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Blogging can be a wonderful thing. It can be a creative outlet or a place to share a hobby or passion with the world. For some people, it’s also a substantial source of income. I could go on and on about the benefits. But, how do you find time to work on your blog?

What’s more, in my opinion, there are very few drawbacks associated with blogging. Having said that, there is one common hurdle that holds a lot of people back from starting or succeeding with a blog: time. It’s undeniable that blogging takes a lot of time.

So, if you want to succeed, you will need to be prepared to make a long-term time commitment. In some cases, that’s easier said than done. Finding the time to work on a blog can be challenging for people that work full time or have kids, and particularly difficult for people that have both!

So, in this article, I’m offering some advice on how to find time to work on your blog when you’ve got kids and a full-time job.

Crack Of Dawn And Midnight Oil

You can’t make more time. But for a lot of people, there are a couple of places to look if you want to find a little more time in your day: first thing in the morning or late at night. You need to optimize your time, similar to how you will need to optimize your blog posts later.

Personally, I do my best writing in the early morning hours. So, a few times each week, I’ll set the alarm for 4 am or 5 am, throw on a pot of coffee and bang away on the keyboard. Now, I’m pretty sure that a heavy dose of caffeine has a lot to do with my high level of productivity. But, this is also a time when my house is pretty quiet. The only downside is that occasionally, my kids will roll out of their little beds, and come running downstairs when I’m in the middle of an epic post. This doesn’t happen all that often though, so it’s not too big of a deal.

If you’re not a morning person, it might be a good idea to burn the midnight oil a couple of times each week. One advantage of this approach is that once everyone has gone to sleep, you will probably have plenty of uninterrupted work time. It’s also nice that at night, your working hours are a bit open-ended. If you hit a brick wall at 10:30 pm, you can call it a night. But, if you’re finding your groove, you can just keep on going all night.

The biggest issue that I personally have with blogging late at night is that I’m usually pretty drained after working a full day and putting the kids to bed. So, I have a tough time cranking out content, and the work that I do produce tends to be subpar. That said, there are plenty of people out there that have built blogs exclusively during the hours of 10 pm and 2 am. So, give it a try and see if it works for you.

Quiet Time On The Weekend

A man has found quiet time to work on his blog.

If you have a full-time job and a family, finding a few hours to blog on Saturday and Sunday is probably a good bet. After all, if you’ve got 16 waking hours each day, you can probably carve out 2-3 each day for blogging and still have plenty left over for your family.

The key here is to coordinate with your spouse ahead of time to make sure you’re on the same page. Often times, I watch the kids in the morning while my wife hits the gym or heads out for a yoga class. Then, later in the day, my wife will take the kids outside to play on the swings and get some fresh air while I do a little writing. By the way, if your kids are young, nap time can be a gold mine too.

Plan Your Work, And Work Your Plan

There is nothing worse than frittering away your dedicated blogging time trying to figure out what to work on. It happens to the best of us once in a while, but it really pays to be prepared. A few years ago, I started keeping a running list on my phone of everything that I need to do, and I also started keeping a list of article ideas on my laptop.

This approach has paid huge dividends for me. Now, whenever I have some time to work, I make the most of it rather than wasting 20 minutes figuring out what to do.

A Time For Everything

Finding time to blog early in the morning or late at night.

I mentioned before that I have a tough time writing in the evenings after working all day. But, that doesn’t mean that the evenings are totally useless.

While it might seem like blogging is just writing, there are actually lots of different things that take time and effort. Yes, if you blog, you need to write and it needs to be good engaging content. But, you also need to brainstorm topic ideas, format articles, proofread, find good images, research articles, and a whole lot more.

My best writing is done in the early morning, so that is when I do most of my writing. But, I’m perfectly capable of formatting articles or finding good images at night. So, that is what I work on in the evenings before bed when I have the time.

Final Thoughts

One of the nicest things about blogging is that you can step away for a few days or even a few weeks when your life gets really busy, and then come back when you’re ready. So, even if you feel like you don’t consistently have a lot of free time, you can still make progress over a period of months and years.

Hopefully, these tips help you to find the time to blog even if your life is pretty full with other things. If you ever realize you need a little help, there are companies like ours that write content for blogs and entire websites.

Guest Post Author Bio:

Ryan Howard runs Smart Parent Advice, a site that provides parenting advice for moms and dads. Ryan writes about all of the different ups and downs of parenting, provides solutions to common challenges, and reviews products that parents need to purchase for babies and toddlers.

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