On Self Management

[JoelR]

Everybody talks about community management. 

But I actually think that the #1 component of success behind your community management - and this is especially targeted at independent sites, hobbyists, and solopreneurs - is self management.  

What I mean by this is that, before you can run your community and spend time on your community, you need to make sure you manage yourself.  Literally, how well do you manage your 'real world' life before you try to manage your 'digital life'?  Do you have a stable job that can pay the bills, and have a little extra to pay for your forum hobby?  Do you have a strong set of real world friends, social connections, and networking?  Are you connected to the news and industry in your niche?  Are you disciplined in setting aside time to run your forum?  Are you successful in leadership, team building, befriending new people, or organizing groups in the real world?  For small and independent communities that are run by a team of one, your community's success is entirely dictated by you.  And creating those personal pillars of success, whether financial, content, ideation, copywriting, or otherwise is all dependent on your own abilities, time, and energy.  

All of these are critical ingredients to your success, and I don't think self management is talked about enough.  In forum admin communities (and after 20 years, are still some of the worst places for actual advice), they want to focus on the quick and fast wins with topics like, how do you boost engagement? what are SEO tricks? what plugins should I install?  They almost never focus on the long-game of your personal life that powers your community involvement: what is your personal discipline, the time allocation, the content scheduling, the brainstorming and ideation and funneling of new topics?  Do you have a stable job that can pay for your forum?  

We should give as much introspection to our own selves as much as we spend on discussion for community management.