5 TIPS FOR JUGGLING WORK & BLOGGING IN 2015

If you remember right back to one of my very first ‘how to’ features, I wrote a whole post on how I juggle my time to write a daily blog as well as have a successful full time career. If you missed the original feature then you can check it out here! Given for many tomorrow indicates the last day of the Christmas holidays before we return to work (or for others uni, college, school etc) I thought now would be a better time than ever to get ourselves ready for the return to some serious balancing acts,  juggling work & blogging!

Juggling a work and a blog is no easy feat, especially when you throw in family, boyfriends, friends and fitness etc too. But I have 5 tips for getting yourself ready, and preparing to get ahead!

The key to juggling both a blog and work is clearly keeping organised, it’s not the easiest thing to master, but my biggest tip for keeping organised is pre planning. I talk about this a lot in all my features but it truly is the number one piece of advice I can give to helping you manage blogging and working!

Pre-planning covers a few key things at this time, number one, pre plan some content, have a think about your posts for the next week, two weeks, month & start to make a plan for content development. Whether it’s just developing your content schedule, or actually starting to produce the content too! Every little thing will help!

Check out this post for more advice on keeping organised!

Now is the opportunity to block out a little bit of time to start getting prepared, your content written & posts scheduled. Whilst the Christmas break is meant to be about relaxing, seeing friends & family and taking some time out of work, it’s also a great time to start getting ahead on the blog front. For me tomorrow (Sunday before work) is going to be a big ‘blog day’, from shooting some new looks to scheduling posts for the coming week, tomorrow is a day blocked out for getting my blog ready for the busy time that is no doubt to come!

You don’t need a whole day, if you’re travelling back to uni or back to the city by train, use your train journey to start working up some ideas or posts, if you have a spare hour in the morning before a day out, then use that to get things prepared. If you have the time then blocking out a good two hours could really help you get ahead!

Generally blocking out time is a really key way for making sure you have time to develop your blog content, without interrupting your work time! Whether it’s an hour each evening, a few hours at the weekend or dedicating a whole day every now and then, marking out time in your diary will really help you ensure you have time to produce your blog content & keep things a little more manageable!

This is more of a general tip, but weekends are a key time for me when it comes to blogging. Working in London and having quite a demanding career means that week days and evenings are not a good time for me to blog, whether it’s late nights in the office, catching up with friends, or simply wanting an evening to relax, it’s not always the best time for me to try and get my blog work done.

Saturday & Sunday mornings on the other hand are perfect! A leisurely morning blogging, shooting some outfit pics if the weather is good enough & generally preparing a few posts for the week ahead. It’s the perfect time for me to do some blog work, and usually doesn’t interrupt our weekend plans too much as I try and only use a couple of hours on both mornings!

Using this time to write up posts, shoot my imagery & work on my upcoming blog schedule is my trick to blogging daily plus of course working full time!

The dream would of course be to shoot daily looks, in beautiful new locations as you spend your days exploring new villages, counties or countries, but when you’re working full time that’s obviously not an option! So whilst it’s not the dream scenario, shooting your blog photography in bulk is actually the most practical, productive & helpful way of doing things. It takes the pressure off for the week ahead  & also means your guaranteed to get some great shots in daylight hours (there’s no guarantees what time i’ll make it home from work and winter nights aren’t the most helpful to shoot in).

I always try to plan a week ahead of myself, and so try and use Saturday or Sunday mornings to shoot my imagery for the week aheads posts, whether that be outfit posts or general lifestyle posts, I always try and make the most of the natural daylight hours when I can!

As mentioned, the key to being able to blog daily & succeed at your full time job is of course keeping organised, and one key element of organisation for me is scheduling content. Where at all possible I will write features at the weekend to go live Monday – Friday when I know I will have limited time to dedicate to writing. Sometimes producing a full post (e.g. images & editorial) for every day of the week isn’t quite possible, so at a minimum i’ll make sure all my images are shot & loaded into draft posts ready for me to write when I get a spare hour or so! Even pre-prearing that much is the hugest help during the week!So there you go, my 5 top tips for helping you juggle a full time job & a pretty much full time blog! Pre plan your content, block out time to work, use your weekends, shoot your imagery in bulk when you have time to & schedule your posts for the week ahead … they’re not ground breaking tips, but these 5 things are what enables me to keep me sharing content on mediamarmalade.com daily, but also have a successful full time career too! A balancing act which takes years to master, but once you do, life’s made just that little bit easier!

I’d love to hear of your tips & advice for juggling both work and blogging & know if any of my tips help you?