I filmed a video this morning about running a serious blogging business.
The gist was how professional bloggers devote most of their attention and energy every day to being professional bloggers.
You probably get this by now.
But maybe you fall into the way too big lot of bloggers who claim distractions pull them away from their work.
Not true.
Distractions have zero power over you.
You choose how – and where – to spend your attention and energy.
With that in mind, let’s look at 3 common blogging distractions and how to dissolve these deadly foes.
1: Various Offline Stuff that Should Not Distract You
This morning I vacuumed the house.
Took me about 10 minutes. Christmas decorations littered the floor. Usually this is a 5 minute job. But I recall days where I would spend 30 minutes vacuuming my old apartment. Everything done thoroughly. This was 10 years ago. 10 years ago I was a horrific blogger. OK; I was a newbie blogger without a sense of passion or purpose for blogging.
Naturally, my lack of passion for blogging allowed silly distractions to pull me from important blogging duties.
Instead of writing and publishing 3 content rich, in-depth posts weekly, I published a few thin pieces weekly. But you better believe I spent hour after hour at the gym weekly, hitting LA Fitness 4-6 times weekly, 90 minutes or more at a clip.
Various offline distractions can expand from minutes to hours if you are not careful. Cleaning, Netflix, marathon exercise sessions and other activities are fine in small to moderate doses but never let such activities eat into your important blogging duties.
Write daily for practice. Aim for 1000 words in a Word document.
Network daily by promoting fellow bloggers and by commenting genuinely on their blogs.
Write and publish at least 1-2 blog posts weekly.
Minimize time spent doing stuff offline to get clearer on your blogging business.
2: Bells and Whistles Syndrome
I am blessed.
I have never given a rat’s ass about plugins and themes and CDNs and all that stuff.
Old RB just wrote his rear-end off for years to build a rocking blogging business.
Many of my fellow bloggers are plagued by the bells and whistles bug. Said bloggers spend 6 hours looking for the perfect plugin while I just wrote and published 3 guest posts during that time frame.
I engage in important blogging duties daily. Many bloggers engage in non-critical, unimportant blogging duties guaranteeing their failure, being distracted by stuff that does not matter much, at all.
Let go the bells and whistles. Focus on the meat of the matter.
3: Various Offline People that You Allow to Distract You
OK; I had to make this a different topic than distraction #1.
Stuff and things are one issue.
But people are an entirely different issue all together.
The basketball game that you should skip because you haven’t written and set up your blog post for the week. The incessant individual who seems to follow you around like a little puppy, asking you to do stuff for them that they should be doing for themselves.
Family is not immune either. Just because folks are blood relatives does not mean you need to keep the home office door open all day long.
This is not about putting your foot down.
This is about gaining great clarity in what you do with your blogging business to release any person distraction that you need to release to be a clearer, more confident, professional blogger.
Video
I discuss how pro bloggers devote their time and energy to being pro bloggers through this Facebook Broadcast: