You started your blog because you wanted an outlet to be creative. You wanted to share your life, share your thoughts and make something of this hobby. When you first started out as a blogger, the prospect of building an audience and creating something successful was pretty exciting, right?

What’s not as exciting, is soon realising that running a blog is more like 20% creative work and 80% working to get it out there.

For geeks like me who love systems and tools to keep myself organised, I love the planning side of things (I know, you might think I’m mad!)

But for a lot of bloggers out there, doing all the admin-y tasks like planning an editorial calendar, replying to emails and scheduling tweets is tough going.

Sometimes you find yourself thinking - should I really be doing all of this?

Yes, you really should.

I love focusing on you as bloggers in my content and I really want to start talking more about increasing your productivity and streamlining the processes you’ve got for your blog.

But before we dig into that and before you can start to improve any of your systems, there’s something you need to do first - own up to your excuses.

Whatever you’ve been telling yourself about not being able to get organised, push to one side and move on from. It’s rubbish. You can get organised.

But as a blogger myself, I know how challenging it can be to even want to get organised. I mean, all you really want to do is create amazing things, am I right?

You can blog without any processes in place.

But if you do have them, you’ll find that you will work faster, create better work and feel really great about yourself.

So are you ready?

Here are the 7 most popular productivity myths (aka excuses) that people have told me in real life and the ones I’ve heard around the blogosphere too. Take a look and let me know - which one do you relate to the most? 😉

Myth 1: I don’t have time to get organised

This is the myth that I’ve heard from so many people over the years. Mostly, from people who’ve wanted to start a blog, or just start something. They thought that if they spent time organising themselves and creating systems of support, that they wouldn’t get any of the important tasks done - like creating content.

Let me tell you, that this is the wrong way to think.

Of course it takes time to get yourself organised. That’s only natural. But how long it takes you to create these systems will save you so much time in the long run. By the time you start using them, you’ll start to make up more than enough time by not having to think about what you actually need to organise.

Myth 2: Being organised is boring - it’s much better to be spontaneous

Friend. If you’re organised, you’ll see a lot of success.

I haven’t always been organised. I never used to have systems, a diary or even a plan. I know some people that hate organisation and just avoid it completely.

When I went on holiday last year, I didn’t have a plan for my blog. And when I first started blogging, I hadn’t created a system for how it was going to grow. That’s why when I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted, I panicked and wanted to give up.

After I got myself organised and started using systems (like the social media schedule I shared on Tuesday), my traffic has increased by over 100% and my overall following has doubled.

Plus, I stopped being stressed, because I knew everything was under control.

You might not like the idea of strategies and systems. You might think there’s no point in being organised, and that it takes up too much time. But for less stress and bigger results, it’s so worth it.

Myth 3: I won’t be able to stick to being so organised anyway

The reason I think so many people don’t succeed with their systems or processes is because they don’t believe they can be organised in the first place. And then when they try to be, they’ve usually created a system that’s too complex.

This is not the purpose of organisation. You want to put these strategies in place to make everything easier for you to manage. You don’t need to overcomplicate things. You don’t need all the chapters in a bullet journal. You don’t need loads of columns in your to-do list. The simpler your systems, the easier it’ll be for you to stick to them.

Myth 4: Working under pressure makes me more successful

This isn’t actually true for a lot of people. They just use it as an excuse so they don’t feel bad about not putting the time and effort in to get themselves organised.

Being able to work under pressure is a good thing - but constantly working under pressure is not. I knew a few girls at university who used to write their essays the night before the deadline and by the end of term, they were always burnt out. This will happen to you too, if you carry on writing blog posts the day before they’re going to go live. You’ll start resenting the work you’re doing and you won’t fill it with as much quality, either.

Your productivity will be more successful when you’ve got plans in place. Even if it’s a simple to-do list that you need to complete, you’re still easing the pressure from yourself.

Myth 5: The work I create is more important than the processes I create

I won’t argue with you. This is true - to a certain extent.

But your processes can be just as important, because an organised blogger means a happy blogger. Believe me 😉

Most bloggers think their readers are only interested in receiving content that’s relevant to them, but they’re not. We appreciate organisation, even if we don’t actively see it. We want the whole process of being in a blogger’s community to be fun, simple and an effective experience that makes us stick around.

A reader will enjoy the amazing work you’ve created much more if they’ve been down a great process of actually getting to it. Think about it - how do people find your site?

Myth 6: But I’m busy!

Let me tell you something about this “busyness” that’s been going around lately. Being busy is not the same as being productive.

This is a myth that has appeared fairly recently and one that lots of us believe just because we read about it from other people.

There’s a difference in productive tasks and busy tasks. Let me explain.

If you spend all day clearing your inbox of emails and unread newsletters from the past month, only to have to do it all over again a month later, is that really productive? You’d think so, but actually, it’s not. It’s just something that keeps you busy.

A productive blogger (or any productive person really), will find a system that or tool that means you can clear your inbox easily and flag up each item into individual folders, so your inbox is always empty. I use an app for Gmail call Sortd and it’s completely upped my productivity in terms of emails. This means you’re not wasting a day going through everything each month and you can focus on more important things - like creating content and building your community.

Myth 7: Trying to be organised makes me feel less creative

This sums up the whole point of this post - putting in systems in place to keep yourself organised allows you to be even more creative. And allows more time for it too.

Without having systems in place to help you deal with administrative and everyday tasks, you’d just be wasting time doing these same things over and over again.

Having systems in place to keep you productive and organised means you’ll get things done quicker and you’ll be left with more time.

To Finish

If you can relate to any of these myths, you’re thinking “that’s totally me”, or you’re flipping out about how unorganised you are, don’t worry. Work through some of these points and see what you can apply into your own life. Then keep looking out for more of my posts on productivity to help you out 🙋🏻

Let's chat in the comments - which one of these productivity myths can you relate to the most? What do you do to try and increase your productivity?