After the popularity of my recent procrastination post, and people asking about some of the tips that I mentioned, I thought that I would create this post about how I stay organised.

When it comes to work, I’m always super organised. I work as a receptionist in a youth club and always bring in my own notebook to write pretty much everything down. My colleagues find it funny, but it’s come in handy when we all forget any passwords or other important notes😂 I have terrible memory, so if I didn’t write things down I would never get anything done or remember to pass on messages to the right people😂

I’m generally the same when it comes to blogging and other content creation. However, I’m not so great at being organised in my personal life. But I am getting better at taking my tips for how I organise in my work/blog life to my personal life.

So, I thought I would create a list of things that I do to help me be more organised. These are just things that I do that works with my current life. For context, I work part-time as a receptionist and I create content for this blog and am beginning to create content more consistently for my social media too.

I’ll admit, I’m not 100% on it all of the time. These plans generally go out the window if I’m having a bad day. But, at least now, I can look back at this blog post to remind me of what I could do.

So, here goes.

1. Keep A Diary/Journal To Schedule Your Time
There are a variety of different diaries/journals available, so it’s so important to find what works for you. I absolutely love stationery! But I just can never commit to a paper diary and it annoys me so much! I spend the last week of December/first week of January filling it in with birthdays and other events and am so excited to be “super organised with my planner this year” and then usually the middle of February rolls around and I’m already behind with filling it in. This could have something to do with the fact that I’m neither a morning person nor a night person – which is when most people suggest filling in your diaries. Plus, I hate when it gets messy when plans change etc. I feel like maybe when I have a full-time job where I need to plan things/write things down I may try a written diary again.

So, this is where Google Calendars comes in. I’d heard so many people talking about Google Calendars, but I wasn’t initially sure how I would get along with it, but I actually love it! When I started using it, I found this super handy guide from Calendly that talks you through how to use it effectively and gives loads of great tips – click here to read it. As you can see from the image below, I definitely make use of colour. Each colour represents something different. For example, red for Pinterest, Pink for Instagram and Orange for blog posts. It can sometimes take time to remember what each colour means, but I definitely find it helpful.

One important thing to remember is to not schedule every single second of your time. If you do this, you may get overwhelmed with how much you have to do. And it also means that if something takes you longer to complete than you have scheduled for it can again, make you stress.

It’s just important to find what works for you. There are so many options out there, so have fun with it!

2. Write A To-Do List
As mentioned in my procrastination post, I find making a to-do list super helpful as a form of brain dumping. There are loads of places that you could create one – your phone, a dedicated notebook, your tablet, a piece of paper – wherever you want!

I generally write my to-do list down on a paper weekly planner or on my Google Calendar (Google Tasks). However, I recently discovered Google Keep. It’s an extension on Google Calendars, or it’s also its own app. Side Note: my only negative about using the Google products is that they’re all combined when you use them on a desktop. But on your phone/tablet they’re separate apps. Personally, I like seeing them all together – but it’s completely your preference. Anyway, Google Keep is like digital sticky notes. As mentioned, I love stationery – and sticky notes is definitely included in this. I still use real sticky notes, but I use them differently to the digital ones.

I’ve begun using the digital sticky notes to create mini to-do lists and for general brain dump lists. I’m still learning how to best use them, but so far I’m finding them very useful.

3. Do One Thing At A Time/Time Block
This is something that I also mentioned in the procrastination post and a had a few people asking me about it. I can’t remember where I first heard about time-blocking (probably on someone’s blog when I was reading about how to be productive at university rather than actually being productive…). But this strategy has definitely helped me get things done more efficiently.

The basic definition of time-blocking is setting yourself a specific amount of time to do a task. For example, I will set a timer for 30 minutes and within that time I will write a section of my blog post. Even if I haven’t finished what I am doing when the time is up, I will stop what I’m doing and take a break for a few minutes (unless I’m literally in the middle of a sentence and know that if I stop, I will forget). This is about discovering how long tasks actually take you when you focus on them. When you do this, it reduces the chance of you not being finished when that timer goes off.

I never thought that this technique would work for me because I can get so easily distracted. But, by teaching my brain to just focus on the task at hand and not think about anything else, I have definitely become more efficient with my writing.

4. Don’t Procrastinate
Okay so I know that I just wrote a post all about procrastination, but I knew that it was important for this post too. Definitely easier said than done!

If you are creating yourself some sort of schedule, procrastination will definitely have a negative impact on this. So, click here to read my post about “How To Put Of Procrastination” for tips and tricks to help beat the habit. Or, alternatively, maybe schedule some procrastination time into your day? That might actually work😂

5. Unsubscribe From Newsletters/Emails That You Don’t Read
This is something that I am yet to do but is high up on my to-do list! I personally love receiving newsletters from my favourite bloggers and brands. But, have you ever signed up for a newsletter thinking that you’d maybe get one once a week at most to then get one from the same person/brand every day – sometimes multiple times a day? Love Honey and Just Eat I’m looking at you…😂

I’ve decided to include this because I know that many people, myself included, feel completely overwhelmed when I see that I have loads of unread emails. But, most of the time they’re not even important, they’re just repetitive junk.

I am looking for an easy way to organise my emails. So, if anyone has any suggestions I’d love to know!

6. Don’t Put Pressure On Yourself
I know that the second that I put pressure on myself to get loads of blog stuff done at once, my brain just shuts down and I can’t focus. But because I’ve been giving myself enough time to organise my thoughts with to-do lists and some of the other points on this list, it means that I generally put less pressure on myself because I schedule my time so I can complete my tasks efficiently. This is also linked to the point below.

Batching content is also great for this. Rather than each week trying to think of and do everything that needs to be done and not having time to live; try spending a few hours taking photos or writing content which you can then post whenever you need to. When this post goes live I will have hopefully just had a successful weekend photoshoot – so keep an eye out for some new Instagram content.

7. Embrace Your Productive Days/Moments
As much as I love writing blog posts, learning about social media, taking photos etc. sometimes I’m just not in the mood. If I try to do anything when I feel like that it’s either not done or done terribly. But some days I feel super productive and motivated and I get everything on my to-do list done and more! Because of these days, I don’t usually have to worry about when I have a shit day because I’ve done enough work to cover me. On my low days I just try to spend time looking after myself and usually catching up on some Netflix.

I definitely know that I’m able to do this because I work part-time and therefore have a fair amount of time to focus on my blog and take time away from it. However, I would actually prefer to have a full-time job (which is something that I’m working on). As much as I love having more time to dedicate to my blog, it also means that the perfectionist in me comes out more and I waste so much time re-writing perfectly good content😂 Maybe some of you will disagree with me – so I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments.