The Ultimate Blog Podcast - 13. 8 Habits for Success

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Today we are talking all about habits! We have 8 habits for success that we want to share with you. Whether you are just starting your blogging journey or have been on it for a while, we believe it is important to develop habits for success. Listen in and utilize a few of these to help you on your journey. Thanks for listening! Connect with us on Instagram: @sparkmediaconceptsCheck out the show notes (link below) for links and resources mentioned in this episode!Thinking about starting a blog? Check out the Ultimate Blog Bootcamp!SHOW NOTES: www.sparkmediaconcepts.com/episode13

Welcome to the Ultimate Blog Podcast with Amy Reinecke and Jennifer Draper. We're on a mission to empower women who want to start or grow their own blog. This podcast is for women who want to learn blogging basics and who crave inspiration and encouragement. Whether you're just getting started or have been a blogger for years, we're excited to welcome you into this space where we are passionate about creating community over competition. We are bloggers who want to encourage you to believe in your potential, step outside the norm and step into a life where you create your own schedule, your own success, and your own story. Join us for weekly episodes as we navigate blogging

and work from home life, all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. all while raising a family and having some serious fun along the way. We are so excited to talk to you today about habits. Habits are something that we all have, and we can also have good and bad habits, actually. Now, in regards to working from home, being an entrepreneur or a blogger, we believe there are some habits that you can have for success. But first, let's kind of talk about what is a habit. And a habit is a behavior that is repeated regularly. So a habit is something that you do often. And it wasn't until a while ago when someone made this clear to me, we have good habits and bad habits, actually. And I think a lot of

times we think that we need to add all these good habits, but sometimes we need to also address some of the bad habits that we maybe have come to have over the years just by lifestyle or different scheduling, just different rhythms and the way it goes. So before we dive into what Jennifer and I have decided are the 8 Habits for Success for being an entrepreneur working from home and especially for bloggers, we want to share with you a blog that was super helpful for both of us. It is called Atomic Habits by James Clear. And it has so much insight in there about building small habits one at a time. So as we go through this with you today, we don't want you to look at this

list and say, okay, we're going to do this list all by the end of the week. That's not really the point of this podcast. The point is for you to connect with one or two of these habits that you can implement into your schedule to make yourself feel like you're more in control of your time and success. And then you can kind of branch out from there. So when we build these habits one at a time, that's how we build a strong foundation that leads to greater success. It's a well-known fact that when we try to change too many things at once, people fail. So that is not the intent. We want you to focus on one or two and really master it, really spend some time and decide how you can achieve these things better in order to set yourself up for success.

So I'm going to let Jennifer kick us off here with the first habit for success that we'd like to share with you today. Yeah, thanks. So we kind of put these in order to some extent. And like Amy said, you're not going to tackle all this at once. So something that you're going to want to start with and our number one habit for success is that you need to be realistic with your time and expectations. What we mean by this being a habit is you need to get in the habit of looking regularly at your schedule and at your commitments and at your to-do list. And when you do so, you need to be realistic in terms of what you can actually accomplish given your current obligations. We all have a whole

list of obligations, whether that's to ourselves, to our families, to our employers, to our businesses. And so you really need to take a moment, whether it's every day or every week or every month or some interval of all of those, you need to on a regular basis, sit down and say, okay, what obligations do I have? And then be kind of ruthless with some of those and say, what is actually important? What do I actually have to do? What can just be completely just scratched off the list? Cause it really does not add value in any way, shape, or form. And then what can I outsource to other people? Because we all only have so much time in the day and you can't just keep adding things onto your plate. You can, you know, we

come up with new goals, new dreams, and we're like, okay, I'm going to take this on. I'm going to take this on, but you have to be realistic. Something has to come off your plate. Unless you're just sitting around with lots and lots of free time, which very few of us are, you're going to have to be realistic, take things off your plate to be able to put new things on your plate. So again, just think about what you can get rid of off of your schedule and then look at what time you actually have available. And then be realistic with the amount of time things are going to take to complete the new things that you want to add to your schedule. Make sure you give yourself plenty of room because you don't want to set yourself up

