It can be overwhelming to even try to tackle all of the things you need to do as a food blogger. One of the best ways you can withstand the workload is by managing your time and energy. In today’s episode I’m sharing some practical tips for how you can make sure you are managing these without burnout.

Setting your goals

With so many options for HOW you can grow your food blog or what you can achieve with it, setting your goals and keeping them in mind is one of the most important ways to manage your energy. 

If your goal is to diversify your income to not rely on ads, your time will be spent much differently than if your monetization strategy is all about ads.  

It’s important to also remember to set goals that are strategic and specific, not vague. You may have heard of SMART goals before, setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. This is a great way to make sure your goals are strategic. 

Here are some examples of how you can take some basic goals and make them strategic:

Have the best Q4 ever → Increase Income by 50%

Be better at SEO → Update top 20 Q4 posts

Work with more brands → Partner with 5 brands throughout Q4

Learn more about Pinterest → Purchase and complete Pinterest course

Keeping these goals in mind will help you structure your time and also manage your energy as you keep your focus on your own definition of success. 

Related episode: How to Set Boundaries, Work Less and Make More Money with Megan Porta

Determining your priorities

In a similar fashion as goal setting, determining your priorities in any given season can be so refreshing to maintain the energy you need to grow and scale your food blog.. 

There is a quote around the idea of juggling priorities. Essentially it talks about how at any given moment, you’re juggling multiple balls in the air trying to keep them all afloat. Some of these balls are plastic while others are glass. 

We often confuse the plastic from glass balls. We let our work life balance, our family time, our sanity or taking care of ourselves get dropped to the floor, when in reality those are the glass balls. 

I sort of think of this analogy in a bit of contrast to setting goals..Setting goals supports the balance in your business. Determining your priorities, supports the balance in your life. 

The reality is we can’t do it all. We have to drop the ball somewhere, it’s just about making sure we don’t drop the glass balls. 

A great book around this topic is called Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu. (Affiliate link) 

Reduce your time on social media

I remember when Apple first introduced the screen time monitoring on the iPhone and there was this panic when everyone realized how much time they were spending on their phone each day. Before Apple had even come out with this I had already started to track my time with a different app because I found myself wasting precious time scrolling on my phone.

Reducing the time you spend on social media won’t just get you back more time that you can use for yourself, for your family or for working on your business but it will also significantly reduce the amount of overwhelm and anxiety that you feel. 

I have to share this email I got from a listener recently because it so accurately describes exactly what can happen when you reduce your social media time. 

“I have wasted a lot of time scrolling through social media looking for inspiration and direction for my blog. But it had the opposite effect. Without realizing it, my scrolling opened a window to feel inferior to other bloggers and I was debilitated from feeling like I would never get this right.

I decided to do a social media detox. I have taken a break except for my own blogging related things, and I feel like a new person! For months, I have saved your emails to get to when I have time. I’ve always had the time, I just wasn’t spending it wisely and I was feeling overwhelmed by my mixed bag of emotions. Now that I am not wasting time scrolling, I see that.“

Spending too much time on social media can paralyze your creativity as a blogger but it can also cloud your own vision of success. It’s so easy to think that it’s “our job” to be on social media but I think it is wise to really assess whether the time you’re spending on social media is really growing your business or if it’s just a bad habit that’s leading to imposter syndrome and comparing yourself to others. 

Invest in yourself and your team

The work we do as bloggers can be mentally and physically draining. I’ve said before that food bloggers are notorious for wearing all of the hats and trying to do it all. 

That type of working style leads to burn out overtime. 

What if you were able to prioritize the most important work that YOU can do? What if you either let go of the other things or delegated them to someone else? 

You do not have to try to grow your food blog on your own. You will grow faster and with less stress when you choose to invest in yourself and your business. 

We have seen the struggles of trying to scale your food blog alone. When it comes to the technical side of your blog, you no longer have to do it alone. For the first time ever, we are launching our food blogger support program to give you access to a team of experts who are here to support you as you scale your food blog. 

We’ll be opening spots to this program this week for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Be sure to sign up for our email list in the show notes so you can be the first to know about it when it opens later this week. 

As part of this program you’ll get: 

• Access to our experts in SEO, Design, Video, WordPress, Email, and Podcasting. We assembled a team that you can’t find anywhere else.
• Up to 2 small projects a month (max of 2hrs of labor – total) 
• Expert recommendations & site review
• Quarterly Food Blogger Chat 
• And more!