Takuin Minamoto has written an excellent piece “3 Days to Successful Blogging” on effective time management for his blog Rule of 5, exploring new ways of redefining your schedule to maximize your creative energy and make you a more dedicated and efficient blogger. Minamoto follows the philosophy of Jack Canfield, specifically his ideas on the Breakthrough Results Time System, to break your work schedule into three distinct day types: The Best Results Day, Preparation Day and Rest and Relaxation Day.

Time Management

Each day has a specific purpose for honing your creative energies and should be separated from each other throughout the week. As the author notes, scheduling these days a week or so in advance will help you get into the swing of things. Here is how this time management system works:

The Best Results Days:

On these days you want to spend the majority of your time focused on your area of expertise and nothing else. You want to put yourself in a mindset that is completely involved in your work – not just any work - but your central ideas that you are most passionate about in terms of meeting your goals, be they monetization, exposure or crafting better articles. In other words, this is the day you want to spend as much time writing and editing your content as possible. For more tips on maximizing your best results days, look to our article on writing captivating content.

Preparation Days:

On these days, you want to use your time to prepare for The Best Results Days so that you can make the transition into effective content development smoothly and confidently. On these days, put aside your core writing tasks and focus instead on blog brainstorming, consulting your blog mastermind group, reviewing social media sites, marketing your blog, finding blog resources, improving your blog’s design and other tasks that will support the accessibility of your content. Without effective Preparation Days, you may burn yourself out and loose focus when you start creating your content. When you keep preparatory and writing tasks separate from each other, you can avoid being distracted by certain activities and concentrate your energies on accomplishing specific goals, making blogging a more fluid and less scattered intellectual process.

Rest and Relaxation Days:

This is the day you step away from work completely to ease your mind and allow yourself to unwind and recharge your batteries. As Minamoto recognizes, this is often easier said than done, since there is always that urge to check your analytics, respond to comments, emails, etc. You have to resist this urge so you can reenergize your focus for the next week and allow yourself to be inspired by other activities. You could also use your R and R day as a reward for accomplishing your goals set on the other two days.

In order for this time management system to be effective, you have to balance the number of days you give to each type. While you may think having several Best Results days in a row will accomplish a lot, you run the risk of loosing your energy and focus. Too many preparation days will distract you from actively creating your content. And too many R and R days will just encourage procrastination. So schedule wisely, giving ample room for each type while placing emphasis on having the greatest Best Result Days possible.

Make sure you have R & R time and preparation time suited to your particular needs for the week, as you can’t always follow too strict of a regimen. We hope this breakdown will help you better organize your time and create a working environment where you can focus and practice your passions with ease! Do any of you follow any sort of time management schedule for blogging? How do you organize your time?