A day in the life of a wordpress blogger

One of the things I am very curious about when speaking to another blogger or a writer is about their writing routine. Everyone has a writing routine they believe in or a productivity tip they use to get themselves to work or a creative tip that unblocks your imagination and gets you writing again. How does a work day look like? What’s it really like to work as a blogger? Take a peek inside of my day:

• 8.00am: Wake up. On most days I wake up early (if you consider 7-8ish early) without an alarm clock. It’s all the excitement for the upcoming day that drives me on. Drink a glass of water which I laid next to the bed the night before. Quick skim through the emails on the phone I keep next to the bed. I am trying to get away from the habit of keeping a phone nearby actually.

• 8.05am: A bit of push-ups and sit-ups gets me going as nothing else can, and I need to do it at the start of the day, as otherwise I will pretend that I am too “busy” or too lazy in other words.

• 8.15am: Shower. Dress up (as little clothes as possible in the summer days). Breakfast. For breakfast usually some oats or yogurt with fruit, nuts and honey. Some days it’s more about eggs.

• 9.00am: Open my faithful Macbook Air. I am in the Chrome Browser for most of my work day. See here a list of tools I use regularly. I keep a folder of important bookmarks and open “All Bookmarks In New Window” to start with. I go through Google Analytics, Twitter via Tweetdeck (see other useful Twitter apps), comments area, Feedly and my other social media profiles. Some days I am a horizontal blogger and you can find me writing on my Mac in the bed or on a couch. Most days I prefer to sit up straight when working. I like light and brightness so the curtain is generally open with preferably lots of sunlight coming in.

• 9.30am: Now it’s time for the real work and for me that is mostly about producing interesting content and social media presence with the aim of driving traffic. In general I try not to keep too many deadlines and things to-do on my list. I have targets like 2 posts per week but keep my time as flexible as possible. Me being flexible with time doesn’t mean that I wait around for an idea to occur to me to start writing though. I proactively work to find the idea when I want to write. In general I will keep the browser tabs open of the important things I am working on and will use any inspiring moments throughout the day to return to those.

• 1.00pm: Lunch. A sandwich or something like a Greek salad. Preferably a look at a newspaper like Financial Times or a magazine like Wired to keep me informed and hopefully get inspired with some new ideas. Or reading through few pages in the book I am currently reading. I never really stop thinking about my projects so I always find myself working or taking notes throughout the day.

• 2.00pm: The work continues. A note on writing. I definitely don’t get to write every day. Sometimes I have intense bursts of activity, where in several days I can produce a lot of content and schedule 15 posts, and then I may go for few days or a week with limited writing as I feel too fatigued from my day job, or I focus on something else or just prefer to mindlessly waste my time. I’m often tempted to check my email or my Twitter feed. It is difficult to keep the concentration for long periods of time and doing something else helps me take a mental break. The issue is that the next thing I know is that I have lost an hour of my day. I take regular breaks to make some cups of green tea (leaf not bags). I add a squeeze of lemon juice to it. It has caffeine so keeps me awake and alert.

• 7.30pm: Time to cook dinner. Pasta with a spicy tomato base and vegetables is a regular. I am a vegetarian so my diet is based on fruit and vegetables. A glass of red wine preferably.

• 9.00pm: Time for some pleasure reading on my Kindle. Mostly non-fiction, biographies of dead men and such. I am too curious and have a keen interest in too many things. Sometimes I watch a movie or some series (currently The Mentalist) to relax and clear my head. I don’t own a TV so no time is spent watching that. Interesting fact is that because of me not owning a TV I find myself indulging in watching TV once in awhile in hotel rooms; BBC, CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN… whatever I can find in any language that I understand. I get to sleep somewhere around midnight.