Tag: productivitytips

5 Tips for Time Management

Are you juggling a busy life? Here are 5 tips to make time management easier.

mylifewithbooksblog13 Comments

Happy Monday!

Time management is NOT easy. One day you think you’ve got the hang of it and then the next day is a completely different story.

Whether you work a full-time job, are in school, have a variety of hobbies, or all three, learning how to manage your time is a never-ending struggle.

However, there are ways to make it EASIER.

This coming fall, I will be a part-time student, a full-time employee, and the owner of my own freelance editing and writing business (check out my services HERE). Alongside all that, I am an active blogger and like to post frequently to my Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. Oh, there are also some books I really need to read for review. Basically, the list goes on and on!

To conquer time management is impossible, but to understand it…that is how you will have more time to do what you want while crossing everything off on your to-do list.

Here are 5 tips for time management.

1. Set S.M.A.R.T Goals

The key to time management is setting goals that are actually achievable. One easy way to do this is by following the S.M.A.R.T goal outline. This stands for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Based. I recommend making your goal list and then going over each and every goal to make sure it follows the S.M.A.R.T criteria. Is your goal something YOU can control? Is it specific? Did you set a deadline?

Setting S.M.A.R.T goals will ensure you are spending time on productive things rather than things that can wait, and do not have much importance or looming deadlines.

EX. Today, I will pre-write 2 blog posts (5 Tips for Time Management and Beginner’s Guide to: Roman Mythology) that will go up today at 5 pm and Monday at 12 pm.

2. Get Work Done So You Can “Play”

In the past, I thought breaking up my workday was a good idea. I thought it would be more efficient to work from 9am – 12pm and then break for a few hours, then work again from 3-6pm, break, and then work from 9pm – 12am…THIS IS NOT A PRODUCTIVE SCHEDULE.

Now that I have a full-time job and I realize I will soon need to balance my job, my one class for school, blogging, writing, business, and other hobbies. I understand the importance of getting everything done within a window of time and then enjoying the rest of your day.

My new plan is to work from 7:30 am -3:30 pm (that is, if I need to do a full 8 hours that day) and then whatever else that has a deadline (school, internship, etc) right after. This has been working well for me because it allows me to get all my work done at once and then I still get off early enough in the day to enjoy it.

3. Start Your with a To-Do List

Personally, I don’t enjoy structuring my day off a rigid outline. I’ve found what works best for me is writing a to-do list in the morning filled with all the things I have to and want to get done that day. This way, I am setting myself up for a productive day by outlining my goals, but it is not a full on, detailed schedule.

When I write a to-do list, I write down anywhere from 5-10 things on it. If your tasks are big, keep closer to the 5 but if they are smaller and more miscellaneous tasks, you can add more. Don’t overwhelm yourself but make sure you have enough to keep busy during the working hours!

4. Spend At Least 3 Hours A Day Not Being Productive

I know that seems like very few hours, but when it comes to running a household or working, and just adulting, we spend a lot of our time being productive. Spend at least 3 hours of your day just relaxing, watching TV, reading, listening to music, going a walk, etc. I work full-time and my hobbies include writing so often times, I will get off my job of content creating and then jump straight into content creating for myself because it is also part of my hobby. I’ve learned to set aside a part of the weekend instead of doing it right after my full-time job.

5. Set a Time Limit to Tasks

Whenever my time management skills are faltering, it is usually because I am focusing too much time on one task and it fails to leave me with time for the others. The best way I can explain this is by speaking to all you fellow writers out there. I know you all know the struggle of never feeling truly done with a project, right? This is the same thing! Sometimes we need to only allot an hour to write a blog post so we are not spending 3 hours on it and ignoring everything else we need to get done that day.

It isn’t productive working on one task for hours unless it has a fast approaching deadline!

Those are my 5 time management tips for all your productive and busy people. If you are a creative person like myself who is alway is always juggling multiple things at once, this is an essential guide for you.

Don’t forget to check out my last blog post as well as my social media accounts which are all linked down below!

