How I Plan To Get Ahead And Get More Done

hey guys welcome back to heart briefings raise your hand if you are somebody who is always feeling a little bit overwhelmed always pushing yourself right up to the last minute of that deadline feeling like there are so many things you really want to be doing that you just don't have time for or constantly stressed that you're not doing enough or you're not good enough I know there are a lot of you out there who probably raised her hand or not it and said yes that feels like me and I know that for me I was like that for a long time too and there are still pieces of my life that are in that old pattern despite how many times I plan or try to change my behavior I do often end up taking on more than I can handle because I'm multi passionate I know a lot of you are too there are so many things I care about so many things I want to be doing and there's just never enough time so even though I have my HB 90 plan in place I have my Kanban board I know exactly what I'm taking on there is still often a feeling of I've overestimated how much I can get done things are taking longer than I anticipated or I'm caught up doing some types of work that I wish I had help with or that I wish I could do faster and I have better systems for and I just wish that I was further ahead because I feel like if I could get more ahead in all of my work then I would get a little bit of breathing room take a little bit of that stress off my shoulders and have more joy in my life more time for family and then more time potentially for some of those projects that I keep having to push back because I just don't have time for them so if this is something that sounds interesting to you definitely subscribe to this channel if you are not already subscribed my name is Sarah cannon I'm the author of more than 26 novels and I love sharing productivity tips as well as tips on self-publishing and planning here on this channel so I would love to have you as part of this community hit that subscribe button and the notification bellow so that you'll get notified when new videos come up for me and stay tuned because I'm going to show you what my plan is for getting ahead it is an absolutely gorgeous day here in Charleston South Carolina and I've got the windows open I have been sitting outside a little bit today and just enjoying it and really spending some time thinking about my ideal life now there's a couple things I want to say one is that there is no sparkly destination no ideal life that when you arrive at that place suddenly all your stress is gone and your happy and everything is perfect in your life that destination doesn't exist because even if you get the house and the career and the husband and the family and everything else that you've always wanted you're gonna be sitting there wanting even more because that's how humans work and I know from experience that it's dangerous thinking I can push myself to the limit as hard as I possibly can because once I hit this level XYZ this house or get this next big thing or hit this level of income then everything is going to get easier and that is also a lie so if you have been operating in your career like I used to where you always say to yourself okay I can push myself really hard this year I can write those twelve books I can you know push myself to the limit I can stay up all night I can do these really hard things because as soon as they're done and I have this income this many books this type of life then I can relax then I'll have made it and everything will get easier I used to be that person I used to think if I could just be making you know twenty thousand dollars a month and we can just have this nicer house and I could just have my son because I really really want to have a baby if I could have these things and I had this laundry list of an ideal life that I had set out for myself and I pushed myself to the limit to the max pretty much all the time so I always felt overwhelmed and I always felt way behind and then woke up one day and realized oh my gosh I have all of those things I have the house the husband the income and it's still not making me happy because I'm still way behind I'm never doing enough it's never enough so when I hit that point in my life where I realized I had these things I had wanted for so long and they just weren't bringing me joy I had to change the way I was doing things and this is when I started to develop a system that I call the HP 90 system it's a 90 day system where you have three main goals and you choose the goals according to what type of life you would like to have not believing that this ideal life is truly a destination that suddenly everything's going to be happy but instead using that picture of your ideal life as a GPS system so that you can say do I want to take on this project yes or no do I want to be this person do I want to show up in this way do I want to write this genre and every question that you have to answer as a person as an entrepreneur as a creator has an easier path to an answer because you know where you're headed so it's a GPS not actually a destination it's a guide for your journey then the next part of the system is breaking those big bowls down into smaller tasks and projects that can be completed over the course of 90 days and this is where the magic starts to come in because you have to look at how much time you realistically have to spend on that and then break it down and be realistic however this is still where I'm messing up in my own system in my own plan because inevitably things take me longer than I expected them to so if I say I'm gonna create this video today this is I'm already on the third time that I've recorded it so if I said it was going to take me two hours to record it now it's going to take me three or four hours and this happens over and over again and even though I