As a mom, you probably struggle to find time to blog.  Because of this, you probably aren’t being as productive as you would like to be.  And maybe you are feeling discouraged with this whole blogging gig.

Am I right Momma?

I’m a crazy busy mom to SIX adorable boys – the youngest of which are twins!  And I’m here to tell you that if this momma can do it, so can you.

I wish I could tell you that it’s easy, or give you a magic wand to produce the time you need.  But we are moms, and like everything about being a mom, it requires a lot of hard work and effort.

But the rewards are oh, so sweet.

I’ve been blogging for three years now and have produced over 100 blog posts.

Now, I know that’s no huge number for non-mom bloggers out there.  But for all of us moms, that’s no small feat.

That’s roughly one blog post every week, give or take a few weeks.  On top of regular blog posts, I freelance for other parenting publications.  And by using the techniques below, I have recently found time to pick up my own clients as well.

Just a couple of months ago, I topped 100 hours of work-time in one month.

How does a busy mom of six manage all of this, on top of caring for her children and running the household?

I’ve gotten so good at managing my time, that I also have time to garden, can my own fruits and vegetables, bake everything homemade (no boxed mixes for me!), and serve my family home-cooked meals (nearly!) every night.  And did I mention that I keep a mean, clean house?

What’s my secret?

I developed a daily routine, I perfected basic time management skills, and I worked on changing my mindset.

By addressing these three areas of my day, I was able to increase my blogging hours to over 100 hours in a month! That is equivalent to a nice little part-time job!

[Read: Budgeting to Be a Stay at Home Mom: How Much Should I Save?]

Have you wanted to turn your blog into a business, momma?  But haven’t been able to find the time to blog?  Then read on!  I’ll show you how to perfect your daily routine, and develop basic time management skills (no need for anything crazy fancy here!) and I will show you how a few simple tricks in the way you think can increase your productivity.

Create Your Daily Routine

Establishing a daily routine will help you to find time to blog because it will move your schedule around and create little pockets of free time.  You will have to give up some activities in order to make room in your day for this new activity, but it won’t be as painful as it sounds.  You can easily pick up those activities again when the time is right.

Creating a daily routine will keep you ‘in the blogging grove’.  If you don’t follow the same routine, day in and day out, it is too easy to skip blogging for the day.  And then, before you know it, several months have gone by and you haven’t cracked open that laptop.

Use the following eight tips to get your blogging routine established.

1. Track your daily activities

If you are looking for ways to find time to blog, then the first thing you should do is track your daily activities.  Take a typical week and write down everything you do that week.

Don’t choose a week that is abnormal or out of routine for your family.  You shouldn’t track your activities while you are on vacation, starting something new, or in the middle of the holiday season.  Choose a normal, boring, routine week for your family.

And then keep a sheet of paper handy.  Label it with the days of the week and start tracking. Write down everything you do, right after you do it, and log how long it took you to do it.

Start when you wake up and end when you hit the hay.  Leave nothing out.  Track your work hours, and track your household chores. Write down when you played with or cared for the kids.  Log how long it takes to make your meals and give baths.  And definitely don’t leave out your ‘downtime’ – TV, movies, games, etc.

Do this for at least one full week.

2. Determine which activities you can give up

Go through that list of activities and find activities that took you too long to complete and activities that you can give up.

For example, do you spend two hours preparing, eating, and cleaning up after a meal?  (I do!)  Can you shorten that time?  If so, you might be able to spend those extra minutes working on something blog-related.

Find everything in your daily routine that you can cut down or shorten the amount of time that you spend on it.  Be choosy – you don’t want to cut down on the amount of time you spend on activities you really care about.  You’ll come to resent that later on.

After you’ve shortened the time spent on your essential activities, look for activities you can completely cut out.  These will be your time-wasters.  They might be things like scrolling through FaceBook, binge-watching Netflix, or over-cleaning your house (guilty!).

Cut out any unnecessary activities.  Don’t panic!  You won’t be cutting them out permanently.  Just for this season of your life.

As your kids get older, they will entertain themselves for longer periods of time. And when that happens, you will have more time to blog.  At that point in your life, you will be able to watch Netflix more often and troll FaceBook once again.

