Dominic Foster

Habit of Highly Effective Blogging

As part of Darrens request for ideas on Habits of Highly Effective Blogging, here is the most effective habit that I use:

Get out of bed early and start blogging quickly

This probably does not sound very exciting or even inspiring, but for me jumping out of bed as early as possible and getting online is the most effective way of boosting production.

However, getting up early does not necessarily mean jumping out of your pit at 5.30am sharp each day. I know from experience that when blogging is providing a major part of your income, that blogging into the early hours is not uncommon. Even going to bed and hopping out again an hour later because you can’t sleep for all the ideas in your head, and getting them into some blog posts is of utmost importance because you will probably forget them by the morining. Sometimes, if you don’t get to bed until 2.30am, getting up early can mean getting up at 8.00am.

So, for me, getting up early means getting up when I wake up - which is usually between 5.30am and 6.00am. By doing this I can be at the computer going through my start-of-the-day routine which involves checking stats, checking affilliate programs and then checking emails and RSS incase there is news that I should start blogging about. News includes material from news sources and marketing/PR material from affilliate programs.

Then I can get into my next routine which is writing my ’stock’ posts for the day. These are the posts which are form the regular daily articles/reviews etc. Once this is done then I’m virtually free to carry out research on my niches and running other aspects of my business.

By getting up early, it means that I can get into ‘The Zone’ pretty quickly and effectively manage my workload and get everything done by lunchtime. This then gives me about 2-3 hours of consulting/research time before my kids finish kindergarten. I’m then free to have family time until the kids go to bed, and then some time with my partner.

I usually do a couple of hours of work before going to bed, which might include writing a couple of posts, catching up on emails or doing some research.

My least effective days come as a result of waking up early and then rolling over and going back to sleep for an hour or two. When I do eventually get up, I feel unmotivated and without any direction. Breakfast usually takes a hour or so and I get distracted easily.

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