1. Plan ahead. Grab your date book or a text file and plan some topics. Take an hour once a month to brainstorm for the month ahead. Look at the calendar...what holidays are coming up? Can you do theming around them? What season is it? (For example...winter is a great time to ask about colds, flu, winter sports, sick days from work, cabin fever, indoor pastimes) Think about reoccurring topics on your board. Do a web search on your board topic. Look at archives from 6 months to a year ago and find questions and topics that were successful. Grab a question book for ideas. Depending on your level of ability to think on the fly you can just jot down ideas, write out a question, or create the whole post just for pasting into your board when it is time. You may change your mind when it is time to post...but if you need a topic, it is ready!

2. Develop a routine and stick to it. If 6:30-7 am is a quiet time in your house that you usually can sit and do your morning posts, then do it. Don't fidget around, im your friends, jump up and down to feed the dog, fix coffee, stare into the fridge for inspiration. Clear your mind and tend your board.

3. That brings me to my third tip: JUST DO IT. Tending board can take a LONG time if you let it. But if you sit down, answer each post as you read it, it really doesn't take so much time.

I was reading a book once on housecleaning. (Yeah yeah I know...weird) It said that we often make chores take longer than they should because we put off doing them under the impression they take a long time. The author suggested you time how long it actually took to load the dishwasher for example. Just unload and load the dishwasher...not do any of the fidgety stuff you can tend to do while doing the dishes like read the mail on the counter, feed the dog, run that paper the kid needed signed to her backpack. Well, surprise surprise; all sorts of things I thought were time consuming didn't take that much time at all.

4. Keep a text file that you copy/paste your daily questions in as well as any good posts and other info you want to include in your board report. Also, some mods allow and even encourage direct email of the report, in that case you can just keep it available in whole on your desktop and you only have the numbers to do before you send it in.

5. Look at the mechanics of how you tend board. Is it faster for you to move from thread to thread you need to answer using the next button? Is it faster for you to open all the new posts by right clicking and opening in a new window?

6. Look at whether you are making too much work for yourself. Is there value in separate morning, qotd, chat reminder, and inspiration/joke of the day posts? Or can you combine them into one or two posts? Can you delegate any of that to a co-cl or a member who doesn't want the full responsibility of being a co-cl but is happy to help?