I am sure that, no matter how much time you have available for your online business, you could do with more time right? In this post, we provide you with 10 proven Time Management tips for optimizing your time and for being super-productive!

1. Better Email Time Management (Overcoming the Temptation)

Here also is a video version in case you prefer to watch rather than read!

Get more blogging tips and tricks. Just subscribe to our YouTube Channel!

I am speaking from experience when I say that learning how to manage emails can be one of the quickest ways to save a tonne of time each day. I have learned the hard way!

 Do you check your emails constantly and get distracted very easily as I used to?

Solution: Create a plan for managing emails and choose one that is realistic and will work for you.

I would suggest only checking emails at the start of the day and end of the day. This is one of the easiest Time Management techniques to use and it’s mightily effective!

The real trick is to check and respond to emails before normal office hours (i.e. before most people get online) and after they log off (so before and after 9 am to 5 pm). This way you avoid any unnecessary email exchanges.

Resist the urge to check your emails because you are bored. Emails can be one of the easiest ways to throw away your valued time.

If you are bored then jump to a different blogging task rather than onto checking your emails (or Facebook).

If you need to check emails for customer support, have a specific email address for these emails and only have this email open through the work-day.

Not checking emails every hour is my Achilles’ heel (weakness) and one I personally struggle with this.

When I have avoided emails though, I have got so much more done in a day. You will too!

2. Making Use of the Right Tools for Productivity

As you might have read in the 10 beginners’ blogging mistakes post, there are some great tools out there for blogging productivity.

And the thing is that not using these tools can cost you a significant amount of wasted time as a blogger!

Even though these sometimes are not free, I would strongly recommend them because, in the long run, they will help you make money!

The best productivity tools that I have personally used and can recommend include:

• Use Canva (or Fotor) – You can make classy and stylish graphics in a matter of minutes using Canva (see the demo). You do not need to be a designer given that you only need to drag and drop images and edit text in Canva. It’s brilliant.
• Building an email list with Convertkit – ConvertKit is a brilliant tool that can save you masses of time. I have used MailChimp in the past, for example, but I have wasted a load of time trying to achieve the simplest of tasks. Convertkit is designed by a blogger for bloggers, to help you build your own business.
• Scheduling Pins on Pinterest using Tailwind – if you are using Pinterest for generating traffic to your site (if not why not?) then scheduling pins with Tailwind will save you significant time. See the post on how to schedule pins.
• Grammarly – This is a brilliant tool that can greatly reduce the time you might otherwise waste on proofreading and trying to improve your writing. Grammarly will auto-suggest spelling and grammar mistakes and it can be used for your web pages but also any documents such as Word docs you create.
• WordPress – chances are you are already using it yourself (if not, make sure to read about how to set up your own blog). Why spend the time to make your own site when there are so many great and inexpensive templates and plug-ins.

Solution: Some tools cost money when you are building your online business and the temptation is to avoid paying for anything. The truth though, is that some tools can greatly reduce your wasted time and are valuable investments. Consider investing in tools that increase your time productively.

3. Learn When to Say No

I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important it is to learn to sometimes say NO in business.

As a person looking to build a genuine business to bring in extra income, you will need to find the strength of character to say no to other people’s requests and yet, this can be extremely hard to do.

To build your business and brand online, you need to start rejecting requests and tasks that will not lead you toward your ultimate goal. Do you really need to use time, for example, for:

• Attending meetings (online or offline) that are unlikely to move you toward your ultimate goal?
• Writing a post for your blog that has no clear end goal?
• Respond to emails or social media questions that are of little value.

You must have worked with someone in the past who would spend most of the day doing tasks that were extremely unproductive. You do not want to be that person right?!

You may also have heard of the 80/20 rule? The concept is that 80% of the problems are normally down to 20% of your customers.

I prefer to call it a 90 / 10 rule as I’d say that 90% of your problems can be down to 10% of your clients or customers.

Consider carefully if you need this 10%, if it will make you much more streamlined, productive and much less stressed?!

4. Plan your Workload the Night Before

You need to HIT the GROUND running when you get started each morning!

