It's Time To Manage My Blogging Workload!

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
C.S. Lewis.

Some of you are no doubt much more ordered and organised than me.

I've noticed however, one particular thing I don't do when I'm blogging compared to how I work in the 'real world', and that is deciding what my key 'tasks' are, which are nice to have, which are essential, how much 'resource' I have and when the tasks should be done.

I reckon the lack of 'formality' in my blogging is because I see it as a 'hobby' rather than a job, I'm not answerable to anybody, and I've treated it as a casual exploration rather than an objective led task.




As well, you've probably come across that well worn description of what it's like coping with the deluge of information that is available from the net as 'like drinking from a fire hose'. Well, I'm not really talking about that experience although it is party related to it.

There is always something you 'can do' when you are blogging, communities to join explore and engage with, gadgets and widgets to try out, technical skills to develop, analysis to carry out, content to write, research to do etc.

For the most part since I started blogging I have approached these tasks on an ad hoc basis, you know, I'll drop in on Blogcatalog, next I'll tweak my Squidoo lens, or build another one, now I'll Twitter, next its over to Stumble etc etc. I've never really structured what I'm going to do on a daily or weekly basis and I've never really worked out how to send a 'shout' on Digg for example!! (cries of 'doh' from the readership) How 'corporate' would that be anyway and surely that's not what the blogosphere is about!!

The trouble with this scattershot approach is that I'm not consistent and I'm not managing the key resource I have - time. Why is consistency important? Well, I think its to do with the fact that I'm not sure what connection there is between community participation, commenting and readership of my blog, I sort of 'drop-in' from time to time but don't really 'join-in'. Not only that I have gnawing sense of frustration and disorientation about what it is do when switch on the laptop! I never seem to have sense that my blogging time is productive or 'finished'.

So...I'm going to try some 'structure'. Now, perhaps Second Brain, Feedster, Google Reader, My Space, Zune, Stumble, Squidoo, Delicious and a host of other of Reasonable Robinson's playgrounds will get some dedicated attention. I'm going to allocate a maximum of 1 hour per day to blogging. I'm going to limit myself to 15 mins for a post and 45 mins for other activities. This is going to be my 'blogging regime'.

Maybe I'll just have to 'let something go' but that is going to be difficult, I reckon I've got the blogging version of the Gambler's Fallacy, you know, 'aw, go on...just look at one more thing, add one more comment, its bound to make a difference to my visitor numbers...this next post is going to be 'the biggy'...thousands of readers...just one more...just one more...' The Bloggers Fallacy in action!

Everyday...half hour max...
1 read the news (usually the BBC)
2 read/ manage google reader
3 comment on other blog posts and Twitter
4 post something

And...for the other half hour...

5 Monday - Stumble, Digg, Reddit
6 Tuesday - Blogcatalog and My Bloglog
7 Wednesday - Second Brain, Feedster, Delicious
8 Thursday - Squidoo and other RR blogs
9 Friday - Yahoo Answers, Amazon lists, Fuel My Blog, Spicy Pages, Blog Explosion
10 Saturday - Predictify, ebook writing,ponder...to monetize of not monetize
11 Sunday - well...work out how to send a shout on Digg?


...this has just taken me 45 mins! now what! aaaarggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!