How to manage your time as a part time content creator
When you make the decision to start making content, there are various routes you can go down, but for most people who do embark on this, they start as a part time content creator. There’s a lot you can learn from the process of creating content and when you have limited time to create content, I feel like you learn a lot more in a short space of time.
Whether you have a full time job, are at school or have caring responsibilities, there is something quite special about creating content on the side and if you’ve ever found yourself questioning whether or not you have the time to work on a YouTube channel or an Instagram account part time, I want you to know that you can do it.
I’ve been working a full time job and been a part time content creator for 3 years now and I’ve gone through many stages during that time. From long nights editing to being completely exhausted and experiencing burnout, but one thing has remained consistent, my desire to continue creating content for my various platforms. If you’ve ever wondered how a part time content creator manages their time, here’s how you can make sure you get the most out of your content and your time.
Let’s be realistic
No matter which way you look at it, time is the most important resource that you have and as you get older, you realise very quickly how little of it you actually have.
Everyone has the same 24 hours in a day and the amount of time you have to work on content dwindles down depending on your responsibilities and life circumstances.
So, let’s take a couple of examples, you spend roughly a third of your life asleep, which means about 8 hours of your day is used up because you are sleeping. You also tend to be at work or school around 9 hours per day. You then have to factor in travel time to and from your place of work or study, so let’s say you use lose an hour each way. Combined together, you would be left with 5 hours per day to work on things for yourself and that doesn’t factor in any extra time you need to get things done in your life.
You can really quickly see how your time gets used up and how little time you may have left to make content should you want to start becoming a content creator. I’m not doing this to scare you, but it’s something you need to keep in mind - how you use your time when you decide to start making content is incredibly important, and the more you procrastinate on that limited time, the less time you will have to actually create content.
Doing an exercise like this to really showcase how you use your time can be incredibly helpful to realise how much time you can put into creating content. If you need to, sit down with a pen and paper and write out hour by hour how you use your time, you don’t need to go fully detailed by saying you sent an email to Shirley at 8:03am and then took a 16 minute break to grab coffee because the machine was broken at work, but knowing how your pockets of time are being used can be incredibly effective for being aware of what time you have left to start working on social media profiles.
Try to stick to an overall bucket theme so you can see your time effectively, any time you are at work or school, colour it in one colour, any time you are asleep or looking after yourself such as getting food, colour that in another colour, and any time which is dedicated to life admin or other things you just have to get done, colour it in another colour.
By doing this exercise across an average week, you will be able to build up a picture of what your responsibilities are and where there may be pockets of time where you can work on content and from there, you can decide how you are going to use that limited amount of time to make content.
Time blocking is amazing
As an example for me, I work a corporate 9-5 job, I have set hours, regular lunch breaks and I have evenings and weekends free. I know that for my typical week, I have somewhere between 5 and 9 hours a day to work on content, it may be more or it may be less depending on how life is and if I need to drop everything to do life admin or spend time with my family.
Credit: Unsplash - Sonnie Hiles
I established quite early on that I have 3 blocks of time which I can use to work on content during the week: in the morning before I start work, on my lunch breaks and in the evenings after I finish for the day, with weekends being full days that I can either dedicate to content or work on other life admin.
Your blocks of time may look a bit different to mine, but having a clear idea on where you can sit down and work on a bunch of content really helps you to make progress on your social media accounts, and it doesn’t have to be big things like editing a video or streaming to your audience, there are plenty of behind the scenes bits and pieces you can crack on with to make your social channels work better within a small space of time.
When you know what blocks of time you have, you then need to work out where you can get your best work done and what tasks fall into line with your energy levels and the amount of time you have during your blocks.
Let’s say you also work a 9-5 job, you may not have a lot of time in the mornings before you start work. If you are more of a morning person and find that you do more of your best work in the morning, working on something like writing scripts, captions for photos or blog posts may be a good use of the short amount of time you have. In your evenings, you may be tired and not want to do as much work on content, so your evenings could be dedicated to editing short form content or responding to comments and emails. However, if you are more of an evening person and hate the thought of waking up in the morning, you may want to flip this around so that you are working at your best during the hours which work well for you.
Make a plan and stick to it
When you know what time you have and when you work best, it’s then a good idea to sit down and plan out your time properly. You can make this as structured or as loose as you like, but it’s important to be realistic about what you can get done during your waking hours so that you still have time to rest.
What I normally do is look at my week and block out any time which I know is going to be a ‘no content time’ first, and then think about what blocks I have which can be used for content from there. The reason I do it this way around is because there are days where I know my energy levels are going to be lower or I don’t have as much time. For example, if you have to go into the office on a particular day, rather than two hours of uninterrupted time that morning, you may only have 30 mins because you have to factor in commuting time. If the amount of time you have doesn’t work out for you, mark these blocks as time for you to rest so that you can work on content when you are refreshed.