These are just temporary cuts we are making, much like you do when you have to squeeze the belt a bit financially.  It doesn’t mean you’ll never eat out again – it simply means you can’t afford to right now.

3. Use nap time as work time

This one is hard for us moms.  We know we should do it.  But do you know how many things you need to get done in a day?  All of which are so much easier to tackle when the kids are asleep.

Resist the urge!!

Set aside nap time specifically for blogging.  Your blog should be your priority, not a clean floor.

Seriously.  I fell into this trap time and time again when the twins were little. As soon as I (finally!) got them to sleep, I’d rush around the house like a mad woman!  I did the dishes, swept & washed the floor, took out the garbage, folded laundry, made beds, and picked up toys.

Then, if they were still asleep, I’d sit down to write.

And wonder why I only got a couple of paragraphs done before they woke up.

It took a lot of work on my part to prioritize my blog.  I desperately love a clean house.  And it was never clean while the twins were awake.  I had to be diligent about blogging during nap time and not cleaning.

Set aside nap time for blogging.  You’ll be happy you did.

4. Get up early and/or stay up late

I know, I know, everyone says this.  And it’s easier said than done. Believe me, do I ever know.

If you can manage it, get up before the kids do or stay up after they go to bed to blog.  You can average two to four extra hours of blogging time if you make this one little change.

Getting up at five a.m. every morning was critical to logging in over 100 hours of blog time in a month.  My productivity sky-rocketed when I got up early!  Not only do you get that extra work time, but it is uninterrupted extra work time.

It’s like the golden cup of blogging.

It’s not easy to get up early, though, or even to stay up late when you have little ones.  If you are up a lot at night still, then don’t bother.  Your sleep is much more precious than that extra hour of blogging time.

It is far more important that you can string together a coherent sentence when you finally do sit down at your computer than it is for you to say you got an extra hour of blogging in. Especially if that extra hour was unproductive because you were too tired to focus.

Keep in mind the season of life you are in right now.  If you can swing it, get up.  If you can’t, don’t worry about it.  Enjoy sleeping in – the time will come when you no longer have excuses to sleep in!

5. Create a daily work schedule

After you have logged your activities and cut out any unnecessary ones, it is time to create your daily work schedule.  When will you set aside time to blog?  In the morning?  At nap time? After the kids go to sleep?

Will hubby come home and make supper so that you can work on your blog?  (Mine often does for me!) Will he take the kiddos to the park every Tuesday or conquer baths for you a couple of nights a week?

Find your pockets of free time and pen them in as blog time.  Use the time you used to spend watching Netflix or scrolling through FaceBook as blog time.  Get up early, stay up late, and use nap time.

The key is to deliberately set aside time to blog.  Schedule it on your calendar just like you would anything else you have going on in the day.  This is your work time. Treat it as such.

You’d never blow off showing up for work to watch the next season of The 100.  So don’t collapse on the couch when you should be poised at your desk.

Write out your work schedule and post it somewhere for your whole family to see.

6. Establish family/work boundaries

When you are at work, you are at work.  Your family cannot invade your time if you are at work. They aren’t allowed to.  You’d be fired before you can say ‘young whippersnapper’.

So treat your blogging time as work time.

Do not fall into the trap of letting other things – or other people – get in the way of that time.

Yes, you are a stay-at-home mom. Yes, you are a blogger.  So guess what?  You are now officially a work-at-home mom.

And you cannot put work off to babysit your nephew.  You cannot play hooky and head to the mall with your friends.  And you cannot skip out on blogging for the day because your hubby wants to hit the beach.

You have a daily work schedule and you need to honor it.  It is time to set up some cold, hard boundaries with your family and friends.  Do not let them distract you from your blogging time.

Learn how to say no to them.  Saying no to them is saying yes to you. And to your blog.

7. Create a structured work routine

Approach your blogging tasks in a similar way every day.  Creating a routine will get your mind and body ‘in the mood’ to work.  Do the same things, in the same way, every day.

This may mean listening to music while you type.  It could be batching out blog posts – writing the posts one day, developing catchy titles the next, and spending a day creating graphics.

Or it could be starting every day by drafting a to-do list or journaling your thoughts.

It doesn’t matter what your blogging structure looks like – what matters is that it works for you.

Find a routine or a system that you like and stick to it.  It will keep you on track, hold you accountable and get you ready to blog, even when you don’t feel like it.

8. Multitask when appropriate

Now, I know there are a lot of reasons out there why we should not multitask.  And for all of the apparent reasons, I agree.  We need to make a habit of intentionally focusing on one project or task at a time.

But there are times when it is okay – even preferred – to multitask.

My favorite all-time multi-tasking activity?  Podcasts!

I absolutely LOVE podcasts.  I have subscribed to many wonderful blogging, entrepreneur, and motivational podcasts.  And I listen to these while I am cleaning the house, gardening, driving, or cooking.

These podcasts keep me thinking about blogging even while I am away from my desk. They allow me to brainstorm and to dream about what I want to do with my blog.

They also motivate me to keep going when times get tough. Because let’s face it; blogging ain’t for the faint of heart.

I also like to answer emails and check my social media accounts while I’m cooking.  Noodles boiling with nothing do to but watch the water bubble?  Pull out your phone and get a little blog-related work done!

Do some research, craft some crazy attention-grabbing titles, brainstorm content ideas, or re-pin your most popular posts on Pinterest. The key is to combine a mundane household task with a quick, easy blogging task.

But take care not to overcook those noodles!

Develop Basic Time Management Skills

Time management doesn’t have to be this being that we can never quite nail down.  I think we mommas make time management out to be more than it really is.

Deep within its core, it really is quite simple.  According to the dictionary, ‘time management’ is the ability to use one’s time effectively or productively.  So use these four very basic time management tips to find more time to blog.

9. Set your priorities

Any blogger can tell you that there is an infinite amount of tasks you need to complete at any given time.  It is so hard to know what to tackle next.  The list is endless!

It is crucial for us mommas to set our priorities.  We risk being swallowed up by unproductive activities if we do not. And we just don’t have time for anything that doesn’t produce results.

Our time is precious.

So how does a busy momma decide what is a priority, when it comes to blogging?

Start by prioritizing your blog content.  This includes writing your post, doing any necessary research, creating graphics and pins, and promoting your post on any social media platform.

But after that, it can get sticky.

Do we spend time creating a FaceBook group – our own little tribe?  Developing and growing our email list? Creating freebies and opt-ins? Freelancing and guest posting?  Cold pitching, chasing sponsorships, and promoting affiliate links?

Should we comment on other blog posts?  Follow others on social media?  Take a course?  Create a product to sell? Write an e-book?

What oh what do we do when we get this week’s blog post done?!?

There are a couple of different ways to tackle this one.

You can start by creating some goals for your blog.  If you know what your goals are, then you can prioritize the tasks that will get you to your goal the fastest.

Your goals could be service related, as in providing writing services, coaching services, or something similar.  Or you could have a content-related goal – getting a certain number of posts up on your blog.  Maybe your goal is to grow your email list.

Whatever your goal for your blog is, chunk it down into monthly goals, and then take those goals and break them down into daily tasks. These tasks should be your priority for the day – after you have finished your blog post, that is.

The other way you can prioritize is by tackling the tasks that will make you money the fastest.  Would it be affiliate links?  Creating a product?  Or freelancing?  Any tasks that can put a little jingle in your pocket should be a priority.

Making a little money off of your blog will allow you to continue to blog.  The extra money will support the growth of your blog, as you will eventually need to spend a little on specific tools and services to keep your blog going.

So if it is a money-making task, do it.

After you have completed the tasks that will meet your blogging goals and your money-making tasks, you can tackle the rest of your blogging needs. These will be things like updating social media and making improvements to your website.  (So, in my case, all of the fun stuff!)

10. Create small to-do lists

I am a perfectionist. And an overachiever.  I often bite off more than I can chew, jump right in without fully thinking it through, and I have a consistent knack for thinking I can get WAY more done in a day than I realistically can.

So my to-do list is miles long.

And then I beat myself up at the end of the day for not being able to get it all done.

Don’t fall into this trap!

Create small to-do lists.  I like to start with the top three things I want to get done during the day. These are my priorities.  If I get these done, then I move on down the line, to the next thing on my list.

But the top three are my only priorities.  I focus on them.

