Inspired by Web Worker Daily’s article, “GTD For Bloggers: The Art of Stress-Free Blogging, by Leo Babauta. I’d like to share some of his ideas presented in my streamlined version of what he says the experts are saying about this subject.

Blogging for a living can create a lot of stress and pressure. This really hit at home for me. Is there truly a way to be a stress free blogger? I’ve been reading about this book, which has been out for awhile now, called GTD or “Getting Things Done,” by David Allen, a widely recognized productivity expert. I’ve also had the opportunity of listening to an audiobook titled,”4-Hour Work Week” by Tim Ferriss, which also provides unique time management techniques and strategies. I really enjoyed absorbing their ideas, concepts, and recommendations. They’re people that know how to manage their time wisely and are successful at it.

To my surprise, I had already been implementing some of the productivity strategies and didn’t even realize it. Half the battle of achieving time management and productivity is recognizing how you respond specific ways to people and circumstances, understanding that those responses do serve a purpose towards increasing or decreasing your productivity, and deciding to take the productive course of action. It was eye-opening for me to discover that I have been innately using time management skills all along. So focusing on a few of the stategies and consciously implementing them will definitely increase my productivity.

Here are a few of the basic concepts:

Collect
Collect everything that comes your way. Some things to collect include email, paperwork, mail, ideas, phone numbers, voicemails, assignments, etc. Being a Blogger, you’re already working online and probably do this already.

One Inbox
As a Blogger, everything is pretty much done online. Now, consolidate it all into one inbox. This helps you organize and simplify your work. I have to agree with Leo about using your email inbox as your Main inbox — gmail is an excellent free resource to do that and I also use my .mac account because it’s an imap account which allows me to get my mail anywhere, especially works well with my iPhone. So doing this you allow your one account to begin organizing you. Everything can pretty much come to you by email like your email for one, ad notifications, reader comments from you blogs, email yourself tasks and ideas for posts, Bookmarking items to review. Try it out, if you don’t already do this.

Process
Now that you’ve streamlined everything into one inbox, you begin processing. It’s not what you think. Just the sound of Processing makes you feel like its more work. It’s really all about Less.

Designate 1 or 2 times throughout the day to actually process your inbox. Don’t worry, you won’t miss anything. Actually, you’ll become more focused in that specific time period and get more accomplished. Think about it, if you’re consumed with constantly going through your inbox throughout the whole day, you won’t have time for hardly anything else. The recommendations from the experts say limit yourself to two processing times — one in the morning, and one in the evening. For normal hours, think about 10am and 2pm. You’ll still have plenty of time to get things taken care of. I’m personally still working on that one.

During those times, you have to process your inbox until it’s empty. Just begin one email at a time. Delete it, do the task (if it takes 2 minutes or so), reply, add it to a Context List. If it takes more than 2 minutes to do then delete it, forward it, or archive it. If you’re not going to do right now, don’t leave it in your inbox. The experts recommend not using a separate folder or label for your to-dos, but I separate my lists of things to do with a label of priority.

The idea is to get rid of the item out of the inbox by replying right away and completing the tasks, quickly by only spending a couple minutes per item. If you need to put more thought into something archive it, which for me I use a label or a folder for current projects, followup or waiting on, Maybe or Future, post ideas, reader comments, and/or next priority. You know which things pile up if you don’t take care of it, like reader comments and emails.

Leo made a great point too in his article about responding to fellow bloggers right away, if possible. Great opportunities can come up to not only benefit the other person but help you grow in the long run too. Just keep your message short and delete it from the inbox once you respond. Another area I need to work on.

Organize
This is where lists are important to organize your stuff. Doing everything online, there is no need for a physical filing system. Some people use Backpack for lists, Vitalist or Nozbe.

Here’s the concept:

You could just have one long context list. Most people find it useful to break them up into different categories.

Keep a list of your current projects, a follow-up list (”Waiting For”), and a Someday/Maybe list that contains items you aren’t going to do now, but want to do later.

Keep lists for reference purposes like post ideas, a schedule for posting info related to your blog, and other information, all in one service.

Reminders of things coming up, such as a upcoming posts you need to write. An online calendar like Google Calendar and iCal on the iPhone are excellent resources for date-based reminders.

Do
The key is not to fiddle with your tools. You can spend way too much time doing that. Stay focused and remember You’re a busy person — you don’t have time to fiddle unproductively. Pick a tool, and stick with it. When your processing time arrives— actually write your posts, and respond to comments, emails, fellow bloggers, complete your tasks. Your blogging will get better believe it or not, because You Are Doing it.

The experts’ suggestions for bloggers are as followed:

Posts are Projects
Recognizing and accepting that each post you write is a small project. Just focus and get the project done. It may entail research, writing, linking, finding an image, and any other thing that goes with posting. Do one of action at a time, do it quickly, and put your focus on the next project.

Defined Outcome
It is effective to write a defined action. For us bloggers, that could be by starting by writing the headline first, to define exactly what you want the post to be. Don’t write a vague headline, but one that will tell your readers (and you) exactly what to expect from the post.

Next Actions
It’s recommended to write down your next action, but to me sometimes that creates more work. When you’re in the middle of a huge post and all of a sudden you think…I could link a specific website to that word, yes take a note and do it after you’ve completed your post. If you need to do some research about a specific item before you can proceed with the post, then that research becomes the task at hand before you can continue with the post. Do it and quickly get back to the post.

Review
Once a week, you need to review your system. How do you do that you say? Process your inbox to empty. Any things that remain in the email inbox should be processed, quickly or archived according to your system. Check your calendar. Add any events that need to be taken care of. Basically do a “Brain dump” to get everything out of your head and off your mind. Things you want to write about, ad stuff, maintenance stuff, things you want to do with your blog, things you want to check out. Write it all down, and process it.

That’s the basics of how to help yourself become more productive and less stressed out. It sounds really good, but just wait until you try it out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 9:00 amand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.