know it's happening I still have a difficult time properly estimating and being realistic about how much time something is going to take I put too much of my I wish it would only take this amount of time and not enough realistic it is going to take me this amount of time because it always takes me this amount of time so we're going to talk about that it might get ahead plan because that's one of the main things that trips me up another thing that trips me up is being extremely multi passionate I know that so many of you out there are like this too we want to be writing multiple genres we to have our family we want to work out we want to spend time at the beach and have our game time and playtime but we also kind of want to do this nonfiction book and we sort of want to make stickers for Etsy and we want to do this planning and we want to and the list just goes on and on and these are all things that we're passionate about that we really want to do and that do actually factor into what we want to be doing in our ideal life that GPS system but oh my gosh there's just never enough time like I would love to be watching you know Skillshare videos and learning how to take better pictures and you know I could list a thousand things I wish I had time for and that feeling of one thing to do more and feeling like I'm never getting to do everything tends to lead to a feeling of never enough always rush always behind so the idea of actually getting ahead has been on my mind for a while and in my HP 90 planner I have this one page that's called the future ideas parking lot and getting ahead in my writing and my planners and a lot of other business things that I have like videos has been on that future idea parking lot for several quarters so this quarter which is q2 of 2020 as I'm recording this is the quarter where I decided I was going to outline my plan even though I didn't have time I knew to execute it so there was so much interest when I mentioned this on my Instagram stories that I thought why don't I take you guys along for the journey so I am going to show you today what I'm setting up how I'm outlining and organizing my plan to get ahead then in the next couple of weeks as I begin planning for q3 of 2020 which is July August and September I will show you the actual checklist that I've made and the things that I intend to do in q3 to get ahead now I anticipate this amount of work that it's going to take me to get ahead and this amount of focus is probably going to be multiple quarters worth of work so you'll see when I start to replan for q3 that my get ahead goal is going to be one of my three goals for the quarter and it will probably be multiple quarters at least two maybe an entire year worth of projects that will go into this so we're gonna take it tiny step by tiny step but my hope in doing this is to get a little bit ahead so that I don't constantly feel like Here I am on Wednesday afternoon recording a video that I have to edit and get ready to post by Thursday or it gets a little bit behind and it doesn't get up until Friday because even though I'm doing the work and I'm showing up and I'm so excited and I'm getting so much more done than I got done five years ago or could have dreamed of doing five years ago I still am not quite where I want to be which honestly is a great place to be as a human being because if we were perfect life would be boring so it's always about baby steps to that life that we want to getting better and better so for me this is the next step is getting ahead how much easier would my life be if I was a few months ahead and I had plenty of time to plan out those edits and plan out those promotions and launches and things like that everything is going really well even though I push things to the edge but I know that there's a toll that gets taken on me in terms of my stress and it takes a toll on my family as well particularly my husband because he has to take over if I have a 15 hour editing day he's got the kids for 15 hours and I yeah sometimes I'm sitting here holding the baby on my lap and I want to spend as much time with her as possible but it also might mean a couple days where we're ordering out not the healthiest foods and we're all just a little bit extra stressed and not getting enough sleep so I want to eliminate that stuff in my life so let me take you along for the first part of this journey which was setting up this notebook and the types of things I plan to do to get ahead okay so now that I've told you why this project is so important to me let me show you what I'm going to do so this will be the how and the what I'm using so just quickly I'm going to go over my supplies here I have a bunch of notebooks and of course any new project is a great excuse to pull out a new notebook I get a lot of my inspiration for starting a new project if I can use new fun things that inspire me I know that sounds silly but I know also that a lot of you understand that so I went through all my notebooks and finally chose this one from Erin Condren I put this cover on it they have interchangeable covers so you can switch them out and this one that says she designed a life she loved felt like the perfect one for this particular project I also decided to use their productivity notebook spread so they have notebooks that have dot grid or just lined but this one also has a little Productivity checklist on the side and I think that that's going to work really well and I'll show you why in a moment I also took one of their zippered pouches and put it on a coil clip connector so that you can put it into the coil and just cut up a bunch of stickers that I can use I think that I'm also going to add these stickers to that box or I think I'm also going to add these neutral stickers as well I know I'm gonna use a lot of these page flags they're notebooks actually come with a lot of page flags