If they are all I get done, I consider it a win and celebrate success!

I also keep a ginormous ‘running to-do list’.  I am always thinking and brainstorming about different things I can do, should do, or need to re-do.  And so I keep a great big list where I write down all of my to-do’s as I think of them.

This is my “I will get to this someday” list.

Basically, it’s so that I don’t forget that I have to do these things.  At the end of each month, I look through that list and see if there is anything that needs to be prioritized in the upcoming month.

11. Work in small time increments

Moms very rarely have large pockets of uninterrupted time to work. And it’s been proven that we work better if we focus on one task, with no interruptions.

Cyrus Foroughi, from George Mason University, has found that the quality of work – particularly written work – greatly diminishes if we are often distracted while working.

So we are already setting ourselves up for failure, aren’t we, momma?  By definition, we are a distracted people – continuously interrupted by little tiny humans.

So it’s important for us to be able to work in small increments of time.  Ten minutes here, twenty minutes there.  Choose activities that do not require a lot of time or focus to complete during these moments.

Maybe you have ten minutes while you wait for a prescription to be filled.  Pull out your phone and get a little blog-related work done.

Or perhaps you have twenty minutes before you need to get going, or need to get supper on the table. What can you accomplish in those precious extra minutes?  Create a new pin for your upcoming post?  Plan out your editorial calendar for the next month?

Use every available minute you have in the day to get your blogging tasks done. Break down your tasks into small, manageable action steps, and pick one to tackle the next time you find yourself with a few minutes to spare.

The key is to be sure they are quick tasks, easy tasks, and tasks that require very little concentration.

12. Do hard tasks when the kids are asleep or otherwise distracted

Because we need uninterrupted time to put our best foot forward, it is often worth your while to tackle the harder blogging tasks when the children are not around. This may mean spending the early morning hours writing out your blog posts.

Use nap time and bedtime to get some of those harder tasks completed as well.  Enlist a babysitter or an older sibling’s help when you can and always, always put daddy to work.  He can spend some quality time with the kids and give you a little child-free blogging time.

If you absolutely have to get some work done while the kids are around, and you need to concentrate, try some of these activities.  Sometimes it is worth the extra time and mess to keep your kids occupied while you work.

Change Your Mindset

The biggest obstacle you will face, when trying to find more time to blog, is you.

You will have a million reasons why you can’t take the time to blog right now.  You will have even more reasons why you should just walk away now and not look back.

But if this is something you really want to do, you have to get out of your own way.  You have to change the way you look at this whole blogging gig.

And these five tricks can put you on the right path.

13. Let go of mom guilt

Mom guilt is a dream killer.

We mommas convince ourselves that we are being selfish if we chase our dreams. We think we are being neglectful if we spend time working, rather than playing with the kids. And we declare ourselves bad wives and mothers if we aren’t cooking, baking, or cleaning the house.

These are lies.

And they cannot be further from the truth.

It is time to let go of the mom guilt.

When you have a negative thought, and you are working on changing your mindset, you rewrite your negative thought.  Do the same with mom guilt –  re-write it.

Feeling guilty because you should be playing with the kids rather than blogging right now?

How about you consider the fact that if your blog doesn’t start making you a little cha-ching, you will be required to return to work? Where you will be away from your kids, not just for the twenty minutes it took to knock out that post, but for an additional eight hours a day?

Are you feeling like a bad wife because dinner is not on the table when your man steps through that door?

How would he feel if he had to swing by daycare, pick up the kids and rush home to throw some food at them after a long day at work, because you are forced to work late – at the office – yet again?

Your blog will (eventually, if it isn’t already) make you a little extra money. It will allow you to stay home to care for your children and husband. Don’t feel guilty for taking time away from them right now to work.  In the end, it is going to allow you to give more of your time to them.

Small sacrifices now are worth the future rewards.

Keep re-writing your mom guilt. Turn it into reasons why you should be blogging.

14. Learn to work with distractions

We’ve already talked about how moms have to work with distractions. There is no way of getting around it. And we know it is going to significantly diminish our productivity and quality of work.

But we have to allow our minds to accept this.

And we have to learn how to work in spite of the distractions.

