decisions in your own little empire. But with that freedom comes a massive lack of structure. There’s no boss telling you when to come in to work, when to leave work, telling you what to do, setting you deadlines and scheduling meetings you have to attend.

This lack of structure is wonderfully liberating, but can also lead to a lot of stress and frustration too. It’s very easy to spend all your time working and never have that freedom to work when you want and not when you don’t, that you originally dreamed of. Alternatively, it’s very easy to faff around doing lots of non-essential things, being constantly distracted and never really achieving any of your goals. In fact, it’s quite scarily easy to simultaneously do both – be perpetually busy and stressed out, but never actually achieving anything. Sadly, I see this a lot in the blogging world.

But I believe with a little bit of organisation and a whole lot of self-discipline, you can achieve amazing things with your blog AND have plenty of free time to spend with your friends and family, and enjoying your hobbies.

Here’s how to organise your blogging week…

 

1. Decide on your work hours and stick to them

This is crucial to success. Treat your blog as a job – even if it’s currently your side hustle – and schedule in ‘work hours’. This could be a traditional 9-5, but it doesn’t have to be! The wonderful thing about blogging is you can decide what hours you work to fit round your life.

It could be you work from 7pm until 11pm every evening, because you already have a full-time job in the daytime. It could be 9am until 3pm to fit into your children’s school day. It could be you work on your blog from 5am until 8am every morning, as it’s the only time you can manage.

It 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 some laundry when you should be working. And don’t do the opposite either. If it’s not your work time, don’t work! Or you and/or your family will come to resent your blog. Make sure you schedule in plenty of free time too – and don’t forget to sleep! You will be more productive in your work time if you are well rested.

 

2. Be clear about your goals

This one is super important, and one of the reasons why so often we as bloggers spend so much time doing ‘stuff’ but never actually achieving much. I’ve written a whole post about goal setting for bloggers, which goes into this subject in detail. But basically, it boils down to working out what you are trying to achieve… What do you actually want out of blogging? What is your ultimate goal? And then working backwards, right back to your to do list. Ensuring everything on your to do list is actually taking you towards your ultimate goal and not just there because you thought of it, or because some other blogger is doing it.

 

3. Don’t plan in too many blog posts

This is one thing I see a lot. Bloggers trying to cram in several blog posts a week, but not leaving themselves enough time to do other things which might be more effective in taking them towards their ultimate goal.

Of course, it’s important to write blog posts. But there are so many other important factors in building a successful blog: working on your SEO, building your email list, promoting your existing blog posts, revamping old evergreen blog posts, pitching sponsored post ideas to brands, creating products to sell on your blog, analysing your statistics…

If you spend all your time writing blog posts, you will not have enough time to do everything else. One well written, well promoted blog posts per week and lots of time working on the other important elements of blogging is a far better (and more sustainable) strategy than churning out 4 or 5 blog posts a week.

You may say – ah Eb but look: ‘so and so’ is a super successful blogger and they are managing to write 4 or 5 blog posts a week. But the truth is, where there is a successful blogger writing multiple blog posts a week, you will almost always find a team behind them doing all the other things!

 

4. Plan in time for ‘blog development’

Just churning out blog posts and sharing them on social media is not enough if you want to see real success. You need to be constantly trying new things, constantly learning how to do things better and/or more efficiently, constantly seeking to grow your blog, constantly looking for new and better ways to promote your blog and make money from your blog…

I call this ‘blog development’ and I consider it crucial to blogging success. In fact, I spend far more time doing ‘blog development’ than I do writing and sharing blog posts. I typically spend 2 days a week writing and sharing blog posts (1 on each blog) and 3 days a week on ‘blog development’.

‘Blog development’ includes things like working on my SEO, learning how to do things better (e.g. social media, Pinterest…), learning how to do new things (e.g. video, email marketing, sales funnels…), working on new ways to make money (pitching brands, creating products, writing content with affiliate links…), working out how to automate things I’m doing already, studying my Google Analytics, watching webinars, taking courses… In short, anything that grows my blog and makes it better.

