by Skellie
Photo by Aidan Jones
It’s been almost a month since I launched blog #2, Anywired. Having never maintained two blogs at once before, the last month taught me a lot about managing multiple commitments: more than one blog, freelancing and the negotiation of even more projects.
In this post, I want to share everything I’ve learned about successfully managing multiple projects (for you, this might be running more than one blog, more than one business, or more than one freelance project), from the planning to the execution stage. I’ll talk about time-splitting, leveraging, batching focus and my new favorite word, elimination.
Time-splitting
When adding additional projects to your plate, the first question to consider is time and how you’re going to allocate it. You have three choices in total:
- Split your available time evenly between projects.
- Subtract time from project #1 and dedicate more time to project #2.
- Put the same amount of time into project #1, and allocate additional time for project #2.
Option one will involve reducing the time you spend on project #1 to 50% of its previous total, because previously you were allocating all your time to this project. Only choose this option if you have reason to believe that the time you spend on project #2 will yield greater rewards than the time you previously spent on project #1.
Option two is commonly selected when the individual becomes disenchanted with project #1 and is willing to sacrifice a big chunk of its success in the hopes that project #2 will thrive. The riskiest option, I’d only recommend it if you feel drained by project #1 or have supreme confidence in the success of project #2.
Option three is the time-splitting model I’ve chosen for Anywired. While it requires making more time available, it allows you to fuel multiple projects without forcing any one of them to ‘draw the short straw’. That being said, not everyone will be able to find the extra time required.
Coming up with a workable answer to the time-splitting question is a necessary step in successfully managing multiple blogs or projects.
Leveraging
Here’s a set of two scenarios:
- A blogger maintains a blog on extreme sports and decides to start another on poetry writing.
- A blogger maintains a blog on extreme sports and decides to start another on adventure travel.
You can probably guess which combination would co-exist most easily. When creating multiple projects you can make less work for yourself by using one project to prop up another related project.
That being said, the blogger would be wise to leverage the extreme sports blog in both examples. Some extreme sports fans are likely to be interested in writing poetry — just not as many as would be interested in adventure travel. You can almost always leverage one project to benefit another, even if they’re highly unrelated, by trading on your name and previous track record.
Photo by Don Fulano
Batching focus
Batching, batching, batching — we hear the word a lot these days, but what does it mean? The way I’ve understood it is: doing lots of one type of task at once (answering emails at once, writing posts at once, and so on). The virtues of batching are as follows:
- It gives you the time to develop focus.
- It removes distractions.
- It prevents you wasting time on re-engaging with tasks (for example, you read an email and don’t respond, then later you have to read the email once again when you do decide to respond.)
As I spin many plates, I’ve found batching both projects and tasks to be incredibly useful. I allocate one day a week to write posts for my own blog, which allows me to keep consistent with my native writing style and let the blogs run on autopilot for the rest of the week.
I allocate one day a week for fulfilling my freelance commitments, which means that I can enter a writing flow-state (and not have to worry about those commitments for the rest of the week). Other tasks I’ve begun to batch are emails, moderation and feed reading. I feel much less fragmented and much more productive as a result.
If you’re constantly flipping and changing between projects, your attention will be fragmented and you won’t be able to do your best and fastest work. If you’re keeping multiple balls in the air, focus on one at a time, rather than all of them at once. The secret to any great juggler’s skill is the ability to focus only on the single item entering and exiting one hand, regardless of the five or ten items currently suspended in the air. Manage your projects like a great juggler.
Elimination
Running an established blog is a lot less work than building one from scratch. As of now, my blogging routine is very minimalist and contains only five tasks:
- Writing content.
- Moderating comments.
- Answering emails.
- Reading feeds once a week.
- Checking stats and subscriber count once a day.
In Skelliewag’s first month, my blogging routine looked something like this:
- Writing a long post every day.
- Moderating comments.
- Answering emails.
- Leaving many comments on other blogs.
- Guest-posting.
- Participating in forums.
- Using StumbleUpon actively.
By eliminating some of the more time consuming tasks, I’ve been able to free up hours each week, and that’s one of the reasons I can take on multiple projects. The assumption that running an established blog is more work than running one which is just starting out hasn’t held true for me.
If your blog is established, your readership will generally do your promotional work for you. While you spend more time moderating comments and answering emails, this pales in comparison to the time most new bloggers do (and should) spend on self-promotion. Being able to eliminate that has been incredibly freeing.
