Scheduling Your Writing Time Based on Your Energy

Recently, I posted about the ebbs and flow of energy during your day to day life (Blogging and Working: Productive Times, Days and Locations), and I wanted to highlight some more on that point by telling you to focus your writing efforts on your peak energy times. Things like feed reading, e-mail, topic research, and other activities should be relegated to times when you aren’t at your peak, so that when it is time for you to write, you have the creative energy required.

Far too many bloggers stick to posting in the evening, after supper, after playing with their kids, cleaning, and watching their favorite evening show. As we wind down to head to bed, it can be the worst time to try to put out thoughts together for a post that will push our blog forward towards the goals we have set for it.

Blogging as a hobby works fine, as long as you don’t want to make a career out of it. I’ve met far too many people that come up to me and ask why they aren’t making thousands of dollars every month, only to find out that they blog for two hours, right before bed, when they feel like they need caffeine to keep their eyes open.

How can you display energy and excitement in your articles, if you don’t feel energized and excited?

Once you’ve figured out when you are at your highest energy level, sit down, and start pushing out content. Enjoy your writing, give it time, focus, and passion, and you will reach your goals. If you relegate your blogging to the last bit of time and energy you have each day, then don’t be surprised if you don’t get anywhere with it.

17 thoughts on “Scheduling Your Writing Time Based on Your Energy

  1. Between 4 and 6 am, I find that I have the Internet all to myself. And If I am posting and make mistakes, no one is looking at my mess. We are all different–so to each his own.

  2. There is so much validity to your info. The hard part is figuring out when the best time to work in the creative time for each individual!

  3. i would prefer writing early morning when everyone is out to school or my hubby is at the office and I have quiet time all for myself. This gives me more time to concentrate.

  4. For some people, the mind works best in the night time. It is all a matter of personal convenience. Just follow your mind and do what you feel like doing.

  5. I have found that the best time for me to write is in the mornings. Then in the evenings when I’m tired from my “real” job, I tend to do more searching for sites of interest and less actual posting.

    I do find that blogging can be quite draining. You can easily become a slave to a blog, because you know the best way to grow your readership is to post regularly and often.

    For this reason it’s a good idea to occasionally have a break from it for a few days and come back refreshed.

  6. Particularly if you are writing about things you love. Often times when I am designing a new web site for a customer I will think about what I want to do for a few hours before I actually start on it. I have found I am able to get my creative juices flowing quite easily by not setting aside a specific time I must work on the project. We are not talking days here, just times during the day when my creative thoughts are in tune with the project at hand.

    I also have an SEO blog that I recently started 1-localseoservices.com It would be awesome if I could get a few of you who really do well with blogs to take a look and give me some ideas.

  7. I agree that getting other nagging chores out of the way first helps me clear my mind and do some good writing. I’m not sure I have a certain time of each day when I feel like I do my best work… it might be more of an every few days sort of thing. Or I might do great work for 10 hours a day for three days in a row and then not feel like I can come up with any good stuff for another week.

    For me, it has a lot to do with location. I am travelling as I work so when I find a great place to work with a good connection (like this cafe in Granada, Nicaragua) I need to take full advantage of it. This might mean that I am often working at times when I’m not in the mood, but the alternative is waiting for the mood to strike me but not having a net connection or a decent desk to work at. It’s a challenging balancing act!

  8. Waiting for inspiration to write is like waiting for Godot. Before I go to sleep I review a few ideas in my head and I say, “I will write about this, then that, and maybe this…” When I wake up all I got to do is write.

  9. Before you head to bed, get article inspirations together, jot down notes of what you might want to write about in the morning and make publishing a single post the first thing you do each day (other than get breakfast or whatever). Then try to ramp it up to two posts each morning. If you are going to surf in the evening, why not surf for inspiration?

  10. I do not have a daily blogging schedule and because of that I suffer. The evenings are too busy and then I will surf since I am tired afterwards. I have always had my most productive time when i accidentally wake up at 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning, hike downstairs and turn on all the lights and the computer in our basement. No plans of course since I was not planning to get up so early and I get a ton of the backlog cleared up.

    Maybe that was why I woke up so early in the first place

  11. I’m the same way. I always feel like I may pick some inspiration or something like that. Plus it’s a pretty interesting way to start a day.

  12. I actually work better after reading and commenting on some other blogs. That helps me get my creative juices flowing so that I can move forward.

  13. I notice that I work better when I’ve taken care of daily chores first, such as cleaning the house, paying bills, exercise, etc… I find that I’m better able to focus on work if these things have already been done. Otherwise the chores begin to pop into my head as the day goes on. I start to get anxious and impatient. It’s not easy, but get the crappy stuff out of the way first!

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