This all might sound daunting, but it truly isn’t. I simply plan to do 1 new blog development thing per month, 10 months of the year (I don’t plan any blog development activities in August or December). That gives me 12 solid days per month to really tackle an area of my blog that I want to improve, and then I move onto the next thing. (Learn more about how I do this in my post on goal setting for bloggers.)

 

5. Schedule time for ‘admin’

Apart from writing and scheduling blog posts, the other thing you will need to plan for in your week is admin. All too often admin either gets left till last, crammed in randomly, or worse – done every time a new admin activity (email, social media notification etc.) comes in! I firmly believe that the best way to tackle admin is once or twice a day. That way it doesn’t get too big or too daunting, but it doesn’t constantly distract you from what you should be doing either!

I like to allocate one small slot first thing in the morning, to quickly reply to all my blog comments and deal with any emails that can be dealt with quickly (read, deleted, filed or replied to in under a couple of minutes and then flag the ones I need to deal with later).

Then I schedule a second, longer time later in the day to reply to social media comments and deal with my emails a little more thoroughly, ensuring I have replied to everything I can and my inbox only contains things that actually need to be there (find out more about how I deal with emails in this post: How to sort out your overflowing inbox for good!). I also use this slot to deal with any other small admin jobs on my to do list.

When it’s not a specific admin time, then I don’t do any. I have my inbox closed, I have my social media notifications turned off and if any small admin task occurs to me, I write it on my to do list for later. Instead I focus on the task I have set myself – without distractions!

READ MORE >>> How to stop procrastinating (and start being super productive!)

 

6. Write a weekly to do list

This is a really helpful, but really simple tool. We are all familiar with the ‘everything’ to do list – a to do list of all the things we ever want done in our entire lifetime (or near enough!) A ‘to do’ list like that is totally unachievable and makes you feel overwhelmed and daunted before you have even started.

Instead, start by writing a weekly to do list of all the things you want to have achieved by the end of the week. And then decide which days you plan on doing each task, ensuring you are allowing enough time for writing and sharing blog posts, blog development and blog admin.

Keep anything that you don’t need to do this week (but want to be reminded of) on a separate list altogether. That way your weekly to do list won’t seem so daunting.

READ MORE >>> Daily, weekly and monthly blogging to do lists
READ MORE >>> How to write an effective to do list

 

7. Have a weekly routine

Better still have a weekly routine and schedule the different activities you need to do at specific set times in the week. For example, you could have Monday as your blog post day, Tuesday as your social media day, and Wednesday to Friday as your blog development time. With every afternoon from 4pm until 5pm as your specific allotted ‘admin time’. For an example of my weekly blogging routine see the end of this post.

 

8. Write a daily ‘to do’ list – the night before

Once you have a weekly ‘to do’ list/routine. You can the create your daily to do lists. Ensure that your ‘to do’ list includes just what you need to do that day, rather than a whole load of things that it might be nice to do or that you have assigned to a different day.

If you have done your weekly planning well, this should really take the pressure off. You will have a much smaller list of ‘to dos’ on your daily list and you can ignore everything else, safe in the knowledge that it has been planned in for a different day.

My other top tip here is to write your to do list the night before. This has three brilliant consequences: first, you will be less inclined to burn the midnight oil; second, you will 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 for the first hour.

READ MORE >>> Daily, weekly and monthly blogging to do lists
READ MORE >>> How to write an effective to do list

 

9. 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 washing machine breaks, unexpected opportunities or appointments come up and so on.

The best way to deal with these things is, first of all don’t over plan your time… leave time in your plans for the unexpected. If you work a 5 hour day, only plan for 4 hours. And secondly, be flexible. If something comes along that messes with your careful plan, write a new plan!

I say this with one caveat: obviously if life happens then you just have to deal with that, but if the thing that threatens to derail your plan is a new blogging opportunity, first think about your overall goal – is this new activity actually leading you towards your goal, or is it something that is actually just wasting your precious time. If it is a genuine opportunity that will push you towards your goals, then fab – rewrite your plan and go do that thing!

