How to Start A Blog While Working Full Time With A Family

Do you want to start a blog while working full time with a family, but there’s not enough hours in a day?

Or do you want to begin your blogging career but you’re completely overwhelmed by the amount of information available on blogging? 

If either of these sound familiar thenlet me tell you, you are in the right place!

I know exactly what you’re going through, because trust me, I’ve been there too!

I am a mother to two adorable, very energetic toddler boys, I work a full time job, and now I also run my online blogging business.  You can read my full story here.

One question that I get asked often is “how do you find the time to blog/run an online business while working full time and raising children?”  

This is something I am excited to talk about today because it is something that I am very passionate about; managing to work full time, have a side hustle, and still spend ample amount of time with my children (because at the end of the day spending time with family is what matters most)!

In this blog post I will be sharing the following:

1. How I manage to find time to blog, and my tips on time management.
2. How I make the most of my time, and why productivity is so important.
3. And lastly, easy to follow steps on How to Start A Blog.

Any working mother can tell you the daily struggles of wanting to be able to help provide for your family, but at the same time feeling extreme guilt over leaving your children every day to go to work.

If you’re anything like me you’re looking for a happy medium where you can spend more time with your children while still helping to provide  for your family.

Back in 2017 my boys had just turned 1 and 2, my fiancé and I were both working a lot of hours at our jobs, and I was just feeling like I needed a change.

The desire to work less and make more money was the ultimate goal for me, as I am sure most working mothers feel the same!  Debt could get paid off quicker, I could gain financial freedom, and most importantly, spend more valuable time with my children.

I started coming across different articles on Pinterest talking about blogging, side hustles, and how to make extra money from home.  At first I was pretty skeptical, but what really gave the motivation to start this journey were blogging income reports.  I came across many different blogging income reports that proved people are making full time incomes from blogging.

Once I decided that blogging was the next adventure I wanted to begin to get me to my ultimate goal, I kind of had to take a step back and overcome one large hurdle in my life; 

HOW AM I GOING TO BE ABLE TO FIT BLOGGING INTO MY ALREADY CRAZY BUSY SCHEDULE?

I already work a full time job that requires me to work Monday-Friday with some evenings and weekends, and have two toddler boys that I spend all of my free time with.  How on earth am I going to find the time to start a blogging career on top of everything I already have going on?

Well guys, I am here to tell you that I manage to find the time to blog with my busy schedule, and here’s how I do it…

Time Management Tips for Starting A Blog While Working Full Time With A Family

You may think you don’t have time for the things that you need to do, much less for the things you want to do. 

But the truth is, you make time for what’s important. 

This line either resonated with you or made you feel as if you were stabbed by a knife. If you tend to put work before everything else, you probably felt the stab. You may think it’s even unrealistic to make such a guilt-inducing statement, since you obviously do care about your family and friends as well as yourself – even though it seems on the surface you’ve put all that last. You just need the money. 

However, the truth is, most of us really do tend to make time for the things that are important to us. 

The problem is, sometimes we think one thing is more important than it is. For example, if you have a job, you probably think that your job should come first no matter what, just because you don’t want to get fired and you need the paycheck. This is what you’ve been taught your entire life and what is expected. The thought of missing work even if you have generous PTO is often very stress-inducing, due to the expectations that society puts on people today to be productive. 

But the problem is – we need more than work and putting work first all the time is not very realistic. Your life is more important than that job, and so are your kids and family. Never missing work to see a game, or go to a PTA meeting, or even to just meet your spouse for lunch is really a sad thing and not a good thing to be proud of. Because your life is about those things, not about your work, with few exceptions. 

If you are having issues aligning your lifestyle to meet your goals so that you can live the way that you desire, you have a little work to do. Most of it has to do with time management and reestablishing what is truly important to you in your life. You’ll want to set SMART goals for life and business, design actionable steps, schedule those actions, and then you’ll be working toward creating the lifestyle you want to live. 

Establish Time-Centered Boundaries 

For everyone, this is going to be different. What you value is going to be different than what someone else values. Not only that, what you enjoy doing is going to be different too. For example, some people love editing videos, others hate it. If you like it, and it is part of your business, you may place more priority on editing videos than writing blog posts, for example. 

If you have kids, you may feel that certain times during the day are more important. Can date night with your spouse be interrupted or not? Will you miss your child’s performances, and if so, what reason is good enough? It’s all up to you.

Set Clear Expectations for Others 

While you’re making expectations for yourself, you’ll want to set them for others too. For example, if everyone knows you’re going to go to your child’s games every single time, they expect it and will accept it. If it’s unusual, they might take exception if it interferes with what they wanted. Everyone from your dog to your child should know when not to interrupt you and when it’s okay to do so. 

Set SMART Life and Business Goals 

Learn how to set goals properly. When you do set goals the right way, you end up with something that can be used to track your progress. Your goals will be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. From those types of goals, you can craft your plans to ensure the goals are reached.

