how to be really really really organised + good at time management

we're doing a time management and productivity lesson today for no reason other than the fact that time management is my lifeblood and um as someone that is wholeheartedly obsessed with it I am making you also be obsessed with it as I've always said we will have goals to reach and we all have to work so you might as well work the best you can while you're working so that you can rest more and play more and start being kind to yourself in the way that you go for things you want okay this is the modern day this is now I filmed this video before I moved out of my old house I filmed it at the same time as the last productivity video I did which has done insanely well and everyone seems to love it and I'm so happy because these are things that I've been literally living by um for years so if you haven't watched that watch that one first because that's it the first half but I just wanted to say now before you watch the rest of the video at the end of this video we are doing another planner release the last video coincided with the last planner released the waitlist ended up getting 55 000 people so we decided to do another planet release so I thought why bring back the same designs when you can just [ __ ] [ __ ] up and come out with more so I am going to talk through that at the end of this video the pre-order starts tomorrow and it's only going to be 24 hours so it's back for 24 hours only hope you get one skip to the don't skip to the end of the video why am I telling people to skip to the end of the video [Music] um but yeah end of the video for planner information so Whistle Stop tour we are going to talk about prioritization organization and then the actual doing of the productive work as I always disclaim you do not need to be productive all the time it goes without saying so please don't use it as a reason to hate we know we don't all need to be productive all the time however we do know that we all need to work and just saying sleep when you're dead is not very helpful if we're gonna have to work we might as well do it right and we might as well get the most out of it possible if you don't want to get the most out of it possible that is so fine and also well aware of the fact that even if you do absolutely everything you might still not be able to get the most out of it possible but in this house we do believe in time management and we do believe in productivity as a form of self-care okay so if you don't believe in that back off so first things first learning how to manage your time is one of the most important things in my opinion of your life you need to be able to have good methods so that when you feel super overwhelmed and when you have loads on your plate and when your workload starts to increase and everything's coming at you from all angles that doesn't overwhelm you and it's natural like it's always going to overwhelm you I get overwhelmed every week it's honestly my drug but you need to have systems in place that mean you understand when that's happening and you understand then how to control it by planning and time managing to make yourself be able to do it all and not feel like I also feel like time management is super super helpful because so much of our life is work now that it's really really good at helping to actually put things in that you want to do as well like if you want to be spending more time with your friends if you want to be trying to stick to the gym more if you want to be learning a language or learning tennis or like whatever it might be actually being able to time manage and put those things in allows yourself to be able to prioritize personal life just as much as work so don't think of this as like just a how to be better at work becoming better at working and time management is all the same as becoming better at the rest of it because you cannot have one without the other you are not just going to be a Workhorse you need to be able to get good at prioritizing your homely bits as well homely bits personal life would be a normal way of saying that obviously normal caveat these methods are not going to work for everyone try what works for you throw in the bin yell at me on Instagram cancel me just try like just sprinkle a little bit here and there it might be time blocking it might be a to-do table it might be any of these things just happen like a little little girl and if it doesn't work it doesn't work but lose work for me and that's the only point of view I can talk from okay number one you cannot do any of the rest of this without number one number one is the ability to prioritize and learning prioritization you need to work out a method a prioritization that is so effective for you that it becomes second nature especially if you have ADHD then understanding systems that are in place to help you understand what to prioritize is really really important then the second thing to mention is the idea of efficiency versus Effectiveness okay so Effectiveness is doing things that get you closer to your goals so right direction and efficiency is performing a task in the most economic way past possible so the combination of efficiency and Effectiveness is the answer like we talk about productivity AKA doing the most in the least amount of time possible but actually Effectiveness is so important there's a very big difference between being busy and being productive a lot of the time what I do to procrastinate is do tasks that are less hard but actually they're probably less effective then so it's actually understanding that you have to be able to prioritize based on Effectiveness too and not just procrastinate by still doing things and being busy but them not being the right things that you need to be doing to get you in the right direction so before I talk to you about our how to prioritize I just wanna emphasize how important prioritizing is if you're not doing something and if you're choosing not to have time to do something this is sounding very girl bossy hear me out if you're not fitting something in it's it's not a priority and this needs to be caveat by saying that different people will be able to fit a lot less in so I'm going to be able to fit quite a lot in because I have teams I have an assistant I have a cleaner all of these