The principles of productivity by elimination are essential for success with multiple projects.
For each of your projects, complete this exercise:
- Write down all the different tasks involved in the project.
- Ask: what would happen if I eliminated this task completely? Record both the time you’d save and possible negative consequences. If the negative consequences are too high, ask yourself this follow-up question:
- Could I spend less time on this task? Once again, record the time you’d save and the possible negative consequences.
I don’t believe real productivity is about doing the same things faster. It’s about simplifying down to what’s important. Longer-term readers will know that simplicity is important to me and I’m only just discovering the benefits of taking a minimalist approach to multiple projects.
Even with these strategies in place, I dedicate as much time as possible to each project. I don’t necessarily believe that there’s some kind of paradise state where you can run a successful project by remote control. It’s theoretically possible, but if you’re like me, you enjoy what you’re doing. Thanks go to you for being part of an audience that has made blogging so much fun.
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21 Comments, Comment or Ping
maheshexp
Hi Skellie, just a good points to take care of things while starting up new blog. For me, I’m just gonna start out my new blog from Wordpress in quite few days. Your points really got into my TO-DO list.
Also, in your section “Skelliewag’s first month, my blogging routine looked something like this”.
I’m curious to know how you started writing the guest posts. Also how did the Stumbleupon worked for you.
I will be glad if you can clear my doubts.
Feb 1st, 2008
Nez
Hi Skellie,
This is truly an enlightening post — I especially liked your comparison between running your blog once it was established versus your first month.
Reading about your first month, I find myself nodding at each point, especially the “writing a long post every day”.
For my own business, “elimination” is certainly something we look at, as in eliminating the various administrative tasks by outsourcing (once we can justify that, e.g. have enough work to hire someone for).
Feb 1st, 2008
FreshAdriaticFish
Hi Skellie, this great post with such a simple advices that I fell like I have become more productive just by reading it. Now I just have to start applying your advices… and we all know that is the hard part!
Sanja
Feb 1st, 2008
Catherine Lawson
Hi Skellie - Great post. So it sounds like marketing is not necessary once you have more traffic then.
Is the case for most bloggers, or do you know of blogs where traffic has dropped considerably again once they stop marketing actively for a while?
Feb 1st, 2008
plonkee @ the religious atheist
I’m surprised that you check stats every day and catch up on feeds once a week - I’m very much the other way round. I might check stats more often than once a week, and there are some days that I don’t check my feeds, but I can’t imagine going a week without reading, or needing to check my stats every day.
Leveraging is certainly more difficult if you choose to write on different topics - my first blog is on personal finance, and my second is on religion and atheism - but I’ve actually had a reasonable amount of crossover, certainly more than I expected.
Feb 1st, 2008
Lilja
Hi Skellie, A great generous post again.
There is one thing I might add and that is that by focusing on one task or topic at a time you also increase your creativity. Being creative requires distance from the subject from time to time. Your way of multitasking will actually help your creative processes as well.
I do not think that there is such a thing as running a successful project with remote control. Not even in theory. A successful project requires you full dedication - and staying close to it.
Feb 1st, 2008
Brett McKay
This is a very timely post for me. I recently started The Art of Manliness in addition to The Frugal Law Student. On top of that I’m going to law school full time. People ask me how I get it all done. Here’s what I’ve done:
It’s all about time management. I plan out my week to the hour. I set aside an hour each day for writing. The rest of day is devoted to law school. I’d love to spend more time blogging, but law school’s probably going to pay the bills in the future.
I use the weekends to bust out as much content as possible. I usually don’t have much law school work on the weekends, so I use this time for blogging. My first priority is to write as much content as possible for the coming week. I’ll then work on networking with other bloggers by commenting, digging, and stumbling.
Guest posts. I actively seek guest writers for both blogs. This frees up time for me, but I’m still growing my sites.
Bring in other contributors. I don’t know why more bloggers don’t do this. I think many are so full of themselves that they can’t imagine that their readers would want to read anybody else but them. I’ve brought in another contributor to Frugal Law Student and it’s been a complete success. He’s written great content and has attracted more readers. My wife also contributes regularly to both blogs. She really helps me out when I’m bogged down in law school. I honestly don’t know what I would do without her.
