It is quite common for writers to become distracted. Your mind can begin to wander and before you know it, the clock has moved ahead several minutes or even an hour! Blogging requires concentration to ensure your content is interesting. Here are a few hints for helping you to keep your focus while blogging.
1. Blog From Home
It is tempting to take your laptop along with you and to blog at the local coffee shop or café, but it is best to do your blogging from home because it is there that you have total control over your distractions. Find a quiet spot in the house and make it your own.
2. Write Faster
If you write/type quickly, your mind does not have time to wander. Let the ideas flow and get them down quickly. Don’t concern yourself with spelling and grammar errors – just allow your mind to flow. When done, simply go over what you have done in order to make any necessary edits. Many professional writers use this technique and find it very helpful.
3. Listen to Music
Some people who find themselves becoming easily distracted while blogging turn on the radio or their stereo to listen to their favourite tunes while writing. Music tends to keep your mind on task, while sitting in dead silence often results in your mind wandering.
4. Stay Away From Email
Once you sit down to begin blogging, make a promise to yourself that you will not check your email every ten minutes. It is best to close all windows on your computer except for the ones needed for blogging so you will not be tempted to check or answer your email.
5. Definitely No Facebook or Twitter
Many of us routinely check Facebook and Twitter numerous times during the day to see what our friends are up to. You will end up spending a couple of hours writing a rather straight-forward blog posting that would otherwise take you fifteen or twenty minutes to write if you are checking everyone’s profile on FB instead of concentrating on your writing.
6. Mute Your Mobile Phone
Once you have decided to do your blogging, eliminate the possibility of being disturbed by a ringing phone by turning your mobile phone on mute. Whoever tries to reach you while you are writing can either leave a voice mail or call you later.
7. Disable Chat Programs
If you are an online chatter, close the programs down or show your status as ‘offline’ or ‘busy’. You cannot stay focused on blogging if your IM window is blinking every few minutes. Again, your friends will be there when you are finished.
8. Write Early in the Morning or Late at Night
It is often best to do your blogging early in the morning or late at night. This is when there is less traffic and fewer people out on the streets outside your window. Many bloggers prefer to get started bright and early in the stillness of the mornings.
9. De-Clutter Your Workspace
A messy desk is not conducive to productivity. Clean up your workspace by removing distracting items from your desk. Keep your work area neat and avoid keeping too many items on the desk in front of you, as the simplest item can become very distracting. Make it a habit to de-clutter every day before sitting down to blog.
10. Eat Well and Don’t Skip Meals
This should go without saying, but if your stomach is growling your mind will inevitably wander to the topic of food and about what you want to eat. Eat a well rounded and nutritious meal before blogging and be sure to keep some healthy snacks on hand when you need a lift.
By following these tips, you should be able to be quite productive when blogging and should find it easy to stay focused. The best bloggers out there know all too well the importance of staying on task and eliminating distractions. Happy blogging to you!
Tom Walker is a full time blogger and designer who works with an online store offering print supplies such as HP 300 ink. He regularly blogs about art and advertising design on their blog, the CreativeCloud. Want to guest post on HowToMakeMyBlog? See more info here.
Image Credit: joguldi
Join thousands of bloggers and get all my blogging tips for FREE! Subscribe to HowToMakeMyBlog via RSS or via e-mail.
If you liked this article, you may also like:
Why I run my blog on Thesis Wordpress Theme
Thesis theme gives my blog a professional, clean, easy-to-read layout and SEO friendly design. Thesis makes it simple to make your own blog unique. See more details and get your own Thesis today.
{ 29 comments }
Tom,
These are some great tips. It’s really hard to stay focused and these work well. I have been using a “pomodoro” application lately. It’s like an egg timer that gives you 10 or 15 minute burst with 1 – 3 minute breaks between. You really push hard to get things done in your defined time slots.
Just Google for Pompdoro app and there are a bunch there.
Thanks,
Chris
Thanks. I think 2 & 3 where the most helpful for me. I will be using them tonight!
I almost always blog from home and listen to music while I’m doing it. I’m also running a software called concentrate, that eliminates any distractions. The software forces all other applications / software to quit, and I set the timer for when they’re going to be available again.
I also use WriteRoom for distraction free writing. This way, the only thing I’ll see is a black screen and my words. No icons or anything to take my mind away from my writing.
I use WriteRoom as well, it’s perfectly simple and I can get a lot more writing done a lot faster in it.
I personally use WriteRoom software for Mac (they have third-party PC ports as well). It basically hides EVERYTHING on your screen so the only thing you see is your writing on a blank screen. Default is green on black but you can change the colors and fonts to whatever you want.
It also centers text to the middle of the screen, so you don’t waste time scrolling when you get to the bottom of the screen (not many programs do this, not even high-end word processors).
Anyway, thanks for the great tips, thought I’d add in WriteRoom.
Another good, useful article – thank you!
Re #1. I do occasionally find it useful to kick start the thought processes by taking my laptop to the local coffee shop to use their free wifi access to get started on a blog post! The buzz and being away from the home office seems to work – sometimes.
