Episode 524: 8 Mindset Hacks to Build a Successful Blog with Lauren Woodger

EBT524 – Lauren Woodger

Intro 00:00

Food bloggers. Hi, how are you today? Thank you so much for tuning in to the Eat Blog Talk podcast. This is the place for food bloggers to get information and inspiration to accelerate your blog’s growth, and ultimately help you to achieve your freedom. Whether that’s financial, personal, or professional. I’m Megan Porta. I have been a food blogger for 13 years, so I understand how isolating food blogging can be. I’m on a mission to motivate, inspire, and most importantly, let each and every food blogger, including you, know that you are heard and supported. 

Megan Porta  00:37

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve really been prioritizing mindset related episodes lately, given my new mindset and self-care episodes that are released every Wednesday starting here in 2024, which is why I loved having Lauren Woodger from The Scatti Mum, join me in this episode to talk about this very thing mindset and how important it is to establishing a solid base to build your business on. Lauren has been blogging for a few years now and she talks about all of the things that have really helped her with her mindset in her business. Things like prioritizing connecting with other bloggers, celebrating your progress every day if you need to, taking a productivity course or really focusing on being a more productive entrepreneur, limiting your comparison or just comparing yourself to you. And so many other things. This was a really well rounded and good quality conversation. I hope you enjoy it. It is episode number 524 sponsored by RankIQ. 

Sponsor  01:40

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Megan Porta  03:09

Lauren began the scatti mom in 2019 as a hobby blog to share allergy friendly recipes when her daughter was diagnosed with multiple food allergies. In 2022. She took the leap and left her day job to focus on her blog full time. Even though her daughter has outgrown her allergies, Lauren still understands the struggle of preparing meals for everyone. She is passionate about creating easy, allergy friendly recipes that the entire family can enjoy. Lauren lives in Surrey in the UK with her husband and two children. Lauren, welcome to eat. BlogTalk How are you doing today? 

Lauren Woodger  03:42

Oh yeah, I’m good. Thanks for having me. I’m really excited to be here. 

Megan Porta  03:44

I’m so excited. I was just telling you that everyone I’ve talked to today has had the most lovely accent and you are not an exception.

Megan Porta  03:53

Yeah, thanks for being here. We’re going to talk about mindset today. But before we get into mindset, do you have a fun fact to share with us?

Lauren Woodger  04:01

I do back in the 90s my footprints were on the single cover of an oasis single. I don’t actually know if our waist is were big in the US. I mean, no, absolutely huge in the UK. So I don’t know if you’ve know, do you know who Oasis are? Yeah. Yeah, that’s my little my little claim to fame.

Megan Porta  04:19

So your footprint was on their cover? 

Lauren Woodger  04:22

Yeah. So it was a single called All Around the World. So it wasn’t one of their biggest but we were basically I was back in the 90s. I was like a teenager and I was on the I was at the beach with my friend and her family. And someone that the beach bit next to us had been closed off and someone had come over and said, Oh, can you go and play football and just run around on this beach? And so we were like, okay, and my friend’s mom was like, What are you doing? And they said, Oh, we’re recording, photographing this single cover for All Around the World. So basically, it was all around the world written in the sand and then all around it was footprints and yeah, they were my footprints, though. A few months later, the single came out and they weren’t So yeah,

Megan Porta  05:00

this is why I love prompting people for fun facts like, would this ever come up in conversation? No, never never.

Lauren Woodger  05:06

I don’t think anyone knows that. I mean, yeah, it’s been buried for years. 

Megan Porta  05:09

So I’m gonna go look it up. I’m gonna go look at your footprints later. Okay, that’s super cool. I love it so much. Okay, so we’re gonna talk about mindset today and just keeping mindset at the top of our mind as we kind of navigate through our blogging businesses. I think this is so important to talk about to frame that we would love to hear a little bit about your blog. So just give us a rundown of like when you started, what your niche is, and whatever else you want to mention. 