different things that are really really really really really important to say however if you're looking at your week and you only have one extra thing to add in the other things are technically not a priority even if you'd love to have those three things you have to be able to understand like how many extra things you fit in so for example taking someone who is in their 20s who has a job wants to see their friends a lot and wants to go to the gym and wants to learn a language if you're not fitting the time in to go to the gym or to learn a language it is not a priority that is fine you just have to be fine with it not being a priority getting to the end of the month when your goal was to learn to do x amount of your duolingos and not doing it and getting frustrated isn't helpful what's helpful is understanding that in that time you need to make things a priority that are a priority and that might be understanding that you are only able to have half those amount of things be important if that makes sense so once you've understood that something isn't a priority the next thing you need to decide is whether that's okay or whether you want to change that obviously if you want to change that start slotting into your week when you're planning it at the beginning of the week and if it's just like you know what I wanted to start a language but actually with seeing my friends and work and going to the gym like I really don't have time to make another thing a priority absolutely fine as well just understanding that and being aware of that is really important otherwise you constantly think you're a failure because you're constantly failing to fit it in even though you'd never be able to fit in with your current priorities anyway so learning how to actually prioritize is really really really important and this is one of those systems that I talked about I did not invent this at all this is the Eisenhower method and it is used very widely but it is just a really really helpful way of understanding how to prioritize so if you're one of those people that looks at everything you should be doing and you don't know what you should be doing let alone when I strongly suggest you start doing the Eisenhower Matrix at the beginning of your week or just when you're in that decision making process and you're finding it really hard to work out what you need to be doing so when looking at your to-do list or your studio table putting them in an Eisenhower Matrix helps for you to decipher whether things are Urgent and important and if they are Urgent and important there need to be something you're doing first if they are important but not urgent they're something that you're going to need to be scheduling if they are urgent but not important delegate is what it says but like ultimately you're really not going to be able to delegate all the time like I'm aware that you're not necessarily going to have someone who is below you in the hierarchy of your role or an assistant or any of these things sometimes delegating can be about using a freelancer if you are a freelancer and you can use someone on Fiverr instead of doing it yourself or what I like to say for that one it's probably more about just like blitzing through it as fast as possible and just allocating an amount of time to do that and they're not urgent and not important don't do it you can just keep it under a little in the corner of the list like if you want to be able to get to it when you have a second but ultimately you need to be able to like work out what what is a priority and when and this is a really helpful way to be able to do that and if it's not urgent it's not important maybe you just need to do it in like a 10 minutes at the end of the day somewhere a hint in terms of like procrastination is the schedule and the delegate quadrant like boxes are probably the ones who are going to procrastinate with most because they're the easiest to jump into because either you feel the sense of urgency or it's really really important when actually you should be something doing something in the Urgent and important box first but it's like a bit of a chore most people I feel like after a few years of work will do this Matrix kind of like automatically like you know what's urgent and important and so you're gonna be able to prioritize based on that but if that's not something that comes naturally to you just use this Matrix when you need to then next I want to talk about organization so once you've got your tasks figured out in terms of like what you actually need to do so any of the things that were in those top three quadrants of the Eisenhower Matrix you need to organize and you need to be able to have good organization systems in place I find that the most important part of organization is visibility and awareness so I think you'll find that probably the times that you get most overwhelmed about what you have to do and like how much you have to do is because you don't have visibility over your calendar you don't have visibility over your tasks you don't have visibility over kind of like the action plan to put this into place because ultimately if you look to all of your tasks and slop that slotted them in throughout the week you'd start to feel a lot less stressed because you're like yeah I can't do these 20 things now but by the end of the week they will be done so I really really really cannot stress enough that no matter how overwhelming all your to-do's are you need to be able to see them otherwise you have no hope of getting them in like how do you expect to be able to go through all of your to-do's without being able to see exactly what you have to do okay step one of organization if you don't do this already what the [ __ ] it concerns me I have friends that don't do this and I honestly I fear for their lives keep an electronic calendar this may sound so stupid but if you don't already keep an electronic calendar I just don't understand how you expect to be organized like maybe maybe I'm not getting it but keep a [ __ ] electronic calendar put your friend's birthdays in there put your important things in there and start populating it you don't need to populate every call in every workday if you can integrate your personal and work calendar together I really would advise you do that because the sooner