for failure. And then ultimately, you need to think about, okay, what sacrifices am I willing to make so that I can work towards the things that truly are important to me? So that may mean taking something off my schedule that I might like to do, but that I don't have to do. I have to make some sacrifices to make room for the things that I really want to do. So again, get out a calendar, pull up something on your computer, like a scheduling tool and really look at what your day-to-day looks like and figure out, are you being realistic with what you can actually get done this week? Habit number two is setting weekly and

monthly intentions. So it's a brand new month. And one of the things I love to do is take a look at my calendar and see what's coming up ahead. So what does this month look like? Do I have a lot of appointments? Do I have a lot of things on my plate? What kind of meetings, what kind of coaching calls do I have? What blog posts need to go out? And when I know what's expected of me that month, then I can then move forward and set those weekly and monthly intentions to where I'm not in the third week of the month and kind of freaking out about all the things that haven't gotten done yet. So when you're setting these intentions, you want to be realistic again with what you can actually accomplish on any given week or month. So sitting down at the beginning of the month and just setting an intention for the month, looking at what you want to accomplish, what is realistic for you with the way that your calendar

looks. And I'm going to say something here too that I think is really important. Each month, this is going to look different and that is okay. You are going to have months that you will not be able to do as much as you can in other months. And that's the beauty of working from home and working for yourself is that we are building businesses that are constantly working for us, but we shouldn't always have to work harder, harder, harder. It's the old saying, work smarter, not harder. That's the goal with this. And that's the goal with this podcast really is to talk about those habits that can help you work smarter, not harder. And so setting those intentions for yourself at the beginning of the month in the week

is really important. And then ask yourself, why is it important that you accomplish these things that you write down on your list and this intention? That is something that I think is helpful when maybe you don't want to work or maybe your plate and schedule does feel full. You can ask yourself, what's my why? Have you thought about your why? Do you know why you're doing the things that you're doing? and then making sure your intentions and your schedule align with that. That is going to leave you feeling more inspired versus depleted in regards to your work. If you know that you're working towards something that's really important to you and brings you a lot of joy, you can much more easily accomplish these things because you know that you're doing something that brings you a lot of joy and it moves the needle forward in your business and what you're working towards. Writing these down is really important. I'm a firm believer that putting pencil to paper is a great way to connect with yourself and those goals.

Now, if you absolutely hate pen and paper, you can write it in an app on your phone or take notes, something like that online. But I would actually really encourage you to write it down physically as well, because I think it's important for you to review these things each week as things come up. You want to be able to look at the week and know what's coming up ahead and how you need to reassess and what maybe needs to be taken off the schedule for that week and put on another week, or maybe it needs to be rescheduled for the following month. We're going to talk here in a little bit about giving yourself a little grace. And here is where that's really important because while

you're setting these weekly and monthly intentions, you also want to know that things do come up and things are going to change and shift, and you're going to have to be willing to pivot. And that's okay. Pivoting is okay. This is how we become more resilient. So in review with this one, sit down at the beginning of the month and ask yourself, how do I want to feel? And what do I want to accomplish? And then break that down into small weekly goals for what you can do each and every week to lead yourself to feel that way at the end of the month. Yeah. And that takes us directly into habit number three, which is creating work and or office hours for yourself. So if you've implemented the first couple of habits, you realistically create a look at what you can get done over the next few weeks or the month.

And then you set your intentions, you set your goals, you write down what you want to have done, but then you're left with, how am I actually going to get this done? And so even if you're realistic about that, I think it's easy to fall behind if you don't have a plan. And so creating work and office hours helps you create an actual plan for getting this done. Because when you're working from home, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're juggling many different things all at once, it's easy to let the fires that you have to put out, so to speak, take over and kind of leach into the time that you have available to work. So you end up doing other things and taking care of appointments or things around the house or laundry or whatever it is, and not actually putting the work in towards meeting those goals.

So what you really need to do is take a realistic look at your calendar, the appointments that you have that are non-negotiable each week, and then block out times to work. Whether that's your kids are at school and you have from 8 to 3 to work, that's amazing. If not, and you're working around those things, that's okay too. You might set a 7 to 8 AM time block and you might have a 1 to 3 PM time block and you might have a time block in the evening. But that way you have the actual time on your calendar to do the things that you wanted to do. Because if you were realistic about what you could get done, you look to see how long each of those things were going to take and you wrote down your goals. You know what you need to get done. You look to see how long each of those things were going to take. And you wrote down your goals. You know what you need to get done. You know how long it's going to take. Now let's

get it on the calendar so that you can actually get those things done. And not only does that help you get those things done, it helps your family and everybody else know what to expect from you. If that's on your calendar, it's written down, then everybody can respect those boundaries as well. Because I think that's something else that can be a challenge for many of us, especially like working moms from home. I think that the time that your family needs things from you can easily bleed into the time that you're supposed to be working. And most of the time, if we just set boundaries around that, we can have those blocks of time and we can get those things marked off the list that we need to do. You can look and see, do you need childcare for a certain number of hours per week? And then

you just really, you make that commitment to yourself. Like Amy said, sometimes things come up and we have to pivot and adjust. But if you have the starting point, then you know, like, okay, if I have to pivot and adjust and take this hour off because something more important came up, then that means I just have to move it somewhere else or have to get rid of that task. You can be more realistic about it from that perspective if you've got it on your calendar. I think a tip here as well would be... I have an Apple phone. And so I can set focus on my phone to where... For me, for instance, I work three mornings a week while my daughter is at parents day out. And so I have it set on my phone that do not disturb for work. And that comes on

during that time. And so I'm not on my phone. If your phone is something that leaves you distracted and you're not able to get work done that you know needs done, either turn on focus to where you're not going to be getting notifications and be getting bothered, or just put it in another room. Let your husband or whoever might need to get ahold of you know, hey, if you need me, send me an email. I'm going to be at my computer or something. But really, like Jennifer said, set that intention with yourself and honor it because that's important. At the end of the day, when we are true to ourselves and what we need to get done in that day, we feel so much better than at the end of the day, when we are true to ourselves and what we need to get done in that day, we feel so much better than at the end of the day, when we were pulled in a million different directions and unable to actually accomplish anything that we had on our list to do. And then we kind of feel

like we failed during that day. So ask yourself, what little tidbits can I do? Or what little habits can I put in place simply to make that work time truly work time that you don't end up wasting. Speaking of work, let's move on to habit four, and that is batching your work. So this can be used for all different kinds of work, but for the nature of this podcast, we're talking about blogging. And so when you've created these office hours and the work hours, then you know how much time you have on any given day to work on any given task. So you need to know about how long it takes you to do a given task. So let's talk about creating a blog post, for instance. And I'm just going to use a food blogger as an example, because that's the easiest example to use. So for a food blogger, a food blogger

could spend one entire day creating recipes and also photographing those recipes as well. So Jennifer does this every Monday and she cooks all day and then takes pictures of the recipes on that day as well. And then later in the week, she can edit those photos on a given day. And then later in the week on another day, when she has another time block for work, she can write the blog posts that go with the recipes that she created that week. When you batch your work like this, you're not having to do everything from start to finish. And you're actually able to get things done in a quicker and more efficient manner because you're doing like tasks together. It allows you to be focused. It allows you to not feel burned out.

Let's say that you really love the photography portion of blogging. Then you think of it, you get a whole day that you get to spend on photography. Let's say you hate writing because yes, some bloggers hate writing. You know that you don't have to do that every single day, but there's just one day that you have to write. So that's another way to think about your batching your work is you can really set up your time in order to do things in such a way that brings you joy as well. You can get really specific about this by having the themes for each workday and also do what's best for you. Maybe you do it more like in a week's time. Maybe you're going to cook in a week, do all the recipes that you need

for that month in one given week, write the recipes the next week, and then you have two weeks off. I mean, wouldn't that be fantastic if we were all that organized? But that's a great way to think of it too, because here in a couple of weeks, we have an episode coming out with Courtney Wolf, who is going to dive deeper into time management. And this might help you in regards to batching your work as well. She provides some great content surrounding how to better prioritize your time. And so make sure you check out that episode here in a couple of weeks, because that's an important piece of blogging as well as time management. But just to give you some help before then, batching your work is a great way to do that.