Create Action Steps from Your Goals

The good thing about making the goals properly is that you can create action steps from your goals. Then you can take those goals and put them into your calendar when it needs to be done. Don’t put just the due date in the calendar, put the actions you need to take on the day you need to take them in your calendar. 

Set Up Automation, Systemization, and Outsourcing Goals  

The more you can use automation, systems, and other people to do the work, the better. That means more time for you to come up with new ideas and make more plans that other people can implement and get out to the world. 

Learn to Love Your Calendar (schedule everything)

Your calendar is so important because each day, it tells you what you’re going to do – from spending the morning with your child to date night with your spouse, to that awesome vacation you’re taking during the holidays and more. It also tells you what you need to do to generate income today, but that’s only part of it.

Stick to It Every Day 

The main thing that is going to bring success is sticking to your plans for the long term. Having a business that runs itself takes a lot of work in the beginning to set up. Try to make your schedules for each day realistic so that you have a more balanced life today while setting up your more balanced life for tomorrow too.

Adjust as Needed 

The great thing about making plans and schedules is that you can track your progress. You can directly see what is affecting your success and what is working to reach your goals and what is not working. Because of this, you can change and make things better as you go.

Aligning your life with the things you really care about requires an understanding of time management, a mindset change about what matters most to you, and how your actions affect not only today but the future. You’ll need to be able to work with the time you have, as well as the time you can afford to buy from others, and good organization skills to ensure that you have the time you need for the things that truly matter to you. 

Now after deciding how I will manage my time, I needed to figure out how to be the most productive during my working times!

So here you have it guys, my tips on:

Productivity Tips For Starting A Blog While Working Full Time With A Family

Productivity is the act of producing of something.

It is not about what you’re busy doing, or how hard you work.

You measure what you’re producing, not how much time it took you to do it.

Measure what you want in life by the results, choose your priorities, and give yourself less time to produce more.

Did you know that smart people have studied the idea of time and work to come up with a law that you should know about? It’s called Parkinson’s Law and essentially states: “…Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Now, sure, some things do take a specific amount of time. You’re not going to bake a cake in less time than it takes, but much of our work has arbitrary time limits and deadlines that you can work with to become much more productive.

If you’ve ever been accused of procrastination, it might be due to this law, along with creating too long deadlines. Another problem is not understanding in advance what done means. You must know how to set clear time boundaries for yourself and for anyone you outsource to. You can challenge yourself and your team by creating incentives built into the calendar to finish projects early. To set up your processes right, you always need to know what happens first, what happens next, and what happens last – plus, what constitutes “done” for any one project. 

Break Down Your Tasks into Chunks

When you have a deliverable due on a specific date, make sure you break down that project into smaller chunks that you schedule to work on from today until the due date. By making smaller chunks with their own deadlines, you’ll avoid waiting until the last moment, which can cause bottlenecks and a feeling of always working.

Don’t Multitask 

The worst thing society has ever tried to make a thing is multitasking. No one can do it, but many people claim to be able to since it’s often seen as a positive. The truth is, studies show it’s impossible, and even when we think we’re multitasking, we’re spending about 30 percent more time than we need on tasks due to the divided attention. 

Describe What Done Means for Each Project

One issue with not getting done with things is that many times, you don’t know what done is. Define and describe for each task that you chunk down what constitutes done. Describe and define what the finished product should look like, too. That way, you have a real stopping point. 

Set Clear Boundaries Around Your Time 

Often, when people work from home on the internet, they tend to forget the time boundaries they’d have if they went to a job. At a job, you’re not surfing online, messing around on Facebook, and playing Words with Friends. This is not work. Set up your calendar to support the things you like to do but remember to fully engage in the elements rather than dividing your time or trying to convince yourself you’re working when you’re playing. It’s okay to play. Just schedule it in. 

Create Incentives for Finishing Early 

If you’ve blocked four hours today to write 10 blog posts, give yourself some incentive to finish early. If you finish before the four hours is up, instead of moving on to the rest of the work you planned for the day, take that extra time and do something for yourself. 

Know What’s First, Next, and Last 

The biggest key to remember here is to know what is first, next, and last when you are doing any project. This means that you must write down what everything is supposed to look like as a finished product. For example, if you are writing blog posts today, what does a completed blog post look like and include? Make a checklist to keep you on track for anything you’re working on, so you know when it’s done and what’s next. 

The main thing is to understand who you are and how you work best. Once you know how to set better deadlines for yourself, you’ll get more done in less time. Not only that, once you manage a team, you’ll be able to plan a project so that it gets done promptly – no matter how many people are working together to make it happen. 

Ok guys, so far we’ve talked about

1. time management and how to find the time to blog while working full time with a family
2. how to be productive during the time we have to work on our blog

So now it’s time to start the fun stuff!

How to Start A Blog

Click on this link for my full step by step tutorial on How to Start A Blog.