you start thinking of them not together it sounds like very like capitalist nightmare to talk about like your work and personal life is the same but I think delineating too much between the two actually makes it quite terrifying because then it's like you're constantly trying to like do these two roles whereas actually understanding that they're all one big role of your life is quite important but that can be dependent on what works for you I just use Google it's linked to my Gmail so it adds like some dinner reservations and stuff in there too but put things in for September and three years time when your implant's about to run out like just keep a [ __ ] electronic calendar you're an adult when you know about something put it in there even if it's your dog's birthday or if it's remembering to book a your smear test like any of these just put in the [ __ ] calendar it's really not them and it will save you time I know it sounds like a lot of works it's a bit of a faff it will save you time down the line and I know there'll be some people sitting here watching this being like please move on from this this is obviously so obvious and there'll be other people being like real to keep you know what you can do on the Gmail one is you can separate it out between like personal and work so you can like click between the two as well which I absolutely love and then step two is gonna sound ridiculous if you found step one ridiculous but it's to keep a paper calendar too and that doesn't need to be like a calendar it can be a planet it can be ones like the one I make it can be just a week view any of them essentially on a Sunday evening or a Monday morning transfer it from the electronic calendar into the paper calendar or into like if you use like a PDF on your iPad or like whatever it might be but transfer it do something that moves it from electronic to actually like full week visibility so you can look at it throughout the week so for example I did this quite Loosely today but by the way we use this at sample we're using thicker paper so like there's a full week for you and I've just put out like I'm going to a festival on Saturday I've got a friend's birthday on Sunday got like work from home here key points like family dinner this filming like meetings and then office regular Tuesday office like you can so it doesn't need to be like everything written out but it needs you just need to be really clear on the visibility of the week ahead and this is not just about like duplicating calendars this is quite an important task I find and you can just skip it if you don't like it just skip it but I find this so important it takes [ __ ] five minutes and I find it so important just like getting a bird's eye view of my week ahead and it's also really important because you can start slotting the big projects in so I have a board meeting on Thursday and I know that I need to block out time on Wednesday to be able to review it or I have a big launch on Monday so I know what I need by Friday all scheduled in to like make that happen if that makes sense you're just getting you're just getting an awareness it's just a nice little five minutes with your coffee just writing it all out understanding where things are what you're doing which friends you're meeting in the evenings starting to get a bit of a clear understanding of where you're going to fit the important things in before you overwhelm yourself okay step three is the to do table method so I talked about the to-do table in my last productivity video in a lot more depth but essentially it's splitting your to-do list up into Quick ticks tasks and projects so that you have a lot better visibility of actually how things are weighted and then what you can do with that is you can use the Eisenhower method to like prioritize them or whatever you need but like having a to-do list that is just a list just makes no sense like it makes no sense it makes no sense that you'll have all these things on the same list and it's like gonna overwhelm you when one of those things is nowhere near as important as another one and then you're like and then once you've done this and it's literally going to take you five minutes you probably will spend longer complaining about doing it it's going to take you five minutes and then that will really really help you slot things in throughout your week because you have really clear visibility of what you need to do and when and you can start slotting it in and then your life will change you're gonna then take this method and then you're gonna use this to essentially start slotting things in throughout your week so that's going to be in time blocks that's going to be like a little task rock each day any of these things you'll get really used to it but I promise you it will make you so much more productive and so much less overwhelmed okay and then the next big big big big big point that I could not recommend more is time blocking time blocking is essentially based on the idea of like task matching so like putting similar tasks together and preparation that those two together equal time blocking okay so first things first the freedom you'll have to time block will be completely dependent on what you do as a job if you're a freelancer you're probably gonna have much more freedom if you're a student you're probably gonna have much more more freedom if you're a mum you're probably gonna have less Freedom if you are in a corporate job you're probably going to have less Freedom etc etc etc but the concept is simple as much as you can really keyword as much as you can divide your day into blocks of time depending on what the type of task is so it can be an email time block it can be a project time block it can be a task time Vlog it can be a specific time block for a specific thing but as much as you can divide it in two time blocks absolute Falcon disaster well I'm talking about toy blocks okay um time blocks my camera ran out and I had to mess up my time blocks to do something else but my camera was charging it's been very emotional but we're back and I'm very sweaty in case you haven't noticed so time blocking concept very simple the idea is that you divide your day into blocks of time based on tasks you're doing preferably putting similar well definitely putting similar tasks