How To Eat An Elephant…

You’ve probably heard the phrase ‘how to eat an elephant – one bite at a time’, and it may be over-used these days but it’s a great adage for the best way to run your blog. When we first start out in the blogosphere it can seem a little overwhelming – so many different things to consider, coupled with the need to get your blog published, up and running as soon as possible, can leave you feeling a bit frazzled.

Even the most well-established blogger can be hit with a wall of activity, wondering where to start on an ever-increasing task list. Despite the many things which we need to do on a daily basis to keep our blogs running at optimum, it doesn’t have to be a part of your business that brings you to your knees. Having a great schedule for your blogging, and remembering to eat your elephant in small bite-sized chunks can work wonders for your stress levels, keeping your blog running well without becoming a millstone around your neck.

It may sound boring, but setting up a tight schedule for your blog helps you to tackle the jobs needed to be done without really thinking about it, in the same way as you do other jobs in your life without paying much attention to them. We all eat, shower, brush our teeth and take the trash out without giving it any thought, and a blog run to the same kind of schedule can give you just as little stress.

Let’s put down an example. When you wake up in the morning, and get to work, what do you do first? Make a coffee? Read through your e-mails? Play a sneaky game on the PC before groaning over your list of things to do? I’m guilty of all of those things, and sometimes the lure of the internet for a browsing session can prove to be much more appealing than a stint of working, first thing. The problem is, the coffee or game spills in to the time I should spend working, and if I surf online a good hour can pass by without me even noticing it.

This time is not something which we consider as part of our day. I think of it as being ‘grey’ time – the minutes or hours lost without thought, that we spend easily and can mount up across the working day. This grey time is guilty of bringing many a hardened business owner to their knees. One of the main complaints I hear from my customers is ‘there just aren’t enough hours in the day’. This is understandable – we all have too much to do, and not enough time to achieve it. However, keeping track of grey time is a great way of seeing just how much more you could achieve if you set yourself a schedule for eating your proverbial elephant.

It’s easy to work out how much ‘grey’ time you spend during the course of your working day. Simply by keeping an eye on what you do over the course of a typical day, and being mindful of it will alert you to just how many activities creep in to your day without you noticing them. Write down how you spend your typical day, and take a look at it at close of business. When you are aware of how much time you are spending on ‘grey’ activities, you can set out a schedule which avoids these activities, making you in a prime position to eat your elephant, one bite at a time.