Lauren Woodger  05:35

Yeah, sure. So I started kind of back in 2019. I was working part time in the state agents. So it was kind of just working around my job. I love my job. But I was thinking, you know, childcare was always a struggle when the holidays and kids were sick. So I wanted to try and do it full time. So originally, mum blogging was a big thing at the time, and I thought, oh, start a mom blog, hence the name of my blog. That’s why it’s called The Scatty Mum, I just haven’t changed it. But then I had a massive crush of confidence, and I didn’t want to be plastered all over the internet. So I was like, What can I do? So I’ve always been obsessed with food and cooking. So I thought food seemed like the ideal option. And then when I was kind of Googling How to Start a blog, everyone was like, Oh, you need to have a niche. I was like, What can my niche be. And my oldest daughter was diagnosed with a cow’s milk allergy when she was born. And then as we were weaning her, we discovered she had other food allergies. So an allergy friendly blog seemed kind of the natural option. Thankfully, she’s actually outgrown all of her allergies now, which is amazing. But at the time of starting my blog, I was kind of like in full blown allergy mom mode. So I was cooking separate dinners for my daughter, to the rest of the family. And I thought there must be an easier way. So I kind of started creating allergy friendly meat meals that we could all kind of enjoy together. So that then became the focus of my blog. I was kind of doing it on my days off and on weekends, and that kind of thing, had no idea what I was doing. Didn’t do the keyword research or SEO or anything like that. And then obviously COVID hit and it kind of took a backseat because of homeschooling stuff. Yeah. And then after COVID me and my husband were having a chat and was kind of like reevaluate in life, which I think a lot of people did after COVID. And you know, I was like, I really want to try and make a go of it. So we made a deal. And he was like, okay, quit your job. And he said, You’ve got six months to make a pound. And if you can make a pound you like we’ll carry on or if we don’t make a pound, go and get another job. So I was like What have I got to lose so I actually quit my job in April 2022. I scraped a pound in in six months in affiliate income literally scrape that in, but it gave me a bit more time. And then I literally put everything into it. And 18 months after I quit my job I qualified for MediaVine. So in November just gone. And yeah, here I am still going. So yeah, it’s been been a roller coaster, but I love it. Absolutely love it.

Megan Porta  08:00

Oh, and so many people describe it that way, right roller coaster. And it’s like your own unique version of the roller coaster. Yeah. Yes. Well, I love hearing about everyone’s blog stories. And then I’m curious, do you still do allergy friendly recipes, even though your daught’s recovered from it?

Lauren Woodger  08:16

I do. Yeah. I mean, I have a bit of a nut an allergy, but a bit of an intolerance to kind of gluten and dairy. And so does my son. So we kind of eat that way anyway. So yeah, but I still I’ve still got the allergy friendly niche, even though, that she can actually eat everything now. But yeah, it’s nice to be able to give back and help other families. Because back then I was so lost. There wasn’t I mean, there’s so much more around now. But 10 years ago, there wasn’t. So it’s nice to be able to just Yeah, share recipes that everyone can enjoy. So yeah.

Megan Porta  08:46

Because when your kid has an allergy, and they do seem to come out of the blue, sometimes it can be really hard and scary. And you don’t really know where to turn. So I’m sure your blog is a valuable resource to many. That’s great. Thank you. Yeah. So at what point did you realize that mindset was playing a huge role in your success as a blogger? 

Lauren Woodger  09:05

Probably not until a year at least a year into doing it full time. As I said, I kind of spent the first year a bit like a headless chicken. I was kind of in every direction. So you know, I was trying to learn SEO, I was trying to grow an email list trying to go on Instagram, Facebook, and I was just not exceeding, I wasn’t excelling at anything because I was just trying to do everything at the same time. So then I kind of, you know, took a step back. I read a couple of books, took some courses, which I think I’m gonna go into later. And it’s yeah, I mean, I’m still I’m still learning I’m still not, you know, 100% but the my mindset and my focus is totally different to what it was like 18 months ago.