Thanks for reading ๐Ÿ™‚

Last Blog Post:ย 3 Tips for Writing Romance

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August Reading + Writing Goals

mylifewithbooksblog3 Comments

Happy Friday!

It is that time of the month where I share all my reading and writing goals for August, and go over what I got done in July. To be honest, it was not a lot! Life got in the way as it always seems to do when I attempt to be productive, but c’est la vie.

August is going to be a crazy month no matter what. I have some traveling I am doing (which is completely following the rules of my province), I start my brand-new full-time job as a Communications Development Lead, and I am launching a secret business! There is a limit to what I can do alongside all of this, so this will be a very practical goals list.

TIP: Write down everything that you MUST get done that month and then plan your goals. This way, you know what your main focus(es) are but also how much time you have to dedicate to other projects.

Here is what I wrote and read during July.

Writing

The Obsidian Butterfly – This is my Camp NaNoWriMo project and my goal for the month was to reach 25k. However, I ended up only writing 6,704 words. I am not too bummed about it because I was dealing with a lot of things for the last half of July. Overall, this is a good start and I’ve decided to take a break from the novel version of this story anyways (more on this later).

Flanelle Magazine -Fashion, Design, Culture & Photography

Flanelle Magazine Interview – In July, I got a really exciting project for the magazine I write for (Flanelle Magazine) and it was an interview with Zonnique, a 24-year-old, Atlanta born singer. This was a cool project because I’ve never done an interview before. I will link it once it is live on the website!

Reading

Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel: Reid, Taylor Jenkins ...

Daisy Jones & the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid – Even in a reading slump, this book never fails me. While this was the third time I’ve read this book, I zipped through it in only 2 days. I adore this book, the characters, the story…everything about it is just so addicting. It follows the rise and fall of this band from the 70s, and it was inspired by Fleetwood Mac so what is not to love? 5/5 stars

Kingdom of Souls (Kingdom of Souls, #1) by Rena Barron

Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron – This took me a bit to get through, but overall, I really enjoyed the mythology, the characters, and the overall story. It didn’t blow my mind and I didn’t love any of the characters specifically, but it reminded me of my own book and it helped inspire me to work on it throughout July. Kingdom of Souls is inspired by West African mythology and follows a girl who year after year, has not been able to find her own magic. When the story takes a dark twist, she finds magic but it is not in the way she wanted or expected. 3.5/5 stars

Here is what I want to write and read in August…

Writing

The Obsidian Butterfly (Novella Version) – In March, I wrote a novella version of my novel idea, The Obsidian Butterfly, and submitted it to the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest which I received a Silver Honourable Mention for. I’ve decided to re-write this story because I feel it was missing some things that really held it back. My goal is to get 7,000 words done in August because the word limit is 17,000 (which being the overwriter I am, I will reach). Since the deadline is October 1st, it should give me enough time to finish it even with all the other things I’ve got going on.

Reading

Eliza and Her Monster by Fransesca Zappia – Yes, this is a re-read but apparently I am in the mood for re-reading my favourite contemporaries. Eliza and Her Monsters is an all-time favourite of mine, especially because the main character suffers from anxiety and how she feels and eventually copes with it is something I strongly relate to still. With everything going on, my anxiety has definitely spiked. I’ve been the most anxious these past few months that I have ever been in my entire life, but I’ve found re-reading my favourite books has helped.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – I have an unofficial tradition of reading this book every summer, or in the fall, before school starts. I am going into my second year of university and Cath, the main character, is in her first and we follow her as she experiences it. This book is also another one that is so easy for me to read. I have no doubt I will fly through it in less than a week!

Those are all the things I want to write and read during August, and also what I got done back in July. I swear, the months are flying by and I can BARELY keep up. But, I am doing my best and despite everything, this has been a productive quarantined summer.

Don’t forget to check out my last blog post as well as my social media accounts which are all linked down below! I will be announcing my secret business on there first, so follow my Twitter, Instagram, AND Pinterest.

Thanks for reading ๐Ÿ™‚

Last Blog Post: Beginner’s Guide to: Aztec Mythology

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How I Organize My Content

How I plan and organize my content to maximize my productivity and time.

mylifewithbooksblog1 Comment

Happy Monday!

