What’s the Score? Setting Daily Goals for Blogging

In the midst of scrolling through my list of post drafts trying to figure out which topic I’d write about first, I got a bit side tracked by a thread over in the Authority Blogger forum (join up and help me get Chris Garrett over here for a guest blog post!). The thread, started by Eve of DillyDesigns, covered a fantastic post over at Problogger.net that outlined a point system to help keep yourself on task throughout the day. The concept is pretty simple; you assign point values to your daily tasks such as posting, emailing, commenting, etc and set a point total to shoot for each and every day. For example, if you award yourself 10 points for a blog post and your daily goal is 50 points, you’d need to write 5 posts in a day to achieve your goal. Of course a typical day would be made up of several different activities all with varying point totals but the end result is the same; you get work done!

Whether you’re blogging as your full time job (as I hope to be doing in less than 346 more days), or you’re posting as a part time hobby, it can be difficult at times to sit down and make yourself work. Most of the people experiencing great success blogging or making their living online share one trait, the ability to motivate themselves. Whether it’s the goal they are striving for, or they are naturally fantastic at focusing, they are able to keep themselves motivated enough to get the work done when it needs to be done. Personally, I tend to go in spurts. When I’m excited about something or “in the mood” I can get a lot of things done in a very short period of time. Unfortunately, when I’m bored or a bit burnt out on something, I can milk a simple task for hours if not days. I go from being a picture of productivity, to a portrait on procrastination.

Alliteration aside, I don’t think I’m alone in that. Just look at the number of blogs that have been abandoned after a few months when the initial fire and excitement died down and the “real work” began. However, setting daily goals for yourself, whether it’s with the help of a score at the end of each day, or not, is a GREAT way to keep yourself motivated. Not only will it help you keep track of where all your time went, it will also create a sort of competitive excitement about completing some of the most mundane daily tasks. At the end of the day today (not a terribly productive day for me in terms of blogging), I’ll tally up my score and keep that in front of me tomorrow. I can guarantee you my competitive nature will make sure I’m more productive tomorrow (and on and on).

So how about you, what’s your daily blog score? How do you keep yourself motivated over the weeks and months of work that blogging requires? Share your experiences in a comment below… after all you’ll earn up to 5 points!