This is a guest post by Ishan. He currently blogs with a group of other bloggers at BloggingWithSuccess.com where he helps others to become a successful blogger.

If you would like to guest post for this blog, please read the guidelines for more details.

Do you find yourself fighting against time to complete your posts?

You are not alone. There are millions of other bloggers who are in same situation. But the fact that you are at same place does not make things better.

If you stay in this situation or long, you will not be able to be a successful blogger.

To be successful, you have to manage your time better and also save time. In this post, I will discuss 7 time-saving tips that will help you a lot.

7 Time Management Tips

1. Automate

You can save a lot of time by automating many tasks. A good example is sending thank you mails to commentators and replying to the contact form requests. You can automate your replies to commentators by using plugin for WordPress. And regarding replies to the contact form requests, it is best to have a separate time slot in your schedule for that. You can also use GMail’s canned responses to send a generic reply(like rejecting or accepting guest posts).

2. Make Editorial Calender

Do you think about one idea for a moment and then a second one the next moment and end up losing lot of time in the end without doing anything useful? Well, I have done this a lot. I was looking for great ideas that could help my readers. But for days, I could not write anything new, let alone preparing a draft. Finally, editorial calendar came to my rescue. Now, I simply plan for about a month in advance about the posts that need to be written and also the time slot needed. Apart from that, notes also help me keeping ideas checked.

3. Track your Time

Yep, time tracking can be boring at first, very boring! But it will reveal very surprising facts. For example, when I was unable to write something useful, one day I went out and bought Vertabase Timer, a time tracking app based on Adobe AIR. And after tracking time for 2 days, it was revealed that I was spending 75% of my computer time on Prince Of Persia!(I don’t blame the game however, it’s so addictive!) The point is that you learn a lot from time tracking. Just try a good free time tracking app and I am sure you will learn a lot. However, don’t expect a miracle in a day or week! I am still spending 46% time on Prince Of Persia but the good thing is that I am spending 40% on writing content too!

4. Make A Priority List

Some things are always more important than others. Let’s do a small exercise. Just organize following in the order of decreasing priority: commenting, moderating comments, analyzing traffic, writing content, checking earnings and replying to contact forms. I am sure writing content is the topmost priority for most of us. Just make a list, then follow it. Even if you have 1000 contact form requests lying in inbox and have one hour, you should focus on writing because that’s more important.

5. Break Down Bigger Tasks

Want to write a big list? Maybe “100 Tips On _______ Better”. Don’t expect yourself to write it all in one day. It will take more time. Best way to do this is to write in parts. For example, you can spread post over the week and write 20 tips per day. This will allow you to write the article without much fatigue. Further reading: Procrastinating to Write That Huge Article? Break It Down In Small Parts by Daniel Scocco.

6. Utilize “Burst Moments”

Burst Moment is a term that I have given to Ravages Of Time. Err, I guess I played too much Prince Of Persia! Anyway Ravages Of Time is a special attack in which Prince attacks the enemies at extremely fast rate. Similarly, burst moments are moments when you just write, write and write! Nothing comes to mind except blogging! I am sure you regularly have your burst moments. I usually stumble upon ideas this way and note them down on my laptop to make sure I do not miss great ideas. Try having a notebook or a laptop with you to capture ideas at these times and if possible, write full posts.

7. Separate Writing And Editing

You know, we bloggers have a strange habit to mix our editor and writer part. Haven’t you noticed before that you sat down to write a post but mixed editing with it mid way and ended with a half written, fully formatted post. Yep, formatting those bullet points, adding the images etc. are very important but doing these things in middle of writing is not a good thing!

Group Discussion…