My friends and family know that I blog. At this point it’s kind of impossible to hide it from them. Every time I ask my parents to help me take a picture of myself doing something strange with books. Or when my friends ask what my favorite book is or what I did with my weekend. But a lot of them don’t know what goes into this book blogging. So I wanted to start this series where I tell you about how much goes into this blog.
Week One Breakdown
This week I’ll be sharing how one typical week is for me – book blogging wise. I won’t be doing this every week, but this week I’m breaking it down day by day. This week was a little different because it was the beginning of a month so I had to write a wrap up – which takes a lot of time. This involves me going through all my months posts and then linking them to various websites based on the challenges I’m doing.
Day One – October 7th
Today I just have to go to dinner tonight, so I have the whole day to do my own work and do the normal like cook and clean.
- Instagram: 50 minutes
- Scheduling Tweets: 30 minutes
- Reviews: 30 minutes
- Other Blog Posts: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Social Media: 5 minutes (but I think I forgot to record because this was day one and I wasn’t used to it at all)
- Reading: 2 hours 15 minutes
- Handlettering: 30 minutes
This brings day one to a total of about 6 hours. If my math is wrong that is entirely my own fault and a total accident. At the moment I’m not working because I’m between jobs and am not on the job search (again) at the moment until the end of October.
Day Two – October 8th
Today is a very busy day. I’m out almost all day from about 1pm till after dinner. But I’m still able to do 2 hours of work by doing work before lunch and reading before bed. I also had the task of taking plenty of Instagram photos before I go on vacation twice before the end of October, so I need to get all of them done and posted for the Light The Abyss Photo Challenge!
- Reading: 40 minutes
- Social Media: 20 minutes
- Instagram: 1 hour
Day Three – October 9th
Thankfully I have today to get back on track for a lot of tasks. I’m also finally getting into the habit of writing down how long things took. Today’s total is around 5 hours 30 minutes.
- Social Media: 30 minutes
- Reading: 1 hour 15 minutes
- Schedule Social Media: 35 minutes
- Reviews: 40 minutes
- Instagram: 20 minutes
- Handlettering: 1 hour 30 minutes
- Blog Posts: 35 minutes
Handlettering takes up a lot of time. Not only is one session about an hour, then I have to edit and schedule it on Twitter. Scheduling tweets is crucial to my blog because it means I can devote about 3 mentions and a Facebook post to each blog post. That way I can also schedule release day messages ahead of time. It ends up saving myself a lot of heartache and time.
Day Four – October 10th
Another dinner tonight – I normally don’t go out this often but there were a bunch of goodbyes dinners which are sad. Daily total is 4 hours 35 minutes.
- Social Media: 30 minutes
- Reading: 2 hours
- Bookish: 20 minutes
Today I was finally able to get on top of my Bookish reviews. I had to make a list of books I was reviewing on Bookish and the status. You can review books you haven’t received from Bookish to get some extra points. I have a whole blog post about how I maximize my Bookish account!
Day Five – October 11th
Moving day for one of my friends so I really only have half the day. Additionally my outside photos are dependent on the weather so today is a good weather day!
- Reading: 1 hour 45 minutes
- Audiobook reading: 1 hour 40 minutes
- Instagram: 1 hour
At night to wind down I’ll listen to an audiobook and play Zoo Tycoon or Roller Coaster Tycoon. Today I was finishing up Ogre Enchanted while also starting My Lady Jane. Daily total is 4 hours 35 minutes.
Day Six – October 12th
Today is a jam packed day where I was able to do barely anything. I went to a book sale, then a Skype date, then out for dinner and drinks. So I managed to do 30 minutes of work on Instagram only and no reading.
Day Seven – October 13th
I felt so ill today so I was only able to really read and listen to my audiobook. Still I managed a total of 4 hours and 40 minutes. This is a case of when I pushed myself to do work when I really should have taken a 3 hour nap.
- Reading: 3 hours
- Audiobook reading: 1 hour 40 minutes
For me, the concept of not doing something on the weekend just isn’t something I do. I mentioned in my September Wrap Up that I’m reading a lot less than before, about half less. Only goal is a book every two days which is better than a book a day. My main problem is that since I’m not employed at the moment I feel the guilt to do more work for the blog and also with the idea that when I get a full time job later this year, hopefully, then I won’t have as much time so I need to get as ahead as I can.
Day Eight – October 14th
You may be asking day eight? This was supposed to be a week?! But I thought it might be interesting for you to know that I had about 4 tasks outstanding from my weekend and this is how long it took me to complete that.
- Schedule Tweets: 40 minutes
- Reviews: 40 minutes
- Handlettering: 1 hour
So I was 2 hours and 40 minutes overdue from last week.
Reflections
I also post on Instagram every day so I’m missing time there which I didn’t write down. I do some posting on the go and totally forgot to write down how much time it took. So the estimate of spending 27 hours and 45 minutes for one week is probably shy. This doesn’t include the 2 hours and 40 minutes of work I would have normally managed to do if I didn’t feel ill on Sunday. It means my goal was to do 30 hours and 20 minutes of work. When people ask me what my day was like, my answers are always just work or reading. But this is what I mean by that.
If you asked me? I’m not shocked at all by this. It’s interesting to see the numbers in my eyes, but I am barely really doing much else besides blogging and what not. When I was looking for jobs and what not, I’d spend at least an hour a day on that. But if you think about the days where I spent about 6 hours on just blog work alone, that would have been 7 hours total (including the job). I wake up around 9 am every day, without eating or doing anything else, I would be done with my work at 4pm – so it’s almost a full time job some days.
Honestly, based on all the content you produce and your engagement with the community, those numbers don’t surprise me! It does help put things into perspective seeing the time breakdown for the various tasks, especially as I’m currently considering how to manage my own blogging + related activities time. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Thanks for reading! Yeah I’ve been wondering if I can like…make my time work more smartly for me? I know I need to up instagram interaction to also gain followers, but I’m just like…that’s a lot of time 🙁