I sit down at my computer to blog while the kids are playing in the living room, right next to me.  I might get up every three minutes – quite literally.  They constantly want or need things; something to drink, the Wii turned on, the bin of cars brought upstairs, or help finding a favorite toy.

They will fight and have arguments, and I have to stop what I am doing to help them work through it.  I might be setting a timer, and then resetting it, when it beeps ten minutes later, only to reset it yet again.

There are a million distractions in my home. But I have learned to work through them. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t get nearly as much done.

One thing I have learned to do, after sitting back down at the computer, is to read through at least the last paragraph or two of what I have just typed out. That way, my mind can refocus on what I was working on.

Any lost thoughts can be quickly recovered when I read through what I just wrote.

I have also gotten really, really good at tuning my kids out.  I used to have mom guilt about this. But now I call it a survival skill.  I do what I have to do to get my work done.

The way I look at it?  It’s better to work and be constantly interrupted than to get no work done at all.

15. Track your work time

This is different from tracking your activities.  We often feel like we get nothing done in a day.  If you are at all like me, and constantly think you can get more done in the day than is realistic, then you will really feel like you didn’t get anything accomplished.

This will leave you feeling like a failure.  It will make you want to give up.

Don’t fall into such a trap!  Track the hours you actually work. Log them, just as you’d clock into work if you worked outside the home.

You may very well find that you get a lot more done during the day than you’ve given yourself credit for.  It will help you to see that you can be productive.

It will work to change your mindset from “I can never find the time to blog” to “look at all I got done this week!”

16. Lower your expectations

Don’t pull a Shannon and think you can get ‘all this and more’ done in a day.  We are mommas, and as such, are prone to taking care of little people. They are our priority. They are the reason we are doing this in the first place.

We need to work our blog into our family lifestyle, not the other way around.

Work hard every day to lower your expectations – plan on getting less done than you think you will.  Keep your list of to-do’s short and celebrate when you cross them off!

Go easy on yourself!! If you have a day that you can’t get any work done, be okay with that. There will be days that you just can’t.

Kids get sick. Groceries need to be bought.  Bills have to be paid. And child-friendly adventures must be had.  You need to do all of these things, and sometimes they keep you from getting work done.

Just remind yourself that this is why you blog – so that you can be around to take care of these other responsibilities as well.

17. Put your work down

Working at home means we never fully leave our work.  We can’t shut our office door, turn off the light, and drive home.

Because of this, it often means we also can’t shut our mind down.

We are constantly thinking about our work.  Planning out our next blog post while playing ball with the kids.  Brainstorming product ideas while giving baths. And frantically creating pins while watching a movie with the family.

Don’t allow yourself to think about work when you are on family time.  Your family does not deserve that distraction. They want all of you, just as your blog demands all of you while you are working.

To help yourself “shut off” your blog, create a daily “end of the day” ritual, just as you do to get yourself motivated to work.

End your day, in the same way, every night. This might mean cleaning off your desk, planning out tomorrow’s to-do’s, or shutting down your computer and turning off the light.

It doesn’t matter what you do; it only matters that it is the same thing every night so that you signal to your body and mind that your work is done.

And then, when you spend time with that lovely family of yours, give them your whole, undivided attention. Don’t think about work again until tomorrow.

It’ll be there, waiting.

Changing your mindset is the hardest barrier to tackle when you are trying to find more time to blog.  It will take the most work and it will take you the longest to master.  Just be patient with the process.

If you need help changing your mindset, check out this post.  It will help you change your inner reality, which in turn, changes your outer life.

Moving from finding time to blog to writing that post

Once you find time to blog, you are really going to want to zone in on who you are blogging for.  Are you blogging to share your stories and adventures?  Or are you blogging for a specific audience, an ideal reader?

If you’ve been blogging for some time now, you may already have an idea of who this ideal reader is.

But for most of us mommas, it seems to be this mystical force, hovering just out of our reach.  How do we identify our ideal reader? And why do we need to know who we are writing for anyway?

You can save yourself a lot of time and heartache if you know who your audience is before you write that post.

If you need help figuring out who your ideal reader is, I got ‘cha covered!  It took me three years of blogging before I discovered this simple little trick!  Click here to learn the ridiculously easy way to identify your ideal reader.

And get some work done already!