Time and again, I hear advises from good copywriters telling us to stay focused. It is easier said than done, especially when blogging is not my bread and butter yet. There are so many things surrounding a normal guy like me that distracts my attention away from blogging most of the time and I figure that is why I am not moving as fast as I would have preferred.
When reading tips and advises, most are written with the assumption that we have nothing else in our lives other than our blogs. I mean, come on, how many of us can really claim to be pros when it comes to blogging. Most of us do it on a part time basis and along the way, maybe strike on the mother lode to allow us to go full time. Meanwhile we still have to put food on the table by doing some “real” work as my fat lady would put it.
It is terribly hard to stay focused when there are so many other things swirling around us. It is just like trying to read a book sitting in the middle of a merry go round. Many a times, a bright idea will strike me and believe it or not, it gets completely erased from my mind within half an hour after a major distraction. Of course some will tell me to carry a little black book and jot down things as it comes to mind. I did try, but that alone, I mean the carrying the black book and jotting, takes immense discipline. Within 3 days, that little black book went missing, not to mention the pen.
I have always believed that when we set out to do something, we should do it with full commitment, however, to commit myself fully to blogging at this stage is near impossible. So what I do now, is forgo most of my nights out, save for once a week and try to spend at least two to three hours working on the blogs that I have started hoping to make something out of them within a year or so, but even then I gets distracted. I can pick up something real interesting in other blogs and spend a good hour hoping from blog to blog, and before I realize it, it’s bedtime. Hey, I still have to work the next day, okay? I have to be up by 5.30.
5.30am?? What? That early?
It’s true, unless you’re solely dependent on your blog income, it will never be the one and only thing.
But then it’s always good to have other interests as well.
Very true. I work full time myself in the Dental Field, and still somehow manage to keep up a good pace of posting. Some of the tips you mention having read, writing ideas down etc, have worked very well for me.
While I would love nothing more than to spend full time hours just blogging to my heart’s content, I have to maintain my job at the highest level for the sake of patients who put their full trust in me.
I have found that I can get a lot of ideas written down, begin composing posts during my lunch hour, and on the off chance that a patient doesn’t show up.
I also have a very supportive husband who encourages me to do my writing, and even keeps bugging me to write a book. Like that doesn’t take a ton of time.