Great article… I find blogging when the rest of the world is sleeping eliminates most of the distraction without having to worry about the rest of the recommendation on the list. If the rest of the world is sleeping, there is simply no distraction. Unless obviously your not focused on what your doing. Which leads me to a crucial tip missing from the list, and that is, set a goal. Without a goal there’s nothing to get done.
It is so true – the distractions are endless, and it is easy to find an excuse to not productive. These are excellent tips – decluttering is the one that works best for me.
These are great tips and I have used most of them myself. The biggest one to me is to make sure that I eat right. bad eating means bad blogging.
Just the way it is for me.
Steve
I can really relate to #8. I find it a lot harder to write in the afternoon, so I stick to either morning or night (mostly night).
Awesome post Tom, simple and straight to the point.
Some nice and juicy tips here –
I prefer working from home as well – it’s cozy as heck ! And writing early in the morning or late at night proves right as well – for some reason it#s the place where my creativity is shining at full speed !!
Great tips here. I think distractions are really brutal for bloggers. My guess is the entire Web 2.0 culture is going to create alot of ADHD. Since I already have ADHD it works to my advantage. But, I wanted to add a few more things here
1) Distraction free writing tools: These are phenomenal. Things like Writeroom, and other pieces of software basically allow you to have nothing but a black screen and green text.
2) Stopwatch: IF you use a stopwatch in addition to writing faster, you’ll place a time limit on what you do and you can write posts in less than 20 minutes. Obviously that’ll be your first draft.
3) Keep an idea list handy: While this isnt’ about staying focused per se, I think it does help you formulate ideas in your head and plant seeds that allow you to write faster.
Twitter and Facebook (but especially Twitter) are definitely my worst blogging distractions! I also have this thing where sometimes music really helps me concentrate, and sometimes it totally distracts me, and even marks me feel like I can’t think with all that noise in my head.
For me, I would add an 11th point. Don’t forget to stay hydrated. When I’m sitting at the computer for a few hours I often forget to drink anything, and as soon as I get even a little dehydrated I lose all my energy, concentration and motivation. Maybe that’s just me, but I’m willing to bet there’re other people out there who’ve felt the same thing.
All of these point to the fact that “multitask” actually means distractions
You really need to focus on one thing to get it done effectively. Don’t text while driving and don’t tweet while writing.
Excellent tips, especially the number 8, I used to write early in the morning or late at night when the children still sleep and don’t need too much attention from me. But sometime I get bored to write from home, so I look for the alternative places such as in the car while waiting for my children back from school, well it sounds uncomfortable, but sometimes it can bring new idea for me
Great tips, it’s exactly what I do to be able to write. Unfortunately (well, fortunately for my checkbook!), these days most of my writing time is taken by paying clients!
It’s amazing how much more I can get done working first thing in the morning without interruption. It’s easily 4 times as much as I can later in the day. Who knew I’d turn out to be an early bird.
And I can’t agree more with write faster – the important thing is to get it down. You’ll find that as you get into the rhythm your writing will flow better and you’ll have more of a “voice” than you would if you agonize over every little thing during the first draft.
Thanks Tom! And thanks Marko for sharing this with us!
I already follow most of these tips. But you’ve compiled this well. Marko, I need your permission, I’ll try to roughly translate the contents idea of this post for the local Bengali bloggers community in Bangladesh/India region [with off course a link to this English post]. I am planning to translate the ideas for this Bengali blog of mine.
Sure, should be fine as long as you give credit with a link back. Thanks.
Thanks Marco, the translation with some ideas customized for the local users have been posted in the link given. [and a link points towards this post as well]
I am guilty of several of these especially number 5 and number 4. Its really hard to focus on writing a good article when there’s so many stuff that you want to do at the same time.
Great post by the way and greetings to you all the way from Philippines
Great information! I always get distracted by Facebook, Twitter, and my iPod touch!
This is so true, all those social sites are a big distractions
Dear Marco & Tom, the translated version has been posted with a link back to here
Thanks both of you.
I agree with 4&5, I am bad for that, and end up doing nothing. Eat well and this keeps your engery up. All these tip are good though.
Removing ditractions is hard to do these days. I find my most productive time is after 11pm while the rest of the world is resting. I put on my headphones, listen to some tunes, often Offspring when writing, don’t you judge me! And the words start to flow but it has taken a lot of training myself not to check FB or Twitter to see what my peeps are doind.
I really like to get enough sleep.
But, I also agree with whole coffee shop thing. Matter of fact, I just stopped over there last night to catch up with my latest coaching program and I could not access their site. 2nd time in a row. I come home, instant wireless access. I’ll have to google it. Anyway, I look at the time I wasted and it kills me.
BrandonBurgh
The main thing I like about the coffee shop is you meet people, and gets me out of the house. As long as you have your laptop there with you, you may make a contact and get a prospect out of it, and get a customer.
My Favorite four -
Blog From Home
Although I disagree. Sometimes I do better by changing environments.
Write Faster
Love Write or Die – Works great especially when I am stuck.
Write Early in the Morning or Late at Night
That’s when my brain gets out of my way.
De-Clutter Your Workspace
Very good but impossible.
Thanks for those tips. All of them make sense, except for 3, Listen to Music. Rhythmic or tuneful instrumental music maybe. But lyrics would have the opposite of the desired effect, completely distracting me.