Megan Porta  09:45

Yeah, it’s a process right? It’s not something that you can do go in, you can’t manage to do this overnight. It’s, there’s so many components and it just is a long game. Getting to that point where you’re like, okay, my mind is in the right spot. So what what would you you say are some of the pieces to this puzzle? What do we have to kind of put in place in order to get our minds in the right spot?

Lauren Woodger  10:06

Yeah. So the first one is to connect with other bloggers. Because I think we all know I don’t mean blogging, it can be quite an isolating job. I mean, most of the time we’re at home on our own. So I think it’s quite important to make connections with others in the blogging world. So there’s a kind of a few ways to do that social media for all its sins, I think is a great way to connect with other bloggers, I had like when I first started, I caught a couple of like, established bloggers kind of just reached out to me, once I’d followed them, they kind of just messaged me and said, Oh, thanks for the follow. You know, nice to have you here, blah, blah, and, you know, kind of build up relations that way. So social media is kind of great for that. Also, I think if, if that seems a bit if you don’t want to DM other bloggers or just start, you know, leaving supportive comments on other people’s posts, and things like that, I think is another kind of great way. Facebook groups are a great for that as well. There’s obviously the big one, the Foodblogger Central, which I think is great. If you’ve got a question about anything or whatever I do a search and have a look in, have a look and see if it’s been answered. And if not then asked, but then it’s also a great way to help other bloggers and answer their questions. And then you can kind of use you see the same names and faces pop up in those groups. It’s a good way to connect as well. Smaller networking groups as well. So I’ve joined a Facebook group called Connecting Bloggers, which was set up by Zhen Greedy Girl Gourmet, she’s actually been on your podcast. 

Megan Porta  11:33

Yeah, she’s so nice. 

Lauren Woodger  11:34

Yeah, she’s so lovely. Yeah, she does kind of, it’s just Zoom calls every couple of months. And it’s normally quite a small group. And we just discuss a different topic each time. So it might be like Pinterest or AI or help, like all my traffic’s gone from the helpful content update anything like that. But there’s a lot of different level of bloggers in the call every time so you know, it’s great to gain knowledge from like more experienced bloggers, but also you can help you know, newer bloggers with your kind of tips as well. So that’s another great one, blogger meetups as well is a good one. I think in in America, there’s probably a lot more opportunities for this, like conferences and stuff like that. But like, for example, if you join in a mastermind or a smaller network group, there might be opportunities for meetups there, like Jen actually organized one in London last month, I couldn’t make it, unfortunately. But I’m gonna go to the next one, because that’s a great opportunity to actually, you know, connect with other bloggers in real life and, and get to know people. 

Megan Porta  12:30

Yeah, I Think that for mindset, this is huge. Because we can get in that bubble of thinking, I’m going crazy. I’m feeling so lonely and isolated. I don’t know if what I’m doing is right, even. And you can go down a really dark path sometimes, right, especially if you do this long enough alone. So I think it’s really good that you mentioned this one first, because this is so important. I ignore this for a lot of years. And please don’t do what I did. Because it did not serve me. I didn’t get anywhere. My wheels are spinning constantly. This is a really big, huge, huge, huge piece. 

Lauren Woodger  13:04

Yeah, I did for the first year as well. And, and it’s hard because you you try and talk to your friends or your partner or or whatever about it, but they don’t really get it. Do they have that? I think yeah, unless you’re a blogger, you don’t, you don’t really get it. And you know, I only worked in a small office before but you had that kind of human interaction every day. And you talk about I don’t know what you watched on Netflix last night or whatever. And you go from that to, you know, being yeah, completely isolated, really at home every day. So it’s difficult. So yeah, I agree. Exactly. And I think it’s really important. Just try and build up your own little network.

Megan Porta  13:37

Yeah. And I like your suggestion just to start with social media and just start commenting on people’s content or send them a DM if you’re inspired by them. The Facebook groups can be really helpful as well. So those are really easy, just like you don’t really need much to get started with that you can just go in start connecting with people. So it’s really easy. Okay, what else do you need? Or what else do you recommend that we do to stay on top of mindset.