but I have a feeling I'm gonna go through a ton during this project so yeah there's going to be a lot of that so I wanted to have them all in one place so I don't have to go searching for stickers every single time but I did have to cut them down to fit into the actual zippered pouch so I'll need to cut these as well I grabbed a few other things that I think I will use during this project so one is just correction tape you know just typical things in case I need to white something out I also have some of the Erin Condren snappin bookmarks and these just snap into the coil as well but I think I'm going to need to mark several different places in this notebook because I'm going to be working in multiple places at once so I have a few of those and I also have the snap-in dashboard I'm not sure this is the one I'm going to use or I have a Wonder Woman one that actually has the days of the week on the back that might work better so I'll see once I get into the project which one feels more practical but for now I'm going to use these wet erase markers so that I can create checklists on this as well now there are already checklists in the planner but those are going to be very like detailed and focused per project and I would like to also keep a checklist overall here for the things I'm currently working on whereas this will have like everything this will have just the tasks that I'm gonna do this upcoming week so those are the tools most of these are all from Erin Condren so I'll link them down below I also have this pencil pouch from Amazon that works kind of in two ways you can open it this way or if you have it unzipped on the side you can also just have it like this so in here I mostly have my tombow twin tone dual tip markers Erin Condren has gorgeous dual tip markers too so if you want to get everything from her you can and I do have a free $10 code for you down below if you've never ordered from Erin Condren but I also just really like the colors of the twin tone markers and they have one sort of marker tip and one more plastic nib bulleted tip and I just don't use these enough so I thought well this will be a project that I'll use them a little bit more so I have all my tools gathered and I've already started setting out what I'm going to do in this notebook so you can see here I also used these adorable stickers these are from an Etsy shop called Studio adorkable and it's run by a woman named Lacey and she sent me a bunch of stickers for free and I have already started using them like crazy especially if you're a writer I will link her store down below there are so many amazing so cute cute cute things and this little teal planner felt perfect along with the coffee cup for a get head project I also have some of the scalloped sticky notes in case I need those so this first page is really the big first beginning to the project so what I've done on this first page is just kind of outline what I need to do so the first section here is just a list of all of my responsibilities so I have basically two sides to my business and my home and I didn't even list anything with the kids here I might add that later but right now I just didn't want them to be a part of this because part of the whole reason I'm doing this project is to spend more time with the kids and have more family time so I'm not going to include that as part of the get ahead project but it will be part of where I spend my time if I do get ahead I have the heart breathing side of my career which is basically this YouTube channel my courses and my planners so I listed out everything that I need to keep up with and that I have tasks to do on a regular basis for heart breathing's like social media my videos for YouTube my planners my coursework and launches for those courses my blog posts and my newsletter and the freebie in the resources section so I have all of those things here down at the bottom I have my writing career so I have SC for Sara Canon which is my pen name and my actual name so my writing and books schedule my vlogs which I've been posting every Sunday but I might switch to Saturday's my social media and promotions blog and website and my newsletter for my home my husband does a lot of the cleaning and meal stuff but I would like to do some things and I'll show you in my list to help out with that then over here on the side I have a checklist of things that I would like to start thinking toward to help me get ahead so for example I want to out lie outline tasks that I can hand off are outsourced so for example every time I do a video I would love to have a blog post that accompanies that video but I don't always have time to go and create a blog post that matches but it's good for SEO and it's great for people who don't have time or aren't able to listen to the videos so I would like to hand off the tasks to an assistant or someone who's a transcriptionist that can turn my videos into blog posts and have them posted so something like that for example and I want to outline all of those tasks that I could outsource I also want to make a list of tasks that I could batch so for example let's say I knew I wanted to do four videos in the month of June could I record all four of those videos on the same day so that I only have to pull my lighting and my makeup out on one day and then I can that I can batch it so also another thing that could work like that is like social media posts or my vlogs some things on here could be batched I'm already doing some batching but I'm not super efficient at it so I want to get better then I want to actually create a process for my batching so in the example of videos my process would be I need to outline the videos and decide what I'm going to do for that day I need to get makeup on and get my clothes ready I need to pull my lighting out if I'm using a stand for my phone that needs to be out the background needs to be out that notebooks need to be pulled out and I want to create an entire like checklist process that I can use every single time I'm doing a video and then also a process for what happens once the video is done I upload it to my Google Drive I edit it I put it on you know update my thumbnail image things like that and the reason I want to create that process is because I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel every single time I'm going to batch a set of videos and then forget stuff and then I you know this isn't charged or I should have done this so if I have that process in place I will become more efficient at it then I want to make a checklist for the hiring process so all of those things that I want to outline and hand off I need to hire a team and start getting that into place for people that can take those things off my plate then I need a weekly ideal posting schedule so I already have a weekly ideal schedule for myself like a time schedule but I really need a central place where I say okay what am i doing on Mondays I post to heart breathing social media I post a sarakin in social media I have a new video that comes up every Thursday I do this this and this and I want to have an overview of all the things that need to get posted my videos my social media my blog posts my newsletter and I just need to create that schedule and it's going to be an ideal schedule I might not always be able to stick to it but I would like to know when I intend to do it then creating a task checklist so these are things I already have in my HP 90 system but I want to update it and really think through that task list a little bit better for q3 then I need to make a Google Drive folder for organizing all of my data organizing the batch process organizing where all my images are stored because if I get ahead I'm probably going to be creating things ahead of time and storing them somewhere and they don't need to be like one on this computer downstairs one on my laptop something on my phone I want to keep it all in Google Drive in a nicely organized way so I need to make those folders then I need to make a checklist of things that are one and done project so these are projects that are not going to be continuing like posting to social media but things that once they're done they're done forever for example like I'm moving my mailing list for Sara cannon from MailChimp over to mailer light so in mailer light I need to set up my landing pages change the links in the back of my books there's like a whole list of tasks that need to happen for that to move over and that's going to be a one and done project once it's all set up I don't have to do that every week so I want to make a list of all of those things that are just like the one and done projects in relation to these things that are my responsibilities so that I can create a plan for getting those done so I can get on a better schedule for the things that are recurring then I want to make a list of templates to create like mailing list templates or social media images templates or blog post templates that will make it easier for an assistant to step in and help me then I was thinking about stickers for my habits so things like my morning and evening routines and my like social media posts did I want to have stickers for that so don't have to keep writing it into my planner so I may be creating some stickers for these things or I'm gonna go buy stickers for these things but I think that'll help me to have like a set of stickers that look the same so that every time I need to have that video posted instead of using different stickers that don't catch my eye it's like always the same YouTube sticker I know that sounds like such a little thing but I think it will help me identify at a glance then this one is a biggie so this is a time tracking system for better estimates so I was telling you guys at the beginning of this video that one of the places where I still fall short is I underestimate how much time something will take and then I end up overestimating how many things I can get done in a day because I everything takes longer than I expected so I have tried several times to come up with a time tracking system that works for me and I've never been successful I've tried toggle I've tried lots of apps but I don't always have my phone with me I don't always have my phone on and then I get distracted if I pick up my phone so I don't want to use an app I'm not always on the same computer I'm not even always on the same browser so that type of thing doesn't work I tried a planner sitting on my desk but it was one that had to open all the way and it's too big to sit on my desk so then I always ended up putting it on the floor so what I'm going to try now is a smaller planner so this one is the eight-and-a-half by 11 Erin Condren but I'm going to use just the normal size erin condren which is the 7 by 9 and I'm going to try using the daily duo which is a daily page and I already have a daily page in my main planner but like I said that planner is an a5 planner and has to open all the way Plus that planner is really for planning out my day before it happens the time tracking system I want to be something separate where I'm actually tracking things after they get done I'll give you more about this project later but I'm excited about creating a Franken planner basically out of the daily duo which if you've been here on YouTube you've seen probably some other people doing this and I'm excited to do I'm just waiting for my daily duo to get here and it just shipped so I will definitely give you guys a video and an overview of how I'm going to attract my time in that daily planner because I want an accounting of not just like my main hb9 tea planner is what I intend to do for the day my checklist the daily duo time tracker is going to be an actual accounting of where