The Importance Of Routine In Blogging

When you think about your life overall, how much of it is taken up by routine tasks each day? We all get up and brush our teeth, take a shower, have breakfast, and usually follow a set pattern for achieving certain tasks which need to be done. If we do certain tasks often enough, they become so much an integral part of our lives that we don’t even need to think about them.

Let’s take brushing our teeth as an example – how many times do you actually consider what you are doing, when you brush, or measure out the toothpaste consciously, expending energy on thinking through the process. Never? That’s because you’re an expert at brushing your teeth, because you do it at least twice a day and the process is fully ingrained in your everyday routine.

As online business owners, we have a series of routines that support us to get things done quickly and efficiently, to the extent that certain tasks become second nature, or habit. We can wake up early on the working day and stumble to our laptops without coffee, firing them up and churning off a few comment responses or acknowledgments on our blogs without needing to be firing on all cylinders. We can send off an invoice, or empty our spam folders, or comment on a colleague’s blog without needing to sharpen our intellect and think through our actions.

Routine supports us to train our brains to act in a certain way more effectively. It can provide a way of making certain tasks an integral part of what we do, and cement actions in our minds in order to ensure that they don’t get forgotten when new tasks come along. While it may seem a little dull, having an outstanding routine full of constancy and habit is a true benefit when it comes to running your blog.

When we were newborns, our parents in all likelihood set up a routine for us quickly, in order to get us accustomed to a certain way of behaving and responding to stimulus. We were fed at the same time each day, bathed at the same time and put to bed every evening according to a set pattern of actions. This routine supported our body clocks to regulate, and we stopped anticipating what would come next as we understood, even at an early age, what was expected of us and what would happen at certain times of the day.

This routine, in essence, stays with us as we reach adulthood, spilling across in to the world of business. Our stomachs rumble at set times each day, we feel tired each afternoon when our energy slumps a little, and we all have specific times of the say when we are at our peak of activity and enthusiasm. A break in the routine of things can make it difficult to tap in to these peaks of energy, and leave us feeling a little disorientated and unsure of things.

This is why routine, for professional bloggers, is so critical. If you have lapsed in your daily routine of posting an article by a set time, spending time housekeeping or responding to queries and service requests, it may be worthwhile mapping out a structure for your day which takes the need for routine in to consideration. Just as it did when you were young, your mind will quickly adopt the new structure and support you to achieve tasks as second nature, making you a more effective, relaxed and productive blogger.