But if it is just something that has come up and presented itself, but doesn’t actually serve your goal (some unpaid blogging event, for example, that doesn’t have any tangible benefit for you or your blog), then don’t get derailed by it… just say no!

 

10. Automate or delegate as much as you can

This is a biggie – the more you grow your blog, the more there is to do. Constantly seek ways to automate or delegate. One of the biggest game changers for me was getting CoSchedule*. I use CoSchedule to schedule all my social media (and it also automatically reschedules at set intervals every post I ask it to.) Now my social media time has gone from probably the best part of a day a week, to just 1 or 2 hours a week AND I am posting far more frequently to all my social channels too – AND it has taken away one of the most boring and hated parts of my week to boot – win win all round, I say!!

Work out what out of your week could be automated or delegated and do everything in your power to get off your to do lists all the tasks that someone or something else could do, so you can focus on your core activities.

This could involve getting a virtual assistant or social media manager, 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 be 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 do things so that I can focus on growing and developing my two blogs and still have time to spend with my family. I typically work from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday with a gap in the middle to pick the kids up from school and/or take them to their activities.

I’m certainly not perfect – it doesn’t always work out like this, because, well, LIFE!! But this is what I aim for…

 

Monday

9am: Household chores

9.30am: Check emails and reply to blog comments

10am: Write a blog post for Easy Peasy Foodie, edit and upload photos

12.15pm: Lunch and household chores

1.00pm: Finish blog post, schedule social media and newsletter for Easy Peasy Foodie

3.00pm: Blog admin

4.00pm: Collect kids from tennis

4.30pm: Reply to emails and check social media

5.30pm: Cook dinner (inc. taking photographs for the blog if necessary)

 

Tuesday

9am: Household chores

9.30am: Check emails and reply to blog comments

10am: Write a blog post for Productive Blogging, edit and upload photos.

12.15pm: Lunch and household chores

1.00pm: Finish blog post, schedule social media and newsletter for Productive Blogging

3.00pm: Collect kids from school

4.00pm: Blog admin

4.30pm: Reply to emails and check social media

5.30pm: Cook dinner (inc. taking photographs for the blog if necessary)

 

Wednesday

9am: Household chores

9.30am: Check emails and reply to blog comments

10am: Blog development

12.15pm: Lunch and household chores

1.00pm: Blog development

3.00pm: Collect kids from school

3.30pm: Quick dinner with the kids

4.15pm: Blog admin

5.15pm: Drop the kids off at gymnastics

5.30pm: Reply to emails and check social media

6.30pm: Go running with my local jogging group

 

Thursday

9am: Household chores

9.30am: Check emails and reply to blog comments

10am: Blog development

12.15pm: Lunch and household chores

1.00pm: Blog development

3.00pm: Collect kids from school and take to tennis lesson

3.30pm: Blog admin (at tennis club – fortunately they have Wi-Fi!!)

4.30pm: Take kids home

4.45pm: Reply to emails and check social media

5.30pm: Cook dinner (inc. taking photographs for the blog if necessary)

 

Friday

9am: Household chores

9.30am: Check emails and reply to blog comments

10am: Blog development

12.15pm: Lunch and household chores

1.00pm: Blog development

3.00pm: Collect kids from school and take to swimming lesson

4.00pm: Reply to emails and check social media (whilst at swimming lesson)

5.30pm: Take kids home, cook dinner for them, then go running

8.00pm: Collapse in a heap on a sofa with pizza and a large glass of wine after a busy, but very productive week!!

 

Get my FREE productivity guide for bloggers…

 

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

 

Don’t miss a thing!

Follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or why not subscribe to Productive Blogging and get blogging and productivity tips straight to your inbox every week?

 

Pin this post to read later

*This blog post contains affiliate links, this means if you click on a link and go on to buy the product I recommend, I will get a small commission, but you will not be charged a penny more – thanks in advance!