Finding the time to generate content for your content marketing efforts can be a challenge. Believe us, we get it. Fortunately, many smaller forms of content marketing—such as blog posts and social media posts—can be squeezed into most days, if you plan for it.
The key is to maximize your productivity—and make the most of the precious hours allotted to you every day. While this can seem like a pipedream for many—particularly when your day rarely follows a set-in-stone schedule—this article in Entrepreneur magazine offers some great tangible techniques to make that dream a reality.
The article lays out some of the best practices of best-selling author, Frank Viola—a guy who’s written 25 full-length books, 900 unique blog posts, a regular bi-weekly newsletter and produced more than 125 podcast episodes in the last eight years, all without a lick of help.
He suggests conducting an activity audit—logging everything you do, in 15 to 30-minute increments, every day for a week—to see precisely how you’re spending your time. While it’s inarguably tedious, he says it will open your eyes to areas of time-suckage (for example, he was wasting a lot of time searching for documents and reference materials, so he started hanging all pertinent files right on his wall for easy access).
I also love that, while he writes a to-do list the night before—and completes all urgent tasks first—he takes a “tight and loose” approach to the rest of his list, to maximize productivity. This means he works on a project or task until he loses interest and then moves onto something different, ultimately returning to the original task when his brain is ready to focus on it again. This can be a great solution for writer’s block—provided you’re not faced with pressing deadlines.
I encourage you to give the article a read and then share your thoughts below. What incredibly helpful, life-changing techniques do you employ to remain productive?