So look at what tasks you need to do for your blog and how you can break that up into bigger chunks when you have those bigger chunks available in your work schedule. Have you ever wanted to start a blog but had no idea where to begin? Or maybe you have a blog that you'd like to update and want some help to make it the best it can be. We know that there are many people out there who have big dreams for their own blog that never happen because they simply feel stuck. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp is an eight-week course designed to help you create a solid blogging foundation by teaching you how to treat your blog as a business, find your audience, by teaching you how to treat your blog as a business, find your audience, design a website that is optimized for SEO, all while providing support via online coaching calls each week of the course. There's a private Slack channel for students as well, so questions will never go unanswered. The Ultimate Blog Bootcamp will give you the tools and support to create a blog that

has the potential to turn into a profitable business. We are committed to helping each and every student feel empowered and confident with the foundational principles of blogging and the behind the scenes work that goes into it. If you don't want to blog alone, we can help. We keep each round small in order to provide each student the attention and support we believe you deserve during this process. Since space is limited, get on the waitlist today so we can help you with your blog. The link to join the waitlist is in our show notes or go to sparkmediaconcepts.com and click on the ultimate blog bootcamp. Okay. This next habit is going to be one where some of us start to put on the brakes,

but it's so important. And we want you to take a moment and be open-minded and really consider whether or not you could implement a habit of outsourcing things in your home and in your business. So we know as women, this can be something that's really hard to do. We feel like we should be able to do it all. I think we're somewhat given that expectation and belief by society that you should be able to juggle it all. You should be able to keep a perfect home. You should be able to have Pinterest perfect crafts with your children, and you should be able to manage all their activities, and you should be able to get all your work done and have a great career and all of this.

But the truth is none of us can do all of it. What we can do is look realistically about what we want to do, what we're good at, what we enjoy doing and take the rest of it and see what we can give to somebody else. Kind of goes back to that number one habit where you're realistic about your time that you have available and the expectations that you have for yourself. that you have available and the expectations that you have for yourself. So really write down a list of all the things that you do and look and see what you might want to, or just at least be willing to try to give away to somebody else. One really easy place to start is just look at the household chores that you have. And can you have a chat with your family? Can you sit down together and come up with a plan so that everybody can more equally

share in the chores? A lot of times we just like to do it because for a lot of reasons, we feel like we're supposed to, or we feel like, well, it's just faster. I'll do it better. All those kinds of things. But can you let go of some of that? Can your children from a young age start taking on some of those responsibilities? I'll tell you that my daughter has folded her own

laundry since she was four years old. Did she do it perfectly? No, but I didn't have to do it. And now she still does it and she does a much better job. So start thinking outside the box in terms of what chores can you start passing on to your children? Because obviously that just makes them better people in the long run too, because they're learning about how to manage and share responsibility for a household. But outside of that, there's so many other things that you can do to save yourself some time. Do you really have to be the person that picks out your produce? I know it's hard to let go of that, but grocery delivery can save you so much time. So think about outsourcing, using Instacart, whatever.

So think about outsourcing, using Instacart, whatever. Even grocery pickup. So many places have grocery pickup. If you don't have a place around you like Instacart or EasyBenz or something like that that's near you, you can always do pickup. I mean, I think most Walmarts do pickup and Hy-Vee and places like that. Yeah. Even that will definitely save you time. And sometimes you think, oh, it's more expensive. But I've actually found that utilizing some of the things I save more money because even

though I may pay a little bit more for the service, I actually don't impulse buy as much. So I stick to my grocery budget much better by doing things that way. Do you really have to be the person that cleans your house? I know for me, I don't enjoy it. I don't get a lot of satisfaction out of it. And for me to clean my whole entire house by myself might take me an entire day, eight or 10 hours or something versus me paying somebody to come in once a month or once every couple of weeks. And they can have my whole house clean top to bottom in a couple of hours. It's a pretty small investment when you think about it that way, and it will save you a significant amount of time. Can you work with other people to have a carpool for your kids? Can you, gosh, can you outsource your lawn mowing so that you're not having to spend an hour or two

every week doing that? Can you simply have a meal delivery service so that you're not, if you don't really love to cook, can you just have your meals delivered at least one or two days a week to save you some time? You can outsource laundry. Even thinking about something like childcare. If you're a stay-at-home mom, can you even just start with two or three hours a week to have somebody come in where you can have some intentional time to work