Lauren Woodger  14:01

Next is probably to celebrate your your progress. This is a big thing as well. So I have like a daily planner book where I kind of plan my day each day. I’m old school, everything’s written down on, not on online. But in that every morning, the first thing I do is I write down the number of sessions that I’ve had on my blog for the last 30 days. I write down how many backlinks I have and how many keywords I’m ranking for. And I get both of the last two bits of information from key search. And it’s a great metric to look back and see how far you’ve come. It’s very easy to just kind of get caught up in the doldrums and going and go in like, for example that I remember the day I qualified for MediaVine, I look back in my book to exactly a year previously and I was only on 8000 sessions. And to me thinking on that day a year before or would I’ve been at MediaVine a year later, I would never have thought because when I was at 8000 sessions, it seems so far away, but to be able to look back and think well, actually, Wow, that’s great how far you’ve come. So just kind of recording metrics, I think kind of helps. And it takes two minutes in the morning to write it down. And it’s just a nice, it’s also a good way to stay on top of things. If things are moving in the wrong direction as well, you kind of can stay on top of it, and know where you’re going.

Megan Porta  15:19

Yeah, I think this is a huge one. And like you said, it’s so easy to do that just to track and even if you don’t do it every day or week, I was doing for a while just recording monthly. So I would go back and like, Okay, what did I get? For pageviews last month, what did I earn for revenue this month? And looking back, there’s something to that just over time seeing your progress. But when you’re in it, you never see it. Unless you’re taking the time to intentionally see it. You know what I mean? So you need to make the time to do that. 

Lauren Woodger  15:51

No, I agree. I think Yeah. Unless, I mean, yeah, maybe. I think I was doing it every day, because I was trying to get my sessions up to qualify for MediaVine. So probably, yeah, head off a bit. But yeah, like you say, unless you’ve got that written down somewhere. It’s so easy to just get caught up with the day to day in the moment. Yeah. You’re never gonna know where you were this time three months ago, or whatever.

Megan Porta  16:11

So yeah, exactly. So The Gap in the Gain, have you read that book?

Lauren Woodger  16:15

I have? Yes. Like the

Megan Porta  16:17

Whole concept of that book, right.

Lauren Woodger  16:19

I know. And yeah, it changed everything. That was one of the major things that changed everything. And I said to my husband, my husband doesn’t read books, he’s like, hates books, but he listens on Audible. And I was like, You need to listen to this book. And he listened to it in like two days. And again, he was like another convert. He was, yeah, it’s amazing. We both love it. 

Megan Porta  16:36

Yeah, that book doesn’t just help entrepreneurs that helps people with life and just realizing that you’re always making progress in your life, all the time, and recognize that it can be a life changer. Love this one. Okay, so far, these are amazing. Lauren, what do you have next, for just staying on top of our mindset.