my time went so if I say in my main planner I'm giving myself an hour to record a video in the time tracking planner I'll be able to see if it took me a full hour or if it only took me 45 minutes or if it took me three hours and I'll be able to see that and I'm gonna have an entire system for tracking that time over the course of each day each week each month and each quarter so I'm excited about that then I'm going to make a 2-week meal plan rotation for our house I have been doing a one week meal rotation but then I get bored with what we're eating and I don't feel like it and then I changed the plans last minute so we're going to try to week meal plan rotation and then I also want to automate and get my advertising and promotions running in a more automated manner so for now this is the checklist I'm sure that I will add things to this list over time but this is where I'm starting now I have a few pages that are blank here to outline my plan and my timeline for getting this done and then I've created a page for each one of these things that are my responsibilities so I've got one for social media and what I plan to do on these pages is to write out for example for heart breathing social media I'm going to write the social medias that I participate on so Instagram and Instagram stories I'm on YouTube obviously I have a Facebook page I have several Facebook groups so I'm on Twitter but I don't really use Twitter for heart breathing so I'm going to just post all of those things I also have Pinterest with all of my like ideal posting schedule I'm gonna brainstorm out what I want to do with this and then how I want to get ahead with it and what ideas I could use to get ahead so for social media it could be something like scheduling out my post ahead of time taking my photos ahead of time having the whole week planned out at the beginning of the week or maybe even having a whole month's worth of stuff that's ready to go so I'm gonna create that plan just for the social media here on these two pages and then I'll create a checklist of action items so if I've created the plan over here I'm going to make a checklist like create a folder a Google Drive folder for the images that I want to store create an ideal posting schedule and so on and I will take you guys through these checklists if you're wanting to see how this progresses let me know in the comments hit the thumbs up button if you're enjoying this video and I will create this checklist and I will take care of it one step at a time so I have that for all of my things so I've got the videos the planners and all of the other heart breathing's things here then I have a few blank pages at the end of the heart breathing section in case I need to do more brainstorming but this is where you can see that I'm going to need extra bookmarks because I want to have one section that's dedicated to heart breathing's and one section that's dedicated to my Sara cannon career so I would put one bookmark at the beginning of the heart breathing section one bookmark at the beginning of the Sara cannon section or whichever pages I'm working on now so I've got the social media one my writing and books schedule blogs my live video readings my promotions and ads my blog and website my newsletter so I've just taken all those things that I listed at the front of the planner and I've given them their own two-page spread and I will slowly go through and actually brainstorm and fill this out and outline the tasks that need to be done few extra pages there and then we go into home life so I'll probably need a third bookmark for this section so like the meals and routines and the exercise my morning and evening routines and that sort of thing so here is where I'll talk about what the actual routines are how I can get ahead or support myself what stickers I want to use and that sort of thing then I've got a few extra pages before I go into this next list so the next section of the planner is basically dealing with this checklist over here so the first section is a two-page spread for each of these bullet points and now this section is a checklist for all of those checklist items so what can I outsource so once I've done all of the work in the front part I can make a list of things that I'm going to start outsourcing and I'll have that entire list here on the checklist what can I back what can I hire and all those things we went through so I've got a two-page spread for all of those items that were on that side checklist like what are my one and done projects so that is what I have built up so far like how will I track my time this is where I'm going to plan out my Franken planner come up with my color code that I'm going to use in my entire system and then I'll create an action checklist for what I'm gonna do like once the daily duo gets here I'm gonna pull it apart and create my Franken planner I need to create a color coding system and so on so that will go in the checklist section the rest of this so far is not be use and I will just use it as I need to make notes about what I'm doing in the future so it like I said if I don't use the whole notebook I will definitely be using it for future things like outlining videos or outlining my social media plans and things like that to get ahead but so far this is what I have nothing is filled out it's just the bare bones of the system right now my plan is to start figuring out what all is going to be involved in each of these main projects so I'm going to over the next month fill out these two-page spreads and figure out okay what is heart breathing social media entail and what are my action items what are the videos going to need to get ahead and what are my action items then what I'll do is when I start planning q3 I know that I'm not going to have time for all of this in the next quarter and probably not in the even in the next two quarters