and outsource that childcare for just that short period of time to give you some time to work and outsource that child care for just that short period of time to give you some time to focus. So make that list and just start with one thing at a time. You don't have to go all in. You don't have to go crazy. But just try to find some ways that you can find an extra hour, an extra two hours, an extra three hours a week. Because if you find that time here in bits and pieces, you're just going to have that much more success in getting your goals met and achieving that, remarking off that to-do list to where you'll start to really think about even more things that you can outsource and

get help on. I think habit number six is going to be tough for some of you as well. And that is to make time for rest. And rest and sleep are different things. And that is to make time for rest and rest and sleep are different things. So I want to make sure I clarify that as well. First of all, everybody should be getting seven to nine hours of sleep at night, just for overall health. You should be getting seven to nine hours of sleep at night. And I realize that that's super hard, but if you're not doing that, then I want you to try to make that alone a habit and try to get more done during the day or outsource some things in order for you to be able to do that. But sleep alone is important, but so is rest. So we have this idea that go, go, go means better, better, better. And it doesn't,

it simply doesn't. I hate to break the news to everybody, but no one is going to win an award for being the busiest person on the planet. Like we're not, the award is going to be complete burnout is what it's going to be. And none of us like to feel like that. And I think a lot of times we associate rest with being lazy and it's not either. Rest allows us to refuel. It allows us to dig deeper into our creativity. And as bloggers, creativity is so important. I mean, we are creative people. We work in a creative industry. And so if you are feeling exhausted and burnt out, then your creative juices are not going to flow the way that they would if you are allowing yourself to rest. This is such a hard thing for most entrepreneurs to do because our work absolutely never ends. Jennifer and I laugh all the time. We could literally work all day, every day and never take a break. One, because we love it so much. But two, because

you're always coming up with new ideas for things that you can do or how you can help people or what you can do to grow your business. But at some point you have to say, okay, this is enough. Today I've done what was on my list. I set my weekly and monthly intentions and I need to walk away. I need to do some things I enjoy and I need to maybe sit on the couch and read a book or turn on Netflix or just simply enjoy my family. And that rest is so important. It's important for your health. It's important for your business. And I know it's easy to get caught up in this day-to-day grind and lose sight of your long-term goals by going, going, going. But I think resting and allowing yourself to do

that will only give you more appreciation in regards to your work. It allows you to also make other things in your life that you love to do important to you. There are some things that I know I love to do outside of blogging. I mean, I love blogging and I love what we do with Spark Media as well, but I also really enjoy going to a class of our method. I love to read a book. I love to scrapbook. Jennifer loves to sew and she wants more time to do that. And so if we don't allow ourselves that time to do the other things that we want to do, we're going to end up feeling really resentful of our jobs. And that's not the goal of blogging. Isn't the goal of working for yourself at home to truly love what you do, to not feel like we

wake up in the morning and we have to do this job just to pay the bills, but rather we get to do this job because it's something that we're so passionate about and brings us a ton of joy because we know that we're providing value to people and we're helping people. All over the world, bloggers get to help people. And so know that while you are constantly pouring out yourself to other people, Instantly pouring out yourself to other people. Sister, you have got to pour into yourself too by getting some rest and sleep. Seven to nine hours. All right.

We've laid out a lot of important habits so far. And I don't know if this one's going to be surprising to you or not, but another really important habit is going to be the habit of following up. You have to follow up with yourself. So at the beginning of the month, you wrote down these goals, you grabbed your calendar, you marked out time. So now what? Let's get to the end of the month and say, did you meet those goals? And the purpose of this is not to beat yourself up because something didn't happen that you had on your list,

or to tell yourself you're a failure because you didn't meet every single goal you had. The reason that you want to follow up is because you're never going to know what to do in the future if you don't know what is and isn't working in the past. So you need to measure your progress and you need to measure your success. And the only way to do so is if you have those written goals and then you go back to them and you say, okay, how much progress did I make? Was the time that I allotted for each task, was it reasonable? Was it easy to meet my goals? Did I maybe set the bar too low because I got everything done in the first week and I had all this time off? Did you struggle because you set your goals too high? I know that's something that I struggle with. I tend to be overly optimistic in what I can get done in a day or a week. But you really want to really assess how far you've come.