To start this week off on a productive note, I wanted to share with you all how I organize my content and ensure I am creating and posting all the fun things. Planning and organizing my content is something I started doing in May and with all my projects and various platforms I post content to, I found it was essential step to keeping my sanity.

For a long time, I thought I didn’t need to write anything down because I would remember all my ideas and their due dates. However, that is not the case! The more you are doing every day, the less space you have in your head to store all your daily and weekly tasks. That is why writing everything down in a list or on a calendar is SO important and critical to your success as a content creator. Once I began writing down my content and organizing it, I became obsessed with lists and notebooks and now I cannot live without them.

There are a couple of techniques and strategies I use to organize my content each month so let’s get into them!

TIP #1: STICK TO ORGANIZING YOUR CONTENT IN ONE PLACE – MY CONTENT PLANNER

When it comes to organizing your content, keep it all in one space even if the content is not for the same platforms. That way, you will never lose where you wrote down that blog post or Instagram story idea because there is only one place it could be.

For me, this space is my content planner. This is my old planner for 2020 that I used before I started my bullet journal. I kept it because I didn’t want it to go to waste and am glad I did because it is a great place to organize my content. Each different type of content is colour coded so when I look at the week, I can easily see what I need to create. For example, blog posts that I need to write and post are written in red, social media posts are in blue, freelance writing is in orange, and so on.

It is helpful to have this separate place for content that is not your daily planner because it declutters that space. If I have a deadline for a freelance project, that will also go in my bullet journal but it will only be written in on the date it is due. In my content planner, I can breakdown the steps to create the content as well as when it is going to go live.

Whether you write your content ideas down in a notebook or in a digital calendar, make sure you have a space dedicated solely to where you keep your content ideas because it will ease your stress when you sit down with it at the beginning of each week.

TIP #2: DEDICATE TIMES AND/OR DAYS TO SPECIFIC CONTENT – MY MORNING VS AFTERNOON ROUTINE

Dividing up the days so I work on different types of content at different times has been a huge reason why I am able to achieve so much within a week. I even started doing this without realizing it because dedicating my mornings to more heavily writing-related content (blog posts, creative writing, Flanelle articles, etc) and afternoons to more business-related tasks (internships, social media, editing, etc) felt natural.

Focusing on writing in the morning also helps because I am able to get in the mindset for writing and create even more because of it. Over the years, I realized I am most creative in the mornings which is why I preserve my writing time for my mornings. If you haven’t figured out what time of day is your most productive, this is something you should figure out ASAP! That way, you can schedule your most time-consuming tasks during that time.

This is another reason why having somewhere like a planner to keep your content ideas is crucial because when you are scheduling out when you will work on it, you can divide up your day where you can visually see it.

Don’t forget to include the dates and times you POST your content too! For example, I post to my blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 12 pm PST, and I try to post to social media every weekday around the same time. I make sure to always write this down in my content planner, even though I always post on these days and times.

TIP #3: ENJOY WHAT YOU ARE CREATING – WHY I ONLY POST CONTENT I LOVE

Obviously, there will be some content you don’t enjoy creating but have to, but for the most part, I make it a priority to create content that I love. This is because the content I post on my blog, Instagram, etc is for people to enjoy as well. I figure that if I don’t enjoy it myself, nobody will! That is also why I try to be active the most on platforms I genuinely like to be on (give or take a few such as Twitter). Once again, some platforms you post to might not be your favourite, but I just remember my main focus is on ensuring I like the content I am posting there.

If you are unsure what your audience wants to see from you, use polls on social media. However, ultimately, you should be in touch with your audience and have a general idea of what they like and want to see, but there is no shame in asking for some help!

These are some tips for how I organize my content to maximize my time and efficiency when creating and posting to all my various platforms. If you have a method for organizing content, let me know in the comments below because I am always looking for new techniques to use!

Don’t forget to check out my last blog post as well as my social media accounts which are all linked down below.

Thanks for reading ๐Ÿ™‚

Last Blog Post:ย June Reading + Writing Goals

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