I read this guest post by Alan Johnson recently on spreading yourself too thin. One of the key points to the post is that we’re only human and no matter what way you look at it, there’s only 24 hours in a day and as such “acting accordingly is definitely a must”.

Subsequently, time (as in hours and minutes) to a blogger and freelance work is extremely valuable and too little time or misuse of available time can be costly.

This is particularly evident with myself when it comes to blogging. I was quoted in a magazine recently as being a serial blogger, something which isn’t far from the truth at all. At one point in the last year I counted myself as being an active author on new fewer than a dozen blogs on a range of topics.

Keeping that kind of momentum going though is crazy. I found myself eating into my lunch hour (pardon the pun) with blogging or researching a post, cutting and hour or two’s sleep out of the night in order to get publishing, staying up later, neglecting certain offline duties, all to make the blogs work.

Analyse and delegate, that is the key.

Making The Change

At the turn of the year I decided a change was most definitely needed, a change backed by a conversation I had at a blog awards night in March of this year (a few weeks prior to the launch of this blog) where it was highlighted I was definitely spreading myself too thin. The same can be said of my activities in the offline world where I run my own web design business, take freelance work, look after the day-to-day running of a theatre company, work actively to promote homegrown and independent music (also on a daily basis).

So, when it came to blogging, I put the virtual pen away on a number of blogs, including one of my personal favourites (favourite thanks to the community of readers had been building and revenue it would bring in on a monthly basis), instantly creating more time for the 2-3 blogs I decided to keep.

The decision to cut certain blogs wasn’t taken lightly though, but in analysing the situation (as raised in John’s post) it was likely the best move to make.

Delegation Is Key

While cutting down the number of blogs I maintain and author on certainly frees up time in the day to tackle other things online, or to increasing my posting activity on my main blogs, it doesn’t do much to make any changes in the offline world.

This is where delegation comes into play, more importantly knowing when to delegate.

There is the old saying that “if you want it done right, do it yourself” but at the risk of burning yourself out and losing all run of yourself timewise, you have to know when to delegate and realise that it is in fact okay to delegate tasks to others.

Whether it is making a phone call, writing and sending out a press release, posting an invoice, doing a run to the shop… you reach a certain point where although you want to do everything yourself, it’s just not possible.

So, tasks in work got managed better, tasks for the theatre are managed better and slowly but surely, things are changing in terms of how promotional activities for the music are working.

While, for a time, it can feel great to take on a lot of things at once, I’d rather take on a smaller number of activities and devote more of myself to seeing those prosper.

I’m learning to change though…

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