Planning your content
When you know how much time you can dedicate to making content you can then start working on making a plan of what content you are going to make. Think about the next month or two and make a note of what content you want to put out, what platform it’s going on and when it will go live. The reason for planning like this is so that you can get a sense of everything you want to make and what steps and actions you need to take to get everything done easily.
There’s different ways you can plan your content, you can either use something like Notion or another digital planner to create a kanban board to show progress on content, you can use a calendar to show when your content is going up or you can use a notebook and pen if you prefer to have something more tangible. Whatever system works best for you to visualise it is up to you, and you may need to play around with different options to find the best one for you. But, when you have a system worked out, it’s so much easier to work with.
When you know when your content is coming up, then you want to start formulating a plan for working on that content and this is where the concept of batching your content is really is really helpful because you can then work on lots of content in one go and still get out loads of content on your social media.
Batch your content
The one thing which has made a massive difference to my content flow, which I thoroughly recommend to others, it’s the idea of batching your content. If you’ve ever heard of batch cooking before, then you may be familiar with what I’m about to say.
When you batch cook meals, you make enough food in one go so that you have many meals made in advance so you don’t have to do lots of cooking throughout the week. That same formula works perfectly when it comes to managing your time as a part time creator.
When you first start out making content, you may work on one video or post at a time and this works well when you are finding your feet as a content creator, but as you become more established and you are working on bigger and better projects, you may find it easier to instead work on multiple projects at the same time.
Credit: Unsplash - Sean Do
Once you have a plan in place of all of the content you want to make, it’s worth making a note of which projects can be done at the same time and planning your time so that you can work on all of the tasks you need in one go.
With regards to content, I personally like to stick to having 3 topics which I can talk about at the same time. This is called a content pillar and it allows you to more seamlessly link your content together. For example, if you are making a guide on how to get the highest level ranks in a video game, you can also talk about how to hit the more important lower level ranks on the way up as well as what the best tools or weapons are for the game.
Another thing which really helps outside of that for batching content is to plan your days so that you get all of the relevant tasks done in one go to make your content flow work smarter. This could be setting a day of the week to filming and a completely different day is dedicated to editing.
The reason for doing this is because it allows you to more seamlessly group those tasks together. For example, if you are someone who films talking head videos which is where you are talking directly to a camera, you may find that you are doing a lot of set up and prep just to get that filmed in one go. There’s lighting to place, cameras to position and microphones to set up, and that doesn’t include any time you have to spend picking an outfit and doing your hair and make up before you sit down to film for however many hours! If that sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is.
Credit: Unsplash - Sam McGhee
Just the set up alone for a talking head video can take you between 30 minutes and an hour on a good day and the same amount of time to put it all away again. So, rather than doing that for every single video, try dedicating one day to a filming or shooting day. Then, when you are done with setting everything up, get everything you need to film or shoot done whilst you have it all set up.
This way, you will have all of the footage ready to go for editing so you can then get your content out more consistently because you will have spent the time dedicating days to those larger tasks when it comes to making content for social media.
Saving small pockets of time
As much as the large pockets of time are really helpful for getting content made, there’s actually something which I have been doing across the last few years which has made finding the time to work on content so much easier and that is using small pockets of time which is also called “dead time”.
You know when you want cup of tea and you go into the kitchen to boil the kettle, what do you do when you turn the kettle on? You wait for it to boil, right? Well, that’s two minutes of time which you may want to put towards something else instead like answering emails or responding to comments on your content.
Credit: Unsplash - Jae Park
You also don’t have to save dead time for just making content. If you’re cooking dinner, you can do the washing up from the prep whilst waiting for it to cook instead of sitting on the sofa waiting for it, or you could do some additional housework so that you don’t have to think about cleaning and tidying in down time when you may otherwise be able to work on content.
Try to think about all those little ways where you can save time and by adding these all up together, you may find that you save loads of time which you can put to good use by working on making your social media channels perform better.
Creating content for social media is one of the most fun and rewarding things you can do, but when you are part time, you realise how precious your time is. However, with lots of planning and a clear set of boundaries, you will find that you can grow a social media following without too many difficulties.
If you want to know more about becoming a content creator and how to get started, I have a list of everything you need to start a cosy gaming YouTube channel which I thoroughly recommend if you are considering starting in the near future.
Have you wanted to do content for a while and wondered what goes into it? Are there any tips you have from working on social media which you think all part time creators need to hear? Let’s share our thoughts in the comments below and I’ll see you in the next one.
