How i published a book and find time to blog each week.

I am often asked, how do I find the time to blog each week and esp. more recently, how I found the time to write and publish a book.

Writing a book is major undertaking and extremely time consuming . It took me almost a year to write this book: maths and stats for web analytics and conversion optimization. 

Blogging, writing a book or working on client projects require great deal of planning and time management. 

I track time, every minute of it. I use an online time tracking tool called 'toggl' (free to use). This tool also let you visualize your time spent on various activities every week.

I know exactly how many hours I spent on a particular task on any given day. I know exactly how many hours i spent on blogging, prospecting, emails, social media, book keeping etc last week. 

For me time is more important than money. It is priceless. I constantly look for ways to streamline my processes and eliminate/reduce time suckers.

Here is what i do to save time:

#1 I track time. When you track time, you know exactly where your time is being spent and what can be done to manage it more effectively next time. You may also realize pretty quickly how less you actually work on a given day when you discount all the distractions (chats, social media, multiple breaks). 

Before i started time tracking, i used to think that i work 10 to 12 hours a day. But once i started tracking time, i came to know that i was actually working only 4 to 6 hours a day (see the chart above). To this day, i find it physically very difficult to actually work for more than 8 hours a day. And when i say 8 hours, it includes only working hours and nothing else, not even the time spent in eating lunch/dinner or even moving away from the working desk for few minutes. 

#2 I do not attend more than once conference in a year. Conferences are great time and money sucker. I prefer webinars over conferences. 

#3 I don't do on site meetings any more. All meetings are done via skype/phone. Anyone who demand on site meeting, clearly does not value my time and is not worth engaging with. Face to face meetings are history in my book. 

#4 I constantly look for ways to spend less time on emails. I get emails every breathing minute. The best way i have found to deal with emails, is to not reply back or not reply to each and every email.

More you will reply, more emails you will get. I reply to an email, only when it is absolutely necessary, in as few words as possible. I use google docs wherever i can to update and collaborate in real time. This step itself eliminate countless emails. Skype text/voice chat also help in reducing the volume of emails. 

This is also the reason, i disabled the comment panel on my blog. I used to get dozens of comments every day (half of them were spams). Finding genuine comments from spam and then replying to them was very time consuming. And on top of that, once you reply to a comment, you get another comment and then another. 

#5 I am learning to delegate tasks to others, not trying to do everything on my own. This is something i should have done long time ago. Your time would be best spent, doing tasks which you love and which no one else can do. 

#6 I constantly work on streamlining my work and processes, so that i can do more work in less time. 

#7 I try hard to stay away from social media (including news websites). If you are tracking time, you will find out very quickly how many hours a week you waste on social media. I have got an app to block social media sites for a particular time period. It is called 'anti social'. 

But even with this app around, staying away from social media is a constant battle. If you are like me, who is working on computer all day, you will get this craving to divert your mind for little entertainment (check out twitter, youtube, read a news website, see what is going on in Facebook etc). You can suppress this craving to an extent by constantly reminding yourself the 'to dos' you have to complete for the day (without working after hours) and how these few minutes of social media peeking here and there, quickly adds up and eat lot of your time. 

Other thing you can do, is to actually allocate some time for social media every day. Don't try to completely block social media from your working life. It will not work in the long run and you will most likely fall back to your old habit of checking social media every few minutes.

#8 Last but not least, my working hours are insanely long. Since i love what i do, i don't feel i am working long/hard. 

Let me know, what you do, to manage your time.