Top Six Ways To Find The Time To Blog

When it comes to blogging, almost everyone I know has the same concern: time. In the quiet spaces of our lives where the gusts of work, chores, meals and sleep seem to calm, few people want the weight of a laptop bearing down on them. They also don't long for the pounds of guilt they will feel at having their last blog post be counted in dog years.

So, if you will never have the time I recommend to people--hire me. If they don't want to do that, I soon get over my shock and pain, to tell them not to create a blog but to try to post on other more established sites.

If the urge or marketing significance pulls at your conscience enough, then here are my top six recommendations for working on your blog, so that you can get back to watching the last "Glee."

1. Get on a schedule. You have to make the time to blog. As you can see by my archive, I'm not great at this, but deadlines help. If you can convince yourself that there is a hard nosed editor with a salt and pepper crew cut and bristly mustache standing over you, hey, it may work.

2. Start content for a rainy day. Unless your blog is about stories from the black and white headlines of today's news, then you can write some posts ahead of time. When you have a bank of five posts on your hard drive, the word procrastination doesn't seem so scary.

3. Find content on which you have a unique opinion. It's okay to quote other posts or articles if you're giving your take on it.  If Men's Health can write every month about washboard abs, there has to be a different approach you can take on your subject matter, even if it's washboard abs.

4. Guest authors are like interns that you don't have to manage. People love publicity, so if there's a vendor, co-worker or friend who is passionate about the same subject you are, ask them to write a post. Best case scenario, they do your work for you. Worst case, just play it off as a compliment.

5. Refer back to old posts. If sitcomes can have a "remember when" episode where they replay their favorite scenes, so can you. Family Ties always did that.

6. Tell a story. Sometimes fiction is the quickest way to tell the truth. Instead of having to search for an example of what you want to communicate, make one up.  Don't pass it off as factual, but people love a good yarn and will hardly fault you for explaining yourself in a home cooked example.

Good writing and I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving Holiday.