And then also, you want to acknowledge. You want to acknowledge how hard you've worked, what you've been able to accomplish. And it will just fuel you going forward. You know what you can get done. You know you've made progress towards a goal. Look at those markers. Did you meet an income goal for the month? Did you increase your page views on your blog like you wanted to? Did you finally create that free ebook you wanted? You want to acknowledge those successes, no matter how big or small.

Because I think we get too much in this mindset of more, more, go, go. And it's important to stop and say, hey, I did get things done. I did have accomplishments. And then where we fell short or didn't accomplish something, then we can really take a hard look at that and say, why? Is it because I didn't a lot for the amount of time it would have taken? Well, that's okay. I can reassess and add some more time next month. Or did I procrastinate because I really didn't actually want to do that? Maybe that's a goal I shouldn't have anymore. Let's get rid of it. It just gives you that opportunity to reassess and set better, more reasonable goals that will move the needle in the direction that you want it to go going forward into the next month and into the future.

The last habit that we're going to talk about today is giving yourself grace. And I think that this is super important in all aspects of life because we can set really high expectations for ourselves that let's just face it. We're not always going to hit. We're just not. We're human and no one has it all figured out all the time. I know that you might think that other people around you do. They don't. We all struggle. We all have months that it comes easier than others. And there are months that we get everything done and feel like we're on top of the world. And then there's months that we struggle to get it all done and we're overwhelmed and burned out. And we just have to have this sense of peace surrounding that, out. And we just have to have this sense of peace surrounding that, that we won't stay in any one given place for very long. And so if you're in a hard season that even thinking about implementing

maybe one of these habits just feels overwhelming, just give yourself grace for right where you are. Give yourself grace that even if you're not growing the way that you thought you would grow or someone next to you is growing as much, that's okay because you're in your own lane and you're doing this thing the way that you need to do it and the way that you're capable of doing it and the way that honors you and your journey. There's no race to the finish line here. Blogging is definitely a marathon, not a sprint. And so just give yourself grace that growing in general is important and great and wonderful. It doesn't have to be at any certain pace. Also, it's okay to want to work and

have a family. So this is something that I know I personally have kind of struggled with a little bit a couple of different times throughout my blogging career, because I did start out as a stay-at-home mom. And now I have this thing in my life the last several years that brings me a ton of joy and I love doing it. And I don't want to have to pick. And guess what? We shouldn't have to because just because we're moms or women doesn't mean that we should have to choose. We should be able to have both. And that means that we do have to make some of those sacrifices and that's okay. It's okay for you to do something for yourself and honor yourself right where you are. As a mom, especially, you're going to have seasons that you're going to be able to devote more. And even if you're not a mom, just women, if you're just

a human being in general, there's going to be seasons that you're busier than others. Just be willing to adjust your goals during that time and give yourself grace for the season that you're in. And I think that you will find a lot more joy in regards to blogging that way. Because like I said, there's just no race to the finish line. It doesn't need to be like that. You can want to beat where you were yesterday and that's okay. I think some good, healthy competition with yourself is healthy, but not in such a way that you're beating yourself up for what you didn't get done because that's never going to serve you well. It's just going to keep you stalled and hold you back from the growth and the opportunity that you have laying ahead of you. So I hope that you will take a look at some of these and implement one and then maybe two and see how it can help you in regards to success in your own business,

in your own blogging journey. We are happy to help you in any way that we can. So make sure to connect with us and let us know if you liked this episode and share it. Share it with anybody that you know that could just utilize a little bit of support in regards to feeling like they're not like running around like a chicken with their head cut off all the time. So how can you help someone else? And maybe something in this podcast gave you like a little tidbit that you're like, you know what? I think I'm going to try that. We would love to know if you tried it and share it with others, if you feel like it would be helpful for them as well. Thanks so much for tuning in today. If you'd like to continue the conversation about blogging with

us, please find us on Instagram at spark media concepts. You can also sign up for our weekly newsletter where we share blogging tips and inspiration. You can sign up by finding the link in the show notes for those of you who are ready for the next step and want to start your own blog. Join the waitlist for the ultimate blog bootcamp. The link to join the waitlist is also in the show notes. Go out and make today a great day.