Wayne Liew Dot Com

Many of us blog on a part-time basis which means blogging is just another part of our routine since we will have other aspects, such as academics or work for us to be taken care of.

As a part-time blogger myself, I find difficulty in seeking the balance in my online and offline life. I often face the following problems:

• No time for people around me
• No time for extra entertainment
• No time for my main aspects, academics
• No time for researching blogging topic research
• No time for planned blog marketing strategies

Do you face any similar problems? I have to agree that many people have either abandoned their blog or other main aspects in life to focus on only one thing. Having a dual-focus lifestyle is hard and proved pressurizing, especially you still have interests in both of them.

As you can see from my list above, the phrase “NO TIME” is the key. Will you say 24 hours is not enough for you? I wouldn’t say so especially after reading Skelliewag’s Time is Something You Make.

Remember my list of what to do to fill up blogging idle time? How much of your time has been spent on something productive? Whenever you get online, how much time that you have actually spent on your blog, for contents and for marketing? Whenever you get offline, how much time that you have spent on gaming, movies and entertainment?

The main distractions when we are online that kept us from blogging productively are:

• E-mail inbox – I have subscribed to 8 newsletters and I can say at least one mail will come in every one hour. I checked it, read it from top to bottom but I didn’t realized that my blogging activity is left hanging.



• Instant messenger – I should admit that IM softwares such as Windows Live Messenger and Skype really kills my time. I can spend up to one or two hours by chatting with over 5 different people.
• Social media and foruming – Social media and foruming are great ways to market your blog and to search for yourself blogging ideas. The problem with these platforms is that we tend to end up reading unnecessary stuffs and posting replies to junk discussions.
• Non-related sites – What a betting site got to do with your blog on food? Why are you watching online porn when you don’t have an adult site? Kill the intentions of accessing sites like porn sites that are extremely sticky once you have access to them. They can really be time consuming.



• Offline worries – Some people have the focusing problem whereby they can’t focus on what they are doing but instead, they think of other things. When you are blogging, think about your blog and don’t think about what will you be eating for dinner.

What are the other distractions you can think of?

On the offline side of life, I should say that entertainment is the killer of productivity. When we are entertaining ourselves, we are doing nothing productive. After we have finished the “entertaining activity”, we normally laze around before getting our engines kicked off again.

You have all the distractions above bothering you? I will have a few ways which you can try to apply to your life so that you can free yourself from all of it.

• Timetable and scheduling
  Seriously, you need a daily timetable to plan out your activities by hour. If you are always having your computer with you, you can try putting your planned activities into your time slots by using softwares such as Windows Calendar or Google Calendar which are free of charge.



• Focus
  When you are doing A, just think of A. Don’t think about blogging during a class or at your workplace if they have nothing to do with blogging. When it time to blog, blog hard and when it is time for you to study or work, study and work hard.
• Review
  When you are doing something, make it a chore to write down the time spent on a particular activity. Comparison can be made wth the one planned and it will be clear to you of which non-productive activity is consuming much of your time.



• Multi-tasking
  I know many out there have this wonderful ability to multi-task. Instant messaging at the same time while you are studying and for some who are even better, blogging while studying. This is definitely wrong and it has a high possibility that you will end up accomplishing nothing!
• Make the time
  God is fair by giving 24 hours to everyone. Many people became successful by just having 24 hours in life but there are also some who did not manage to get any thing done with 24 hours daily. It is all about how you use the 24 hours and there is always more than enough time. Don’t sleep that much, rise early and sleep a little bit late is one way of making time for yourself.

I am posting this today because you will be experiencing a brand new week tomorrow – a productive week that everyone, including you will be amazed with what you can do with 24 hours a day.

What other ways that you think will boost your productivity, for both your online and offline goals? Do you think that you have been a productive person all the while? How productivity has killed of many of your aims in life?

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• Priority Besides Blogging
• 10 Reasons Why You Don’t See Ads On Blogs
• Fired For Online “Business” In Office
• Blogosphere Summary Week #2
• How was Your December (Holiday) Traffic?