Time Management Tips To Balance Your Life + Work | By Sophia Lee Blogging

welcome to this week's vlogging video I am in my humble boat of an apartment I'm moving out if you're in actually less than a month but I'm filming it here because it has to do with today's topic kind of but today's topic is all about time management I could talk and talk and talk and talk about time management I'm obsessed with it I've listened to so many books if I could take like a course on time management I would I just am really intrigued by the entire thing and so I have my top time management tips and programs that I use this is so huge in blogging because blogging takes so long and also you're doing it completely on your own in the beginning and so you really do have to be smart with your timing so I'm gonna go over all of my top tidbits and how I just get like the absolute most done at all times a little Spiel before I start I have to do my normal 30 second Spiel so I have the blog by Sophia Lee I earned seven figures a year from it so well over a million dollars and I have a team of seven now um and I started this blog from my dorm room when I was 19 years old I'm now 25 so I've been doing this for six years now and I've from my blog I've been able to store multiple businesses and really turned it into a whole I mean it was a business in general but now it's like a whole operation so I kind of give you all the tips and stuff that I wish I would have known when I first started which leads me into the next thing so I have always been obsessed with time management as you saw from the intro and it really kept me motivated in the beginning because when you start blogging and if you've like already started blogging you know it's a lot of work up front and it can be really overwhelming and I just feel like knowing certain things with how to manage your time just makes everything a lot more approachable and easier to handle so here's my top tips some programs that I use um some like actual like tangible tips some more like mindset things let's get into it number one I have to schedule everything like literally everything I always tell my team Ben anyone in my life I'm like if I don't write this down or if it's not in my calendar it's not gonna happen I'm not gonna remember it and so I make sure that every single thing is written down I personally love to use Google calendars for like my like everyday schedule and then I use a paper planner shout out this is one of our businesses um shout out to the daily planner but um I use this in the morning to just like mind dump and plan out my day but then my Google Calendar is where all my appointments go and all my meetings I like to use the Google Calendar because my team can see it so we can kind of like they can see when I'm available they can see when I'm not available they can add in things for me that I have to do and that just is really really helpful for me like I love Google Calendars because you can set set it up in different calendars so I've like content calendar I have my personal life calendar that I have set to like uh Saturday and during the week anything that comes up like you have to pay this bill you have to get this done blah blah blah whatever send bye your sister's birthday gift whatever it is I write it down in there so then I can reference it um and then in here like I'll go through okay so in my planner um I actually started this from doing free printables of organization sheets on my blog and then it just like exploded into a planner business we have a blogging specific planner which I'll get into um because I like oh my God if I would have had that when I was first starting I would have like actually died but I write down my grocery lists again if I don't have it I'll forget um and then you can kind of see like I um write down all my to-do's and I time Block in the morning and I always do this before I even get to work or like first thing when I go to work because then it kind of just like sets me up for the day and allows me to just like figure out what I have to do and make sure that I'm getting it all done okay I kind of jumped to the second one already but it's that morning planning and it takes me like five minutes and I'll just sit either at my desk at work or I'll literally sit on my island in the kitchen and I pull up my Google Calendar I have like my iPad that I use but obviously you don't need when you can pull it up on your phone or whatever and I'll look at my daily schedule and then I'll look for it a few days and that's where I just brain dump it all in my planner um and we also have iPad planners or you can buy one from Etsy like do your research whatever I'm sure you have one that you like too and it just allows me to make sure that I'm getting everything that I need to get done and then I also love time blocking I'm like did I write time blocking down I would have had to so time blocking I swear by and do I always follow my time hockey no like some things come up where I just can't follow it but it allows me to in the morning kind of look at like what my open gaps are and kind of fill out like okay this is the first thing that I need to do this is the second thing like third priority fourth priority and then that way I can like go down the list and at the end of the day if I don't get some of this stuff done at least I got like the most important things done um and it just makes sure that I'm utilizing my time as best as possible so I swear by time blocking in college oh my God I like really swore by time logging now my schedule gets so crazy that it can be harder to time block I find that the busier my schedule is the harder it is the time block and the less like more open space that I have the easier it is to time block but I think specifically like when you're starting a blog time blocking can be so huge because you can be like okay content calendar for 30 minutes um keyword research 30 minutes writing the actual post four hours like and you can kind of like Pinterest pins 30 minutes because then you can kind of figure out like and make sure almost like a checklist on what you all need to get done third tip batch your time this is so huge and so like I'll give an example when I first started my blog so I would write all of the PO like all of the posts for the week and then I would do all the key keyword research at the same time and write all the posts at the same time and then I would also make all the pins at the same time that way I wasn't going from like like I wasn't going from one thing to another like I would just have everything on Camp and I just go like first post that's going out on Monday do the second post that's going on on Wednesday do the pins third post that's going on on Friday do the pins and um you just go a lot faster and you make sure to get it done now I really batch and my team is realizing how helpful it is for me to batch especially for like these vlogging videos for example it is so much easier for me just to sit down and film like three in a row I really should be doing that right now I'm at the apartment right now because I have another meeting at 9 30 what time is everyone right now I'm like pushing this video slightly I should be filming multiple videos in a row because once you get in the mindset like it's easier to be in that mindset versus like going from test to test to test so love batching highly recommend I know so many people that like batch all of their content um and it just makes everything a lot easier okay the vlogging iPad planner so I'm actually gonna screen record this because I think that it's gonna be so valuable to see the actual Pages this I had so many of these Pages created and it's like so many of the pages that we use at BSL and we basically put it into an iPad planner we're actually having this as a tangible planner too and it should come out in May um but this has all of the organization pages that I wish that I would have had when I was first starting my blog I mean it literally has everything you could ever imagine so let me just get in to that screen recording so the blogging iPad planner has this first page which is basically like where you can go and click