Prioritize. I’m a law student first, and blogger second. Sometimes blogging takes the back burner for me when things get crazy at school. I’ve gone a week (gasp!) without posting anything because I was busy at school. It hasn’t affected my subscriber count at all. As long as you produce quality content, I don’t think people mind too much if you miss a day or two (or a week) of posting.
Feb 1st, 2008
Alfa King
I have to agree with this one. Now I have a clearer view of your idea about “elimination”.
Handling multiple projects is not for everybody, still less for a part timer, unless they can follow strict discipline, commitment and the practical steps you’ve mentioned.
Feb 2nd, 2008
paidtwice
As a person who runs two blogs, one wildly more successful than the other, this was a great post to read. I nodded along a ton!
My blogs are semi-related but really, the crossover isn’t as much as I had kind of hoped in the back of my mind. And - I spend just as much time on project #1 so I knew I couldn’t do equally with project #2. So I am pleased with how it is developing nonetheless.
I’ve actually got project #3 up my sleeve that is highly inter-related to project #1 (although not exactly another blog) so - we’ll see how well I can leverage this time.
Thanks for the post!
Feb 2nd, 2008
skellie
Thanks for the comments, everyone. I’ve enjoyed reading them
@ Maheshexp: For guest-posting, I’d suggest that you find other popular blogs in your niche and pitch an idea for a guest-post at them. Just make sure it fits their blog.
As for StumbleUpon, content that is value-packed tends to do well, even if it only has a small target audience. It’s a great site for niche content.
@ Catherine Lawson: I think the scenario you’ve described would be almost guaranteed to affect a newer blog, but I can say that I’ve done very little marketing over the last month or so and the blog has continued to grow. There may be a case where the scenario you’ve described applies to an established blog, but I haven’t heard of it.
@ Brett McKay: I think one thing holds true about all this — you can do things other people would consider impossible with a clever system in place. It sounds like you’ve developed a very clever system. Thanks for sharing it!
Feb 2nd, 2008
Mary Jaksch of GoodlifeZen
Yes, those spinning plates…
My life is crammed to the brim with exciting challenges.
I tend to meet my deadlines and complete projects, but don’t ask about the state of my house…
At times I just decide to go for my creative task and worry about the mundane stuff later. A friend of mine gave me a beautiful saying to hang up in the kitchen:
“A tidy house is the sign of a wasted life”
Sometimes when I have to do necessary tasks like going to the bank or hanging out the washing -and I’m just developing an interesting idea, I want to shout: “JUST LET ME WRITE!”
Feb 2nd, 2008
Hunter Nuttall
Sorry if I’m taking the juggling metaphor too literally, but I can’t help myself.
Every juggler in the world stares at the point where the balls cross. There’s just no other way to do it. Peripheral vision plays a role, but if you take your focus off that point for a fraction of a second, it all falls apart.
Single-minded focus is critical for productivity. As the saying goes, if you chase two rabbits, both will escape.
Feb 2nd, 2008
Mrs. Micah
I’m having to deal with this right now. Fortunately, I’ve just found some times where I can get the nuts and bolts of my blogging done. Then I split my time between creating content for my blog and working on another project. Not perfect, but it splits three ways pretty decently.
Feb 2nd, 2008
Anthony
My blog is just starting to show some traction and the #1 question I keep getting from readers is if there is going to be another version for women since the current one is for men. I am hesitant to start another one till I can take the training wheels off the first one.
These tips you’ve provided will come in handy if and when I am ready to go with blog #2. Thanks for another great article.
Feb 3rd, 2008
maheshexp
Ske, thanks for the reply. I’m just trying to figure out what make Stumble outstanding Digg. And after making the Digg Algorithm tougher, I guess even from Digg, we could get some quality posts.
Feb 4th, 2008
theblackactor.com
This was a magnificent post; one which I desperately needed. The batching idea is of great interest; and later, probably elimination (not quite ready for that at the moment). But I did follow your other advice. I was trying to post 5 days per week. Too ambitious. Now, I’m down to 4 — or 3. Interesting. When I saw you were starting a new blog, I wondered how it was possible.
LOL
Feb 6th, 2008
Trisha
It’s funny how happenstance puts certain things in front of my face just when I need it the most. Then again, perhaps it is simply the tendency to notice that which we are seeking…
Mar 31st, 2008
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