How to Balance Blogging with a Full Time Job

Finding time to blog, when it’s not your full-time job, can be difficult. Finding time to blog, when you have a full-time job, a significant other, and kids, can be nearly impossible, but it’s definitely doable if you’re passionate about it. Here are few ways I learned to balance blogging with a full time job:

Set a schedule

If you have any plans for your blog turning into a full-time job, treat it that way now. Schedule your time wisely in order to get the most value out of the time you have. For me, that was difficult during the school year because I was getting up and going into work around 4:30 am in order to leave earlier to pick the kids up from school when it let out in the afternoon. We still weren’t getting home until 4 pm, so just in time to change, start on dinner, do homework assist, eat, and spend an hour with Nathan before I would fall asleep to get up and do it all again the next day. I was blogging whenever I had a spare moment, which didn’t really work for anyone because I felt like I wasn’t devoting enough time to blogging and Nathan felt like I wasn’t devoting enough time to him/us, especially when I was grabbing the laptop to write a post or check on social media when I was supposed to be snuggling in bed watching a movie or one of our favorite shows … whoops.

With school coming to an end this week, I’ve created “office hours” that I’ll dedicate to writing, social media, and meetings.

Create an editorial calendar

Mommy brain didn’t go away with the age of my kids, though you’d think right?! For this reason, I have to see things in written form, as in I have to actually write them down many, many times, so post-it notes, agendas, and printed calendar pages are my life. I found because I was trying to just fit post in when I could, I was lost on what to post, would forget things I’d like to post, or ran out of time to post on the day I had planned to post … fail. I finally sat down with some printed calendar pages for the upcoming 3 months and brainstormed some ideas based on my existing schedule of events on my agenda. Once I had those written down, I went back and filled in my remaining empty post days with general post I knew I wanted to post about. Once I had the drafts finalized, I utilized the online editorial calendar, Co-Schedule, for my final draft. I fell in love with Co-Schedule, not just for the editorial calendar component, but the ability to plan out task and social post … trust me, if yours is a WordPress blog, you want Co-Schedule for its ability to seamlessly integrate your calendar with your blog and you can try it out on a trial basis, no credit card needed. That was not sponsored, I genuinely love it.

Devote weekends to yourself

I made sure not to forget the “life” in blog/life balance by leaving my weekends to do things for me or with the kids. Don’t get me wrong, I do actually still do blog related work, given I have a full-time job during the week, but the vast majority of my time is devoted to family/girlfriend related activities and I pick early mornings … I wake up several hours before everyone else … to get in 5 hours of blog time.

In the name of full disclosure, I just started this process for the month of June, to run through the summer, but thus far it’s made things tremendously easier and less stressful because I know what’s happening when and, with my post pre-written, it only takes me a few minutes to post and I can devote more time to building an organically grown and engaged following on social media.

In the comments, tell me how you’ve learned to balance blogging with a full time job.