As a freelance writer, you need to be as productive with your time as possible. That means using those spare 5 minutes as much as you can.
I tend to use 5 minutes for writing, planning, and social media promotion. It all depends on the next piece that I need to do and what I’m doing after the 5 minutes available. If it’s 5 minutes before dinner, I’m more likely to plan and promote. If it’s 5 minutes before I have to pick my daughter up from school I’ll get a post outlined to work on later.
But 5 minutes isn’t enough time!
Many of you are likely laughing right now thinking that 5 minutes isn’t enough time to get anything done. You’ll have a lot of half-finished drafts or do half-hearted promotion.
I used to think like that. I thought those 5 minutes meant I had time to browse Facebook or waste time with the TV before leaving.
Over time, I’ve learned the completely opposite. Those 5 minutes really are the perfect time to get things done, especially as my typing speed improved. Considering I can do type around 100 words per minute (faster, I’ve found, when I’m not actually trying to time myself and put myself under pressure) I can easily get a 500 word blog post written within the 5 minutes.
Okay, I usually get to around 300 or 400 words because I edit as I write. But I still get the majority of it written!
You could even spend 5 minutes reading a blog post or a bit of an eBook to learn more about writing and making money online!
That’s 5 minutes of work that I don’t need to fit in anywhere else. It’s 5 minutes of work done so I can spend an extra 5 minutes elsewhere playing with my daughter.
Those spare 5 minutes soon add up
Think about just how much you could get done throughout the day because of those 5 minutes. You’ve got 5 minutes before having to get up. Instead of a 5 minutes snooze, use the time to go through your emails and start your writing day productively.
Instead of using your spare 5 minutes to browse Facebook, get your blog posts promoted in groups. You can have templates to make it all so much easier and quicker to do. You now don’t need to do it later.
By the end of the day, you’ll find that those spare 5 minutes throughout the day add up to 30-60 minutes. You get to spend them doing anything you want.
Can you become a more productive writer?
Just how well will those 5 minutes work for you? Stop procrastinating and start using them productively. I’ve started doing it and I get through so much more now.
I actually wrote about this last year and shared more details about I use my spare 5 minutes on a daily basis. A few things have changed since then—I now have two kids to run around after rather than just the one—but it’s pretty much the same in the way of being more productive as a freelance writer.
If you need help with your productivity as a freelance writer, I can help. Let me help you use those spare 5 minutes better by hiring me as your writing mentor.
The most I can type is 40 words per minute. I am slow compared to many people.
Well, just think of it as 200 words that you could get written in 5 minutes, saving you time for later. Say you had 30 minutes in a day, you have a blog post or two depending on length 🙂
This is a wonderful article! because most of us can find that 5 minutes wasted to make something happen in the blogging world.