This week, on a busier than normal day, I Tweeted that I wish there were more hours in a day (or that there was a pause button so that time could stand still for a bit so I could catch up). The tweet was of course an attempt at humor but the deluge of replies that I received from that Tweet revealed that I’m not the only blogger out there that wishes they had more time.
As I giggled at the responses it struck me that if I’d not posted that message on Twitter about how I wish I’d had more time that I’d probably have had an extra 6 minutes that hour to get the things I needed to get done finished.
While I’m glad I did get on Twitter for those 6 minutes (it gave me a laugh, made me relax and lightened my day a little) I began to think about all the other small little distractions and time suckers we as bloggers face and on a whim (and for a bit of fun) came up with this list of how to be a more productive blogger.
How to be a more productive blogger:
- Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
- Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
- Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
- Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
- Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
- Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
- Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
- Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
- Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
- Stop Reading Blog Tips and Start Blogging – 3 minutes an hour
By my calculations this gives you an extra 37 minutes an hour to do what you need to do. Over an 8 hour work day I’ve just found you a smidgen under 5 hours!
What would you add?
Update: No I’m not really serious. While we could be more productive as bloggers by minimizing a lot of this stuff there can also be a lot of good things come from these activities. I guess it’s about knowing your goals, setting good boundaries and engaging in these kinds of activities to the extent that they help us achieve our goals.