How to Find Time to Blog When You Have a Full-Time Job

The number one reason people don’t start a blog isn’t the tech, or the niche, or imposter syndrome.

It’s this: I just don’t have the time.

And I get it. I really do. I started my houseplant blog in 2019 while working 50 hours a week.

This is not about time blocking or putting everything into a Google Calendar. If you don’t have time to blog, I can’t help you. I’m going to give you a starting point, and you’re going to adapt it to fit your routine.

One thing before we start. I promise not to tell you to treat your blog like a business. I get what people mean, but man, is it depressing.

Is 8 Hours a Week a Realistic Goal for Blogging?

Eight hours a week is the sweet spot for making real, consistent progress on a blog without burning yourself into the ground.

That’s one full working day spread across seven. It’s enough to research, draft, edit, and publish multiple articles (different articles will take more or less time, deal with it) and maybe do a bit of housekeeping on top. It’s not so much that it takes over your life.

And it’s achievable for most people who work full-time, even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.

What 8 hours a week can look like:

• One full day on the weekend (Saturday morning, Sunday afternoon — whatever you can protect)
• Two hours a day, four days a week
• Ninety minutes a day, five days a week
• A mix of longer weekend sessions and shorter weekday slots

None of those options require you to quit your job, give up sleep, or become one of those people who wakes up at 4am. They just require a plan.

Do You Actually Have 8 Hours to spend blogging?

I’m not your mum, and there are a million YouTubers who will tell you how to find more time in your week.

Ok, so:

• 168 hours in a week
• I work 37.5 hours a week
• I sleep for 56
• Blog for 8
• 66.5 hours to get everything else in. 9.5 a day.

That’s surely plenty.

Obviously I don’t have kids or a dog.

How I Actually Structure My Week (Real Example)

Time management and productivity is like a puzzle. Everything seems disjointed, but actually, it all fits together once you’ve done a bit of work.

I am a very organised person. Not because I’m naturally tidy or disciplined (I am very not those things), but because if I don’t batch and schedule everything, nothing gets done.

Nobody can do nothing like me. Personality type wise, I’m a Type C that dreams of being a Type A that looks like a Type B. There’s nothing like a nap after a morning sat at my desk writing away.

My weekday morning is fixed: up at 6:20, laundry in the machine if there is any, then an hour with my coffee and a scroll through my blog roll (Feedly). I sometimes switch to YouTube at 7:00.

At 7:30 I floss (every day – this was the first habit I consciously built), do my press-ups (sometimes – this is a habit I’m currently trying to build), shower (squeedgee down after every use – successful habit #2), laundry hung out and walk to work. Every weekday morning.

The coffee/blog roll thing is an everyday occurrence, but I get up later on a weekend (sometimes as late as 8 – this is what happens when you go to bed at 9).

I walk to work and home again — that’s my exercise, built into a commute I’d be doing anyway. I come home for lunch. Again, built into the day. No gym membership, no separate slot carved out for it. I could fit a yoga session into my morning routine but, er, I don’t want to.

Towels get washed on Tuesday, bedding on a Thursday. Deep cleaning happens every other Saturday morning. Cooking is sorted once a week — I make a huge batch of chilli on Sunday, my boyfriend heats it up each evening and prepares stuff to go with it, we split the dishes. Done.

None of this is interesting. That’s the point. When the boring stuff is scheduled, it stops taking up mental energy. And that mental energy goes to the blog.

At 7pm, my boyfriend’s alarm goes off. That’s Task Time. He does his thing (tropical fish, since you asked), I do mine.

Don’t think it didn’t take years to come up with this routine. It did. I used to work in the restaurant every evening so Planet Houseplant was built off the back of working between split shifts . I actually ended up working four looong days a week so I had a full day at home to blog (which I didn’t do, because I didn’t have a plan to follow).

How to Find Your 8 Hours

Here’s how to do this for yourself — no spreadsheet required.

Step 1: Write down your non-negotiables

Work hours, sleep, commute, childcare, anything that genuinely cannot move. Don’t include things you just think can’t move — we’ll look at those separately.

Step 2: Look at what’s left

Map your remaining time in rough blocks. Morning before work. Lunch. Evening. Weekend. Even a rough version of this is useful.

Step 3: Propose specific time slots

Don’t just think “I’ll write in the evenings.” That never works. Instead: “I’ll write from 7pm to 9pm on Monday and Wednesday, and for two hours on Saturday morning.”

Those are your protected slots. Treat them like appointments.