Lauren Woodger  16:54

The next thing I’ve got is to take a productivity course. And this was this was a game changer for me, really. And one of the one of the things along with the books that changed everything. So I invested in kind of SEO courses, Pinterest courses, that thing, but I never thought about actually investing in a course for myself, I thought it’d be a waste of money, kind of in investing in a productivity course, but actually changed my way of thinking and working. And the course I took I mean, so many, so many points. But a couple is, again, and I think it actually comes back to from The Gap in the Gain, because you start with your big picture goals and what you want to achieve in the long term, and then you work backwards. And you work that backwards into kind of a yearly roadmap, and then a monthly and then a weekly, and then a daily. And then you kind of she helps you map out your year, and what steps to take to get you to that big picture goal. So it’s kind of rather than, you know, working towards your goal, you you’ve got your goal, and you’re working back to how you’re going to achieve that. So that was a really good thing that I took away from the course. And the other thing I took away from the course was focus work sessions, which I think it’s called something else, I think it like the Pomodoro method or something. But it’s probably a little bit similar to to that. But I’m quite hence the name of my blog, The Scatty Mum, my mind goes everywhere. And it’s I find it quite hard to focus. So this was like a massive thing that she suggested, kind of do what she calls focus work sessions first. So that’s kind of your most important task that day. So whether that’s I don’t know, write in a blog post or write in your newsletter, and you set a timer. So she should just start in it kind of like 30 minutes or an hour. And in that time you do that and you do nothing else. So you put your phone on Do Not Disturb you turn your email off, you Don’t multitask, you literally just focus on on that task. And that was that’s been a game changer for me. Because I’d start I’d start writing a blog post, and then my phone would ping, check social media, maybe it was a comment or whatever. And I go off on a tangent on that. And then you get an email and you’d read an email, and then I’d go off on that. And before I know it, you know, half an hour has gone by and I haven’t written a word of the blog post, which is what I was actually supposed to do. So doing this focus work session has been yeah, as I said, yeah, it’s been been a bit of a game changer.

Sponsor  19:21

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Megan Porta  20:32

Those focus sessions are amazing. We used to host them while we still do in the accountability group. If you’re inside of that, hearing people I talk and I sometimes join them. And it is amazing how much you can get done. When you’re intentional about setting things aside, putting your phone away, clearing your desk like that sort of thing can take you so far.

Lauren Woodger  20:52

Yeah, it’s silly. It’s crazy. How, how does the little thing like that? Does? Yeah, make a difference? But it does. And, you know, we’ve got the phone thing, because it always used to be like, I used to think, Oh, what if the, you know, the children’s school needs to get a hold of me or whatever. But I mean, I’ve got an iPhone, I’m sure it’s the same for other phones. But you can set it so certain numbers can get through. So I do that. And then you can fully switch off and concentrate and know that you know if anyone important needs to get you you can but otherwise, it can wait, though. 

Megan Porta  21:20

I just heard this tip on the radio yesterday. They were talking about ways to just like not have your phone be so appealing. And apparently there’s a new setting in the iPhone. I haven’t looked for it yet. But you can change your color to black and white. So that it’s not as 

Lauren Woodger  21:39

Boring. 

Megan Porta  21:39

Yeah. So it’s boring. So you pick it up. And you’re like, I don’t want to look at black and white food. So you just put it back down. So I thought that was really interesting. I’m going to look into that. 

Lauren Woodger  21:47

Yeah, no, me too. That sounds good. 

Megan Porta  21:48

Anything to increase productivity. I’m all over that. So I feel like you’re in my brain. Lauren, with all of your points. This is all stuff that yes, yes, yes. cheering you on. Okay, what else do you have, in addition to the three amazing points you’ve made so far.

Lauren Woodger  22:02

The next one is to limit comparison. This is one that as I say, I’m not perfect. I’m on this journey too. And I do still struggle with sometimes, but I try really hard to try to, you know, avoid comparing yourself and your journey with others. You know, I remember when I was, you know, just starting, it was very easy to compare yourself with the bigger bloggers and you think, how are they doing all of this, and you know, how they got to MediaVine, or how have they, you know, done this so quickly. But again, and again, it goes back to The Gap in the Gain book, but focus, like compare yourself with yourself and focus on your own growth instead of comparing yourself to others. And as I said, I know it is hard kind of ways. I’ve tried to do this. Now as I set a timer on my phone for social media, and I’ve got a certain amount of time, I’ve also kind of changed my feed. So fill it with positivity. So I fill it with things that are going to fill my cup rather than, you know, make me feel down and just kind of remember that, you know, social media, people only show their best bits don’t like on social media. And it’s very easy to think that everyone you know, for example, I don’t know you look at a blogger and they’re doing these amazing reels for example and she’s got this grilled cheese sandwich with this like cheese pouring out of it. It looks amazing. And it’s like really great reel. But you don’t know whether that’s taken her all morning to film because she dropped the first two or cheese didn’t pulled you know what I mean? Or I don’t know, all she had a migraine that day or, or she went to edit it and it all deleted like you know, you all you see is that finished? Finished reel. So I think that’s what we’ve got to kind of remember that. Yeah, we don’t see the full journey.