around and you can see all the different things that it has so I created these Pages based on like what I use on my blog and the pages that I think would be super helpful first we have this yearly content plan I love in the beginning of each year and just as I'm content planning to go through every single month and be like okay during January my focus is on organization here's my income goal during May my focus is on you know like I just go through and plan out what I did like want to focus on differently we have a usernames and a password section branding guide so this is where like I go and put all of our colors fonts um just something that I can go and quickly reference blogging tasks I love this page I'm just such like a task person so I like to go in and write down everything that I want to do on a weekly bi-weekly monthly quarterly and yearly basis it just helps me stay on track and making sure that I'm doing everything that I need to do for that I think a reader Avatar is so important so this is where you go and like pick basically your dream avatar for your blog and I will literally write my blog post to this person so it just um is really helpful to get it on paper and write it all out holiday content planning obviously regular content planning then every single month has a calendar overview just like this I go through content topics for each month some extra notes I will write out all of my different blog posts and then every single week has this page so you can go through and write your to-do's and then also like every day you can write out what blog post is going out what social content is going on Etc we have this week's blog posts to further go through the different content that you're writing and then every single day has a page that looks like this I'm a huge time blocker as I've said in this video so I have 5 a.m to midnight time blocking I love the today on the blog on Instagram on tick tock on Pinterest and then we left extras for anything else that you could possibly be on so you can plan out like I always plan out what I'm gonna like basically talk about on Instagram stories or what Tick Tock we're putting out so I love that and then a to-do list so every month looks like that and then every month we also have budget breakdown and purchases and then we have goals which are so huge Monthly kpis our team uses this every single week and it is such a great reference to look back on and then back to the planner dashboard where you can just see some more of the things that it offers so what really has everything and anything that you could ever imagine to plan for your blog and like I said we will have this in a physical copy coming in the spring but for any iPad users this is like game changing for blogging next up delegation so this is more when you have an actual team or even like your spouse or I don't know anyone um and I'm horrible at delegation like literally horrible I have an issue that I think people can read my mind and then when I do delegate something it doesn't go the way I want it to and I have learned that I need to get over that I go to a business coach and like one of the most valuable things that she's taught me is does it really matter like does it really matter if this looks exactly like how it was in your brain does it really matter if that title is exactly what you would have thought like no it really doesn't matter and I would not be able to do all that I do or have the businesses that I have if I wasn't able to learn how to juggle my time work juggle my time if I was if I wasn't able to learn how to delegate and I think that like especially when you have a team it gives them so much power and them so much more confidence than like just hovering over and so I know for us like I wanted to create a team where I'm not giving them to-do lists like I'm not every single Monday I'm not like okay you have to do this this no they come to me and they tell me what they need to do because and so do their like direct reports they come to them and tell them you know I like it's it just triple down effect trickle-down effect and that's because the delegation has been set up in a way where they fully know everything that they're taking care of and I fully handed it off to them it's not like I've half-handed off to them and I'm watching over them like they're my child like they really know how to do it and I think even for home life too like when you start a blog you might think you're gonna have more freedom but honestly like I think the joke that like when you start your own business you do it so that you can work whenever you want and then you start your own business and you realize you're working 24 7 which is so true um and so you're gonna be so busy that like you need to delegate your personal life so I even I have a cleaning lady now which is hilarious because I love cleaning like it's one of my passions but I didn't love that I was working 24 7 and then the three hours that I had on a weekend I would be sending cleaning and I was like if I'm working this much then I'm getting a cleaning lady and same with dinners like Ben's taking over making a lot of dinner dinners and I think delegation is just key project management systems so we used to we have used well two project management oh my God two project management systems we use click up and we've used Asana click up we had for like the first three years of the blog I actually really really like it but I don't think that we explored it as much as we should have and then Asana is what we use now and we love it so Shelby one of the BSL team members she really took Asana under her wing and learned it up and down the only thing that I don't like about Asana is that you can't link files in it like you can but you can't store like we've almost used click up as like a storage unit for our files and you can't really do that in a sauna but Asana is where we do like all of our content planning now um and just get everything organized and I think that that is could be really really helpful and it is really really helpful for us to just like write down the tasks that we have to do check them off um who's doing what when it needs to be done by etc etc and last last know when to say no um in the first year blogging I personally did not do anything that wouldn't make me money and I always was thinking ryry Roi is this does this have a return on investment does this have a return on investment and I think that mindset is really helpful I always say about Paige like don't spend time on your about page is that going to earn you money no it's not um so always think about that and then even like now I've had to learn to say no to things that possibly could make me money right now but don't align with my future like business goals and where I want all of our businesses to go and so I think that the power of saying no is I think that saying no is one of the most powerful things that you can do um so that's my tidbit on that one okay I think that wraps up this video if you have any more questions on time management definitely let me know check out the iPad planner it is so so good um again the tangible planners coming out in the tangible ibad planner like physical one is coming out in May that should be so good um this one is undated all of our other planners are dated but for this one we wanted to make it undated so that like no matter when you start your blog it would make sense and yeah check out our courses watch our other YouTube videos and subscribe to the channel I will see you next week

Channel: Perfecting Blogging | By Sophia Lee Blogging

Views: 5,291

Keywords: blogging tips for beginners, blogging motivation, blogging tips from a full time blogger, work-life balance, how to start a blog, by sophia lee blogging, how to start a blog and make money, how to start a blog in 2023, work-life balance tips, blogging for beginners, sophia lee blogging, sophia lee blog, blogging tips and tricks, blogging tips 2023, how to start a blog and make money 2023, blogging tips, full time blogger, make money blogging, by sophia lee how to start a blog

Id: gbhV0wPpVF0

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 24 2023