Get Organized Now to Avoid Blogger Burn Out Later

While there are many bloggers who are able to work hard and remain persistent during the early, slow days of their blog, they may not be aware of another unsuspecting predator that lurks about—his is called “burn out”.

Ironically, the very thing that helped these bloggers get through one of their first major challenges might just end up being the cause of their blog’s final demise. Are they working too hard? Maybe. But most of the time, it has more to do with simply…

Working Smarter

Everyone has their limit. Even the determined, would-be “pro” bloggers who stay up all night to publish their last-minute posts, send in their guest articles, and submit their final batch of social bookmarks before going to bed to get just enough sleep before waking up bright an early to make it to their day job.

The problem is, as your blogging journey progresses, the more things start to pile up. Deadlines, other blogs you’re networking with, pending projects, emails, the list goes on… and only gets bigger. When that happens, it becomes more and more difficult to keep up. I’ll say it again: Everyone has their limit.

So how do you fix this problem? Simple. You set up a system to organize your business, and that’s what “working smarter” is all about.

Why Get Organized?

Everything you organize or “file away” as I like to call it, alleviates the mental burden you place on yourself to remember everything—even if you’re only doing it subconsciously. Things like blogs you’ve guested on, passwords, affiliate links, etc. are suddenly stored on a seemingly “separate brain”, which then puts less weight on YOUR brain so you can carry out the task at hand much easier.

When I started getting more organized, I started early so I didn’t think I’d be able to notice any positive changes… but I was wrong. I suddenly felt way less stressed out, my blog posts improved, and I was much more relaxed when doing ANY kind of task, whether it was writing a new blog post, doing promotion, participating in forums, etc.

Everything that seemed like somewhat of a hassle before started to become more enjoyable. I attribute all of this to the act of organizing, which freed up more “resources” in my mind for me to use. The truth is, I might’ve got burned out and suffered a severe blow to my online business if I hadn’t decided to get organized. Thankfully, I did it early on in the game.

Things to “File Away”

I already touched on it briefly, but to give you a better idea of some of the things you can store in your “separate brain” (whatever your chosen medium of organization is), I’ve come up with a short list:

• Potential blog posts to write about (this one has saved me countless times).
• People you have JV’d or networked with in the past.
• Blogs you have guest posted for, links to your guest posts, and bloggers who have guest posted for you.
• Passwords to the multitude of sites you have joined/have to join.
• Affiliate links for products you promote.
• Signatures for forums, email, and article directories (these start to add up after a while).
• Emails you need to save, but don’t want to fill up your inbox.
• Any notes containing “things to remember” but don’t want to take up anymore precious “mind space” that you need to actually RUN your business.
• Appointments, deadlines/due dates, and important events.

As you can start to see, whatever you are using to organize sort of acts as your “virtual assistant”, keeping track of all the things you really don’t have to on your own. Now you may already have a way you plan on carrying this out in mind, but just in case, I’ll go over my preferred…

Methods of Delivery

Of course, you can choose to use whatever works best for you to organize your blogging business, but everything I use is completely free and works wonders for me and my business (all links below are non-affiliated):

• Evernote — This is an awesome free notes manager that I use to organize the majority of my business (potential blog posts, saved emails, guest posts, people I’ve networked with, etc). Of course, you can just use note paper and a binder, but I like Evernote better.
• LastPass — This is hands down the best secure passwords manager that I’ve ever used. It stores passwords for anything that I need, and it stores them securely (as well as hassle-free). As a blogger, your passwords list will inevitably pile up like no other.
• Google Calendar — I actually use iCal, but I know not everyone uses a Mac, so Google Calendar works just as good. I use this to keep track of when I need to publish a new blog post, schedule a new mailer to my list, and any other event that needs to be remembered.

The small list above encompasses the only tools I use to help keep me organized, and I’ve seen tremendous improvements in my productivity, the quality of my work, and my ability to remain persistent with my online efforts.

Whatever YOU decide to use, it’s absolutely imperative that you set up some kind of system to get organized, and stay organized, or you risk the chance of repeating the same mistake that has led to the death of countless blogs that otherwise had the potential to be great.

Don’t let your blog be next.

Tagged as: Blogging, get organized