Megan Porta  23:38

Or somebody else could be creating that for her.

Lauren Woodger  23:41

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Megan Porta  23:43

This is I think this is the hardest one, in my opinion, because we have so much opportunity to compare ourselves not just with social media, but just seeing other people’s blogs and their homepage designs and the way their emails are so beautiful and structured. And like there’s so many things that we can compare that it’s really hard to put our blinders on. Do you have any special tips for us?

Lauren Woodger  24:06

Again, it’s just, as I say, this is a bit of a work in progress this one for me as well. But just it’s very easy to just say don’t isn’t it but again, you know, just try and compare yourself with yourself. That’s all like, all I ever tell myself is that social media is it’s like it’s like a shopfront, isn’t it and that’s all all it is. And, you know, you know that you probably only put your best bits out on social media. So if you’re doing that everyone else is doing the same and it’s just trying to kind of just keep putting that in your brain that that’s what it is. Yeah, it’s a really hard one. That one really hard.

Megan Porta  24:39

Yeah, I like what you just said though, comparing yourself with yourself and prioritizing that instead of like just not allowing yourself to do it with others like okay, if I’m going to do compare, if I’m going to compare, I’m going to compare with myself, and not yet. Yeah, that’s great advice. Okay, what do you have next Lauren?

Lauren Woodger  24:58

Then my next one is to come concentrate on one main goal at a time, which is yeah, what I said earlier about when I started and I was trying to do everything, which yeah, didn’t get me anywhere. So. So for example, if your main goal is to get into media vine, that’s what you concentrate on, and kind of put everything else on the back burner. And I don’t mean like don’t do any of those other things, because they still need to be done. But for example, once I had in my head, this was kind of like at the beginning of last year, when the mindset thing really kind of kicked in. And I decided, right, this year, I’m gonna go for MediaVine, and I had a goal that by the end of December 2023, I was going to make it into MediaVine. So I kind of put everything else on the backbone, I stopped doing reels on Instagram, when I published a blog post, I would publish a photo of you know, of that recipe, and share it story. But that was as much as I did. And I put everything into going for MediaVine. So I took Cooking with Keywords course, I then had an audit with Casey. And I literally just created as much quality content as I could and updated as much as I could. And they were the things that were going to get me to that goal of MediaVine. And it was my goal. But to do it by December, I did it in November. So then I think right now, the next thing, and the next thing for me is Pinterest, but kind of everything else went on the backburner last year because I wasn’t getting anywhere trying to do it all at one at once. So I kind of think if you have one main goal in your head, kind of focus for that. And then once you’ve you know, whether that be qualify for MediaVine, or whether that be your next goal might be to produce an ebook. I don’t know, an ebook cookbook or something like that. Make that your main priority. And then kind of everything else can wait, if that makes sense. 

Megan Porta  26:43

Yeah, that does make sense. I think it’s smart to to do that. And you have to be a little bit stringent with yourself on this one, at least I do. Because those shiny objects pop up. And it’s so alluring to think, Oh, I could I could fit that in. It’ll be fine. And then you do it. And you’re like, Wait a second. This was not good. So yeah, it requires, for me just a little bit of strict strictness. And then also accountability and to do you ever get accountability with things like please keep me on track that sort of thing with myself, or I was thinking more with other people. Like, please hold me accountable for this?

Lauren Woodger  27:19

Yeah, I mean, there’s a couple. Yeah, in a couple of other bloggers and groups and stuff. Yeah, we kind of have like, accountability sessions and stuff, which I think, yeah, they’re brilliant, aren’t they? It’s yeah, really, really good.

Megan Porta  27:30

That works well, if you have a problem or not have a problem. But if you struggle with that. Okay, what else Lauren for just staying on top of your mindset.