To do this, having a clear idea of exactly what you are waking up to tackle and to achieve will make your time much easier to manage on the day.

Take 5 minutes the evening before to make a brief list of the tasks you want to achieve the next day. List just a few bullet points and ensure to include one main big task and a few smaller tasks.

5. Learn to Delegate and Let Go When Needed

It is very hard for us bloggers and work-from-homers to let go of being in 100% control.

We want to run our own business so why would we then want to involve others? Right?! Well, we have to be smart with our time!

We should focus primarily on being an expert in our chosen blogging niche, rather than trying to be an expert programmer, web developer, technician dealing with computer servers and so on.

Where needed, learn to hire others to do what they are good at, whilst you do what you are good at! You can use a site such as Freelancer.com to find freelancers offering a range of skills.

6. Use the Three Minute Rule

If you come across a task that you need to do and if you know that it will not take more than 3 minutes (an absolute maximum of 3 minutes) then just do it. Why extend your already too long “To-Do List” with yet another task?

Be careful though. Even these 3-Minute tasks should be ones that fit into point 8 in this list. Only tasks that you should be saying YES to should be included.

7. Tackle One Main Task Each Day

In the planning for your daily tasks, make sure to include one major task for each day.

Do NOT get bogged down in too many low priority tasks that, in themselves, do not constitute a main achievement.

A solid task might be to:

• Write one high-quality 2000 article for your blog.
• Spend a solid day working towards making a digital product you will sell.

A day spent getting through emails and admin work will not normally constitute having completed a major task.

Plan to work on one major task and 2 or 3 low-priority tasks.

8. Focus and Attention – Create Time Positive Habits

Start to form what I like to call “Time Positive Habits”.

In addition to making sure you do one main task each day, and learning to say no when a task is unproductive or unrelated to your business, make a conscious effort also to build a new habitus.

Habitus refers to an ingrained set of habits, meaning habits that become engrained in you both physically and mentally.

• So get used to physically waking up at a given time, i.e., 7 am if that is the time you need to be up in order to have time for your blogging and building your business online.
• Learn to look after your body so that you have the energy to be productive and creative (such as by drinking a large bottle of water each day) and using a stand-up desk for 1-2 hours a day.
• Remember to set time aside for exercise (even if only to walk up and down the stairs 20 times to get the heart pumping, or do 100 press-ups at home).

These mental and physical changes that you generate over time and that become a habit of your body, will put you in such a better situation for making whatever time you do have available for your business, highly productive.

9. Stop Trying to Be Perfect over Productive

This is something, once again, that I have personally experienced and I suspect you may also have experienced yourself.

When building a website for your business, it can be extremely hard to let go of the details. How much time do you personally waste trying to make your site too perfect?

If it is a choice between making your website look nicer aesthetically or getting a blog post written or making a video for one of your training programs, get the content or video made.

Get into the habit of understanding that your website/blog will continually evolve and will continually change over time.

What you absolutely need though is to ensure you have time to create the digital products that are the basis of making good money online whilst you sleep.

Avoid trying to have the perfect site and instead use the time to get key tasks completed.

10. Re-Purpose Ideas and Knowledge – Use What You Already Know

There are many opportunities when building your online business, to re-use your own content in different formats.

You do not, by any means, want to spam your followers by just continually repeating the same things.

BUT you should consider re-using content where it can be used productively and in a manner that is good for your readers.

Let me give you an example. If you have previously written a number of blog posts on SEO techniques, you can re-purpose some of that same content when creating an online training program.

If you are using teachable.com, for example (arguably the best online platform for creating your own online courses), re-use some content ideas from your own site.

What you ARE offering and that is unique when you re-purpose content is another way of understanding and presenting it.

On an online course, for example, you are presenting it in a more compact way and more sequentially for users.

So this does mean real value for people who buy your online course/s.

Let me just explain one final thing. When I say re-purpose or re-use, I do not mean to just cut and paste the content as it is.

It is more a case of re-using the same ideas and points (and sometimes the same images). In other words, re-present it.