Balancing Blogging & The Rest Of Your Life

It’s back to school season and of course #BeautiesOnFire needed a take, especially when half our collab is heading back to college or school in general. I’m not currently in classes but have a few left, but I am about to be back in the workforce (fingers crossed) after a year off for health reasons, so here’s the thing?

How the hell do I balance my blog with work/school/life?

I need this as much as you guys. Life gets in the way. You get overwhelmed, or have personal issues, or for girls it might even just be that TOM and you don’t FKING feel like it. Or it might be adding in a new element like work or school back into your routine. So here’s my tips, for you, for me, for anyone that needs them.

My 5 Tips To Balance Blogging, Work, School, and Life

#1: Don’t Overwhelm Yourself

As always with blogging… quality over quantity. For your sanity and the quality of your posts, if you only have time to write one good post a week… just write one good post a week! Retweet out your old posts, maybe interact more on Instagram and other social media to keep your followers interested if you have the time… but don’t force yourself to write every day if you don’t have the time, the energy, or the creativity right now. It’s OK. It REALLY is OK. Even if you’ve been writing daily forever.

#2: Batch It

Just like baking Christmas cookies is sometimes easier to do all at once… blogging can be the same way. There’s a few ways to go about batch writing, you can write start to finish on one post and then start to finish on another and another… or you can spend 15… 20, 30, 60 minutes on one topic, then open a new draft and work on something else. Whether you do this multiple times in a day and finish each post, or you just get the base or skeleton of the upcoming posts set up so you can finish them quicker and easier later, batch writing can be something that saves you time and stress later in the week because once you get in ‘the zone’ (as long as you avoid burnout by working TOO hard for TOO long) you’re able to write in “your voice” a lot faster and longer and you can pull higher quality posts.

#3: Pre-Plan

So what if the problem is you sit down in front of your computer after classes or work is done and you just… don’t have the slightest clue what to write about? Plan your posts ahead of time. Keep a sticky-notes app, a document on your phone, a note in your purse, a checklist,  anything that works for you, filled with any ideas you have for topics. Maybe it’s one that’s not appropriate until Christmas, but writing it down now means you have future ideas ready and you can spark inspiration from something you’ve already thought of. Additionally there’s the benefit of seeing your ideas when you’re in different frames of mind and being able to determine if it was a good idea, or a great one.

#4: Don’t Compare Yourself To Others

So what if someone in a similar situation to you or with a similar blog can post XYZ every day of the week? If that doesn’t work for you? It doesn’t make you any less of a blogger. Compare yourself to yourself. The best you can do, the best you can do right now in this mindset and this situation and with these social and economic commitments.

#5: Take Inventory

Write down ALL of your commitments. Parent, Family, Friends, Work, School, Exercise, Self Improvement, Blogging. All of it. If you want to go into detail, write down the time estimate for anything you know of how much you expect it to take per week. That means the actual class times AND time for homework when it comes to things like school. For this exercise, anything even remotely optional, like blogging, needs to come last. Because you need to decide how much of your time and energy you have left to dedicate to blogging. Remember that things come up, and that cutting time from sleep or studying isn’t an option. The reality is if you have less time to blog, you might even use your time more wisely. If you only have 6 hours a week? If you only have 2 hours a week? Make it work!

How do you balance blogging and the rest of your life?

If this post helped you, share or pin it to help your fellow bloggers find it!

My fellow #BeautiesOnFire girls have done some amazing posts already this week!
Just click on the logo below to head over and see the rest of the Back To School posts.