Lauren Woodger  27:37

The next one’s a big one for me. This is kind of really one of the biggest things that helped me. And it was to write a timed daily schedule. So I plan my day out every day, from kind of when I get up until the end of my working day, which might sound a bit extreme, but I’ve had to do it because my focus is so bad. And the way I do it is I write my schedule for tomorrow, I would do that today. So I would make it my last job before I close my laptop, I would write out my plan for the next day. And then doing it that way. When I wake up the next day and open my laptop, I know exactly what I’m going to be doing that day. So I kind of give each each task a timeframe, roughly, obviously, you know, you’re not going to know exactly, but you know, as time goes on, you know, kind of how long it’ll take you to write a blog post or send a newsletter, that type of thing. And I could try and stick to it as much as possible. I mean, obviously things happen. Yeah. But I now add in kind of lunch, and breaks and exercise and stuff like that, which I didn’t do before. And that’s helped as well. So, you know, before I just have a list of all the tasks I needed to do, but now I’ll have everything kind of timed out. And then I have my set lunch break, and I find it works really well for me. Otherwise, I kind of I get up open my laptop and think oh, what should I do today, and then I might spend half an hour checking my rankings, or you know, and you just get lost, don’t you otherwise. So I find personally that having a schedule and doing it the night before. Then when I wake up that next day, I’m kind of ready to go. 

Megan Porta  29:10

I think there is so much power in what you do doing it the day before instead, even instead of doing it the day of because then you have time to kind of even if you’re not consciously thinking of it, you have time to let your subconscious kind of work on it like okay, this is my structure of the day tomorrow. And I’m going to be doing this and this. And I feel like for me when I do that there’s so much power in that. And it might seem like a huge task, but it really doesn’t have to be right. It can be five minutes at the end of your day. 

Lauren Woodger  29:38

Yeah, that’s all it takes five minutes. And it’s great because otherwise no, I used to lay in bed thinking on each today. And then tomorrow. And now it’s done. It’s out. It’s written down and it’s out of your brain.

Megan Porta  29:47

So hopefully you sleep better too. Yeah.

Lauren Woodger  29:50

Yeah. 

Megan Porta  29:51

All right. What else do you have for mindset?

Lauren Woodger  29:53

Yes, my last one is what you mentioned before really is yeah, don’t get distracted by shiny object syndrome, which again was a massive thing. So shiny object is kind of yeah, when you focus all your attention on something new or current in your current constantly hopping from one thing to another. And that is really easy to do, and something that I used to do all of the time. So, again, it kind of goes back to how I was saying about, I now do like this focus work time first. So I do the focus work in the morning. So that’s kind of like your most important task for the day. So whether that’s, you know, you need to do keyword research or writing a blog post or writing a newsletter, or whatever. And you do that on, you know, with your phone on Do Not Disturb and not distracted. And then you allow kind of any shiny object stuff or admin stuff to kind of be done after that session in the afternoon. So admin work is kind of obviously the stuff, the boring stuff that we need to do to keep the blog going, but we don’t really want to do so updating plugins or dropping links around up social media, unless, obviously, your whole a lot of your traffic is coming from social media, that’s not your main main priority, checking your analytics and stuff like that. So I kind of now try and allocate like an hour at the end of the day. And this came from the productivity course as well, to do all of those tasks, because I used to get up and the first thing I do would check was check my email. And when I was working in an office, that that was just standard, that’s what you did. You came in and you cleared your emails, and then you make way more that come in through the day, and you answer them as you go. But I find that was just constantly distracting from the focus of what I would needed to be doing. So now I try and yeah, try is the word that I’m trying to get all the shiny object stuff out of my head. So again, you know, phone away out of reach, so you can’t be distracted by social media, I turn the beeping off on WiFi on my laptop now for my email, so I don’t hear them come in, which is good. And then I can just concentrate on one on what I do. And then kind of get all the admin out of the way, I kind of tend to do that in the like my last hour of the day. 

Megan Porta  30:33

That is such a good idea. I’ve heard other people talk about strategies like this, and I’ve tried to implement this sort of thing.

Lauren Woodger  32:08

It’s hard. Yeah, it doesn’t come naturally. 

Megan Porta  32:10

It is so hard, especially if I don’t know, I just feel like I get so much communication throughout the day that if I did that, I’d get to the end of the day and be so freaking overwhelmed by my inbox that I would scream and not have a good evening. Does that make sense? 

Lauren Woodger  32:26

Yeah, I think yeah, maybe I suppose it depends, doesn’t it? Is it who it suits, you know, for example, your business is very different to mine was so I don’t have as much communication coming through my email. So that kind of works for me. And maybe yeah, like you say, maybe, I don’t know, have two sessions, maybe you could do an hour in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, something like that, or maybe.

Megan Porta  32:45

Even like noon, you know, like right after lunch or something. And then right before the end of the day, just so you can get rid of a little bit of it. So it’s not so overwhelming because I I do see things come into my inbox at the end of the day that just set me off and and then I have a terrible evening. So it’s something to experiment with though and just see what works for you. I think that’ll probably be different for everyone. But admin as admin is tough. That one is a struggle for me and I know a lot of other people, you just don’t know where to put it and what to do with it.

Lauren Woodger  33:15

Now, it doesn’t my job before where I was working in estate agents, it was actually an admin job. So that was my whole job. So to then kind of have to, I have to whereas a lot of people it’s more of the creative side and they hate the admin, my main job before was the admin to to then try and to have to put all that you know, to side and it not be important it feel yeah, feel very alien. But yeah, I’m, I’m learning I’m trying.

Megan Porta  33:39

Lauren is there anything else along the lines of mindset that you want to mention, before we start saying goodbye.

Lauren Woodger  33:44

I think the only thing is give yourself a break, really. So I used to make my lunch and bring it straight back up to my computer and just carry on working. And I did that for the again, the first year before I kind of started looking into mindset and stuff and probably close to a burnout. And now I have my lunch away from my laptop. And I go for a walk every lunchtime and I listen to a podcast, which is what I love to do. So that kind of inspires me to go out for a walk and actually come back and I’m more positive and more productive. And I think easy to be like I’m too busy. I’m too busy. But I think giving yourself a break is actually one of the most important things.

Megan Porta  34:21

Yeah, as we said earlier on, I think this is so important to keep at the top of our minds because the work honestly doesn’t matter unless we’re taking care of our mindset and doing all the things that you mentioned in this episode. Thank you for all of this. This was so valuable. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Lauren Woodger  34:39

Thank you for having me.

Megan Porta  34:41

Do you have either a favorite quote or words of inspiration to leave us with?

Lauren Woodger  34:44

I do. It’s from our late Queen Elizabeth the Second actually. And she said it’s often the small steps, not the giant leaps that bring about the most change. I think that kind of links back to another book actually which I know I think you’ve read is the Atomic Habits with James Clear. Yeah, and just about getting that 1% better every day. And it’s the small steps that are going to do that. And the small little gains will add up to big improvements. So yeah, just keep going and taking small steps and that will that will bring about the most change rather than the big giant leaps.

Megan Porta  35:16

Such a great way to end thank you for all of that Lauren will put together a show notes for you. If you want to look at those you can head to eatblogtalk.com/scattymum, tell everyone where they can find you.

Lauren Woodger  35:28

Yeah, so my website is TheScattyMum.com I’m on Instagram @thescattymom and I’m on Facebook @scattymum just Scatty Mum without ‘the’.

Megan Porta  35:38

Yes everyone go check Lauren out and thank you again Lauren for being here. And thank you for listening food bloggers. I will see you next time. 

Outro  35:48

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Eat Blog Talk. If you are craving accountability, focus and connection at a low monthly cost. Join the blog talk accountability group at eatblogtalk.com/focus. I will see you next time.