blogging workflow increased efficiencyOne of the biggest obstacles to making money online is that there are 1,001 ways to waste time in the name of work.

Everything from spending too much time reading other blogs in your industry to networking needlessly with other marketers and consumers that will never impact your bottom line.

If only you had a few more hours in the day, you’d be able to get everything done.

But you don’t, so you need to create an efficient blogging workflow that will increase profits and productivity for your website.

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Tips for an Efficient Blogging Workflow

Separate Research from Writing

The first step to being more efficient is to try to group your tasks together.

For bloggers, the biggest area of improvement usually comes with the act of writing an individual post.

I find that I can write 2-3 times faster if I separate out all of the research related tasks (from keyword research to interesting topic data/trends/opinions) from the act of sitting down and writing the post.

That’s because when we focus our minds, we can get more done. Constantly moving back and forth between different types of tasks acts as a continuous disruption to your brain, so you never fully focus on any one of them.

Rank Tasks By Importance

Secondly, it’s essential to make sure that the tasks you’re completing are the ones that are most in need of getting done.

This concept is central to many studies and books available on productivity. You’ve probably heard of the 80/20 rule, where 20% of our tasks produce 80% of the results, and you might even be familiar with Stephen Covey’s concept of focusing on the important, but not urgent tasks first.

Either way, making sure you’re acting mindfully is essential to increasing productivity and profits.

Use Daily Task Lists

Finally, I encourage you to get into the habit of using daily task lists.

Having a clear list in front of you can help keep you focused. For bloggers, you might consider going as far as listing exactly what post you’re going to write, and how that fits into your overall plan or schedule.

This helps reduce the downtime we all take when hesitant to complete an action. Thought like “Should I do X or Y?” or “But what if I did Z first instead?” only serve to get in the way and waste precious minutes (or even hours) that could be better spent working.

Task lists remove this element of distraction, since you’ve already gone through the process of deciding what’s important and what isn’t for that day.

Once you decide something needs to get done, all you have to do is do it!

What are your top tasks for today? What tips do you use to maintain an efficient blogging workflow for your web business?