all of these things are probably going to take me a full year or more to get my systems and my checklist and everything done so I'm giving myself plenty of time but this get ahead plan is going to be one of my three goals for q3 and probably again in q4 and then q1 of 2021 and so on so what I'll do when I start planning q3 is I will start choosing which one's of these I'm going to work on in q3 so I might not work on getting ahead with videos but I might get social media for both things up baby's awake but I might get social media done for both of them or I might get my vlogs in a better system so I might out of you know 10 or 15 things I might get two or three done next quarter and then two or three done in q4 and so on but once things get done I'm hoping that everything will begin to run more smoothly and that a year from now I'll have an actual team in place and I'll have a batching process and like all these one-and-done projects will be done I'll have templates all have stickers I'll have a time tracking system and better estimates in place and I will be in a much better place and this is one of the things I love about the HB 90 system is it's all about you know you pick one or two things and you make actual progress where in the past I would have just looked at all of these things and I would have just been like well there's too much to do I'll never get it done I just can't do this YouTube video and I would have given up on it now I know that it's really about like divide and conquer so to speak I have really outlined the things I need to pay attention to and now all I have to do is each quarter tackle one or two of them and get it done and then a little bit more the next time and a little bit more the next time and it makes things so much clearer so much more productive and I start to actually clear things off my plate so I'm really excited about this get ahead project and I will definitely keep you guys updated as I continue on with it okay guys so that was a look at my brand new get ahead plan so like I said I'm going to be outlining this a little bit more as I get into planning for q3 so if you aren't familiar with it I do run a course called the HB 98 method this is a week-long course that is all about setting goals breaking those goals down into manageable projects and tasks based realistically on the time you actually have then you take those tasks and you put them up on a Kanban board or a digital Kanban board you schedule them out so that for the next three months of your life you know exactly what you're focused in on and less distraction less stress so much more clarity on what you're getting done and you're actually doing things so instead of spinning your wheels and wondering what's next what's next or letting whatever is beeping at you take your attention you're focused you're clear and you're actually seeing results if you're interested in joining that course we are starting a new round in June so I would love for you to join me actually this Sunday upcoming Sunday I'm going to be opening the doors for the next round of the HP 90 bootcamp I would love to have you in that course so if you want to see more information about that go ahead and subscribe to this channel you can also click that link down below to get on my newsletter list and I will be sending out a newsletter as soon as the doors are open on Sunday this round of the course will kick off on June 14th which is a Sunday we'll have a live kickoff call on zoom' and then the entire week will be full of videos and exercises for you to do but don't worry if you can't attend live once you are in this course and you are a member of the course you can take this course at anytime your own pace whenever you want to take it and you can take it over and over again every single quarter if you'd like it also comes with a free copy of my printable HP 90 quarterly planner so I would love to have you in that class the great thing about this HP 90 method as hopefully you've seen in this video is that you know there's no plan that's just gonna be like your life is perfect within 90 days that just doesn't exist but it's all about choosing what you're going to focus on this quarter then the next quarter you get a little bit better and the next quarter you get a little bit better ten or fifteen years ago I couldn't have done a quarter of the things that I'm doing now but now it's manageable and all I'm trying to do is next quarter get a little bit better at it and then the next quarter a little bit better and every time I make one of those little baby step incremental upgrades to my life I get happier I get more clear I get more excited I'm able to show up better for those of you who are watching me that I can serve and life just gets a lot more joyful so if you've been craving that level of clarity and productivity in your own life I hope that you'll join us for the HP 90 class and if you're an alumni I hope you'll go through it again with us for this full week-long course starting in June make sure you subscribed I will see you guys again on Sunday with my June HP notebook challenge video and giveaway so I will see you there and hopefully I will see you in the HP 90 bootcamp this next round all right you guys bye [Music]

Channel: Heart Breathings

Views: 13,980

Rating: 4.9574466 out of 5

Keywords: how i plan to get ahead and get more done, productivity, get more done, productivity tips, time management, how to get more done, to do list, time management tips, thomas frank, motivation, productivity hacks, how to be more productive, success, how to get more done in less time, how to manage your time, calendar blocking, how to plan, how to, procrastination, how to be productive, elon musk productivity, daily planning, how to plan your day, how to focus, erin condren

Id: m9uO6gTjuq8

Length: 35min 14sec (2114 seconds)

Published: Fri May 29 2020