This post is part of the Internet Marketers United Group Writing Project at CourtneyTuttle.com.

Working from home sounds fantastic, especially if you are caught in the 9 to 5 daily grind. On the plus side, you can set your own hours and work in your pj’s, but working from your big, comfy house offers its own challenges. Without a set schedule to keep you on track life gives in to distraction.

Blogging from home can be even worse. Beginning bloggers usually have a full time job in addition to their budding blogging careers.

Whether you blog full time or try to squeeze your blogging into a limited few hours, a little organization can go a long way.

Setting goals is the most important task to getting things done. Ask yourself what you want to accomplish this week. Write it down.

I blog part time. The pace of my life outside of blogging can get a little crazy sometimes. So, after taking the rest of my schedule into consideration, I assign myself the following blogging tasks for the week:

• The number of posts I want to write (currently I have three blogs).
• A social networking hurdle I want to cross.
• A monetizing task, and
• a blog design task.

Then I give myself time limits. Usually I break my tasks into chunks of time as follows:

• Monday morning - 2 hours: Write posts on the following topics…….
• Tuesday morning - 1 hour: Explore ONE social networking site.
• Wednesday - 1 hour: Monetize - look at ONE affiliate marketing opportunity.
• Thursday - 1 hour: Work on blog design, plugins etc.
• Friday - 1 hour: Surf the web, build on post ideas for next week.

Keep in mind that I blog part time and do not post every day. Full time bloggers will put together a more extensive schedule for their blogging tasks.

Now comes the hard part - actually setting aside the time to accomplish the above items. I build the time right into my calendar by scheduling blogging time. I actually pencil it in or input it as I would an appointment. Personally the early hours work best for me, and my increased productivity is worth the missed sleep.

Staying on track is another challenge of working from home. Kids, spouses, phone calls, personal business, and the web in general can interrupt your good intentions. Disciplining yourself to stick to your scheduled blogging time and blocking out all other distractions during that time is extremely important. Make sure you have a quiet place to work and even offer yourself a reward if you have to - i.e. When I finish this article I can go get another cup of coffee or something to eat, but not before it is done.

One big distraction is something that I ask for - my RSS reader. The authors of the blogs that I subscribe to are absolutely prolific. They offer a lot of great information. But if I get behind, my unread articles can number into the hundreds. Reading other blogs, newspapers, and books are very important blogging tasks. I set aside separate reading time. Usually, I clear my RSS reader twice a day. Once in the morning before I even start my scheduled blogging and once at night. At night I fit in my offline reading.

Oh, and one last thing. Lists are golden! Keep a running list of post ideas, social networking to-do’s, monetizing to-do’s, and blog design to-do’s.

If your are still looking for more ways to organize your work at home experience you may want to check out a guest post by Julie Bonner at Problogger called Keep Yourself Organized with a Blog Binder. Julie also uses a set task per day and lots of lists. And Justin Consuegra, in a guest post at John Chow, offers a unique Blog Box idea.