Late-Start

Ever wonder what other people’s productivity systems are? I know I do but that’s because I’m a nerd for productivity. I try to test my systems out and see what works with other people so I can adapt what is useful to me to keep my systems from becoming redundant or unnecessary or worse, outdated to my current needs. 

Today we are going over my productivity apps and maybe you can see what I do that might work for you. If not then perhaps tell me in the comments what works for you. That’s what I think is the best part about productivity, it’s very individualized.

*By the way, this is not sponsored or paid for by any of these apps.

 If anyone wants to sponsor this blog or my YouTube, I am available.

Google Calendar

A place for everything and everything in its place. I like to use my calendar as a way to calendar block out time for the events of my life. Did you know that with google calendar you can get an agenda sent to your email each morning with a list of that day’s events? I just found out a few weeks ago and it has been a real game-changer for me. You can also customize the colors of your google calendar as long as you know the Hex codes. Additionally, you can set up calendars for each of your projects as a separate calendar. There are a ton of useful things I’ve learned about google calendar so I want to link you to a youtube video explaining some more things you can do to make your google calendar work for you.

Google Sheets

I know what you are thinking, spreadsheets arent productivity tools and to that, I say “yes they are!” if you need to track certain numerical things( AKA money). It becomes more and more essential. Without a good stream of income, this blog would collapse, I would be destitute, and then you dear readers would be lacking in entertainment. So how do we solve this problem, budgeting of course! What I love about budgeting (and yes this is a sentence I never thought I would say) is that it’s for literally everyone. 

Growing up as a child of a single mom my family had a lot of lean times. We had to make our dollars stretch a bit further than we would have liked. My mom hardly ever budgeted though so I remember a year getting my first bicycle as a Christmas present and having to return them after 3 days because mom went way over her allotted amount for her credit card.

Now I’m not telling you about this for the pity, because trust me, I don’t want or need it. What I will tell you is that day taught me a lot about money. For the first thing, it taught me that money existed, and without enough of it, things you like or even love can disappear without a trace. I remember this, I stock it in my mind every time I have to budget and think to myself, what do I want to keep doing or going or creating. So this is the end of my PSA about budgeting.

Todoist

In February of 2021, I started using Todoist and since then I have been a big advocate of using this to-do list app. I put it down as one of the Monthly Motivation: Things to Check Out. And it, for me, still holds up as one of the best to-do list apps I have. Though I’ve tried to put my todos on my Notion, it doesn’t work quite as well as my Todoist system of organization. There’s a priority function in my Todoist which I use constantly for the tasks I have in my day. 

Here is a look at how I organize my tasks: 

• Priority 1 is for things I have to do within a timeframe and must be in person or cant outsource.
•  Priority 2 is specifically for things I need to do but aren’t time-sensitive or in-person. 
• Priority 3 is for things that are neither Urgent but still important like doing the dishes, cleaning the refrigerator, or vacuuming (basically anything I have to clean). 
• Priority 4, the things that don’t matter like an idea I have for a video or blog post, I will see where it goes if it aligns with what I do I will research it which bumps it up to a priority 2 or 3, depending.