together but it could be like a task block where the tasks are slightly different but you blitzing through all of your tasks in that block if you have no control at all over your calls or meetings or commitments then ideally the time around those should still be blocked even if it's like an hour here or there it just really helps you to do it you don't need to do loads in advance you can literally do it the morning of what really helps me though and what I do think is important is if you have big chunks of work to do you time block those at the beginning of the week so you can literally look at it in the morning and look at your schedule and see where you have blocks to fill and rather than just like freestyling willy nilly through your day no no no no we don't do that we planned we plan so if you just insert look at your to-do table look at your calendar a block for task Blitz a block for this project a block for your emails just throw it all in there it doesn't need to be any more than just that day but going freestyle through the day is like trying to get somewhere in a car but literally not putting GPS on if you have greater Freedom around your time blocks then base your week around your time blocks so if you're most productive in the morning do your hardest tasks in the morning I mean I'd always recommend doing the hardest task first but as a general rule you can literally base your life around these time blocks so for example for me when I used to now I'm like employed by tala so to be honest like most of my time isn't necessarily designed by like what I how I would plan my time it's based on like meetings with other people and stuff um but before that point what I would do is usually I'd keep my mornings for blocked out work because I know I could get my head down and then in calls in the afternoon where I wouldn't need as much Focus like you can still work through calls with less Focus but in the afternoon my concentration is just gone and so I try and get like my deep work done in the morning obviously not everyone has the freedom to do this goes without saying if you don't don't if you do do I think we have this misconception because like meetings are things that people put in our diary or we're working with people on that that is the bulk of our work but actually the work you do outside of your meetings is obviously literally like the most important thing for your job and actually like delivering things obviously once again I'm talking to many people with many different jobs who are like it's this isn't specific but I'd say but in the most part the your own work that you do is incredibly important so like the idea that we wouldn't have that blocked out in a specific time but we would have meetings it not makes sense no one if you're a creative two really really really really really really really really understanding when you're most creative is so so so important for this so I know for example my job's not all creative at all but when I'm doing creative things like for example conceptualizing a campaign it almost certainly has to be in the morning unless I really really can't avoid it sometimes I'll even wake up two hours earlier to be able to make it in the morning because I know that I'm far more creative in the morning because once I've spent time doing emails and like admin and like whatever I'm not creative anymore so learning that is I think so so so important and then it goes without saying that we need to talk about the fact that unexpected things will come in they'll come flying in when you least expect it and you really don't need it but they will it's part of work it's part of life you're always going to have these things and I guess all I can say about this is that ideally if you've time blocked the rest of your time you've been as productive and efficient and effective as possible up to this point so when new stuff comes in yes it's stressful but it's like not the end of the world you've been as productive as possible up to that point so if your time blocks in the afternoon go out the window absolutely fine probably happens to me once or twice a week when things just come flying in and they're much more urgent but you've been as efficient and effective as possible up to that point so you're still better off having time blocked it also means that your top priority work will probably have already been done and I think that is I mean that's definitely one of the reasons that some people start work early and I'm not necessarily saying do that don't if it doesn't work for you um but you know getting to things before other people can get to you because other people you can respect your own time and you can plan your own time doesn't mean other people will respect your time especially if you're in a more Junior role so if you can set time aside at the beginning of the day to do the most important and urgent things by the time unexpected tasks come around you're going to be so much better off and so much like you've respected your time as much as possible so fine you have to jump onto this other thing but at least you've had a head start in these other you know in the rest of your work so not everything just flies out the window at nine when everyone logs on and it's like let me ruin your day so yeah you have to be able to be adaptable to whatever pops up we can't help it it's really part of work and life what we can help is what we do outside of that time and in advance of that time to make sure that when things do pop up we're in as best position possible to be able to deal with it AKA having been as productive as possible having got our most urgent tasks done um do not stop losing and important things to last because you don't want to do them it's shooting yourself in the foot because then things are going to come up or you're going to suddenly be exhausted from like racing through all the other things and then your most important stuff hasn't got done eat the Frog really good saying sounds strange if you don't know what it means it means just do the most horrible thing first like do the thing you're least looking forward to doing and need the most motivation for first then once you've done that you're already like the amount of fulfillment you get from doing a task that kind of really took a lot of energy to get done once you've done that you're already like well into your day of actually like getting those non-negotiables ticked off I would say that if you find your schedule being thrown off a lot like you find that around lunch time every day so much stuff gets thrown in and it's like urgent and then you're completely thrown off start accounting for that like if that's part of your job it's part of your job once again like stop setting yourself up for failure start setting yourself up for success and block out some time when that usually comes around so say from 3 30 till end of day every day it's blocked out for unexpected work and if that unexpected work doesn't come in you just work through your tasks I cannot express enough how if things keep happening and you don't adapt yourself to those things happening you're just setting yourself up for failure if they come up all throughout the day then maybe just have like little unexpected work time blocks just here and there like one after lunch one right before the end of the day one at 10 A.M and just work around that play around with it but start I would really say it's so important to adapt to what like your work is showing you it's going to be like so I feel like I've just yelled at you for the past while I just feel really emotionally about time management I love my systems and I've been definitely for the past two years I've been like very resistant to like sharing them online because it sounds very much from someone in my position and from my privilege it sounds very much being like you should work harder to get someone where I am and it's not that at all I would say in any position there are things you can do to make yourself more productive effective and better at time management and the reason I care about that is not because life's all about work it's because when you allow yourself to do your work better more productively more efficiently and more effectively you allow yourself to spend more time doing the other things and spend more time thinking about the other things I really really really don't want to spend all my time working and I hate spending double the time there's nothing that [ __ ] me off more than spending an afternoon doing something when it could have been done in two hours and that's usually because I didn't plan to be doing it earlier where I knew I would be able to get it done quicker or planning in advance where I knew I needed to ask someone something for it first like that's what frustrates me as I said before time management is a form of Stress Management and if you can get these systems in place you're like 10 times closer to actually being able to do your work well and in a way that leaves space for the rest of things and before anyone has a [ __ ] fit obviously working is not always the answer obviously as I've said before sometimes it's important just to sit the [ __ ] down and have a break and it's not most productive to like plow through but these types of tools are what makes that decipherable so thank you for coming to my TED Talk and then once again no one else will I hope you found this helpful if you didn't just leave a hate comment down below lots of love have a lovely day be productive and remember that sometimes the most productive thing is to rest and sometimes the most self-care thing is to get the [ __ ] up and do your [ __ ] job because you keep complaining about not progressing and you're also not working hard okay bye right sexies it's time for some productivity planners let me take you through it so first of all last time I only had samples so you can see how actually like how thick they are they're over 300 pages so it's like carrying around a 300 page hardback book so we didn't want to make them any thicker than this so just to take you through the colors we have this gorgeous like light Dusty pink all of these are cloth bound this one's um like waxy hardback like really really good quality better quality than like any planner I've had which is great and that's what we know I like to do um this one's called brain waves it's like a lovely little blue and it's got this gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous um pink brain waves this one's cold on Wednesdays we work and then we've got self-improof mint here she is gorgeous again cloth bound and then we brought back the best seller from last time which is Navy cloth bound I don't know what I think I'm an ASMR babes but then we thought why stop here I thought why understand when a hobby is getting out of control when you can just not acknowledge it at all I thought for all of the people who aren't necessarily plan of people but want to be able to use the method desk pads big productivity energy best-selling colorway matchy matchy you could even get the two have one at the office have one to carry around slay Kimmy K wants her planner back so this goes on your desk and it has the to-do table method like if you're not going to get through all of that in one day you can just do it as like a weekly one it's got 60 to do tables goes on your desk at work you put this back you can rip all of them off or you can keep them you can rip the top off or you can keep it and then you just go if you're the type of person who just like Post-its things and like and less of a planner person I carumba she's here if you're watching this on the day it is life Sunday releasing Monday 24 hours 24 hours only Monday the 17th of October it will go live at midday until Tuesday the 18th of November it will go live at midday if you do not get them during that time I cannot help you it is a pre-order so they will take the production time to come they are made to order and so if you've got the last ones and you prefer these designs you'd have to wait the pre-order time for them anyway so I mean you can switch them out if you prefer but like you're gonna have to wait but yeah enjoy [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: Grace Beverley

Views: 139,000

Keywords: gracefituk, flexible dieting, bbg, new makeup, must haves, intermittent fasting, vegan, weight loss, how to, grace fit uk, what i eat in a day, full day of eating, oxford university, entrepreneur, sophia cinzia, flossie, olivia neill

Id: SPb9P1IDO9M

Length: 28min 3sec (1683 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2022