Step 4: If the slots don’t exist yet, make them

This is where most people get stuck. But often the solution is simpler than it seems:

• Could you meal prep on Sundays to free up weeknight evenings?
• Could you batch your cleaning so it’s one proper session instead of low-level constant effort? Or vice versa?
• Could you walk or cycle to work instead of driving, so you’re not adding gym time on top?
• Could you watch one less episode of whatever you’re watching?

You’re not giving up your life. You’re making deliberate choices about where your time goes, instead of letting it drift.

This is where the ‘treat it like a hobby’ part makes a big difference.

Step 5: Test it for two weeks

Don’t try to build the perfect schedule from day one. Pick your slots, try them for two weeks, and adjust. You’ll quickly learn which ones actually stick and which ones were wishful thinking.

It only took me, er, 14 years.

The Slots That Work Best for Most People

Every person’s schedule is different, but certain windows tend to work better than others for blog writing.

Early mornings work well if you can protect them. The rest of the world isn’t competing for your attention yet, notifications are quieter, and there’s something about starting the day having already done something.

Lunch breaks are underrated. Even 45 minutes of focused writing adds up — that’s potentially 3–4 hours a week if you do it most days. You don’t need to write a full draft in one session.

Fixed evening slots work if (and only if) they’re specific. “I’ll write in the evenings” is a plan for writing nothing. “I’ll write from 8pm to 9:30pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays” is a plan that might actually work.

Weekend mornings before anyone else is awake, or before the day gets loud, are often the most productive writing time people have. Protect them accordingly.

The One Thing That Kills More Writing Time Than Anything Else

Your phone.

Specifically: picking up your phone for a “quick check” before or during a writing session, and surfacing 45 minutes later having done nothing.

I call this the research trap — you convince yourself you’re being productive because you’re looking at blogging content. You’re not. You’re consuming, not creating.

During your writing windows: phone face down, notifications off, or in another room. This is non-negotiable.

Oh, and alcohol. Nothing saps productivity like a hangover.

Treat Your Blog Like a Hobby, Not a Business

Something you’ll hear constantly in the blogging world is treat your blog like a business.

Booooo.

For some people, that framing works. It creates accountability, urgency, a professional mindset. Great.

I have a job, I don’t want another. And a whole business? Fuck off.

What actually worked was treating it like a hobby. I enjoy my hobbies. I look forward to my hobbies. I don’t resent my hobbies when I have to show up for them. Framing it that way made it dramatically easier to sit down and do the work — even when I was tired, even when I didn’t feel inspired, even when I’d rather be playing Merge Dragons (by the way, Merge Dragons fans, you can use OOC events as a pomodoro timer – leave your dragons to do their thing, go and write, then go back every hour or so and merge everything they’ve collected).

The goal isn’t to feel like a CEO. The goal is to show up consistently enough that the blog grows. Whatever framing makes that easier for you is the right one.

What If You Genuinely Can’t Find 8 Hours?

Then find five. Or four.

Four hours a week, done consistently, is infinitely more productive than ten hours done once in a burst of enthusiasm and then nothing for three weeks.

The number matters less than the consistency. A steady low output beats an erratic high one every time. Start with what you can actually sustain, and add more as the habit settles.

If you choose to spend your time leaving comments on YouTube about how a specific productivity method can’t work for your specific circumstances, stop. Spend the time you would have spent commenting making notes in your notion content matrix.

What to do next

Before you do anything else:

1. Sketch out a calendar showing how you spend your time
2. Think of three ways you can reduce that time (ideas below)
3. Find 8 spare hours for blogging – you may have to sacrifice something else
4. Try a couple weeks of your new schedule
5. Adjust as required
6. Repeat

If you don’t have time, you don’t have time. Continue making notes in your Notion content matrix and then when, one da,y you do have time, everything will be ready to plug into WordPress.

Productivity tips

• Batch content your blog tasks
• Meal prep – if you don’t meal plan for whatever reason, you can still e.g. chop a week’s work of onions. I sometimes watch youtube from 7-7:30 on a morning and chop e.g. salad at the same time. It takes like 10 minutes.
• Plan out everything that you want to do, even if you don’t do it. A bit like the tidying rule of ‘make sure everything has a place’. I wash my towels on Tuesdays. If I, for whatever, reason can’t wash them til Saturday one week, that’s fine, but it’s back to Tuesday the following week.

Frequently asked questions

→ Next up: How to Build a Blogging Routine That Actually Works — for when you’re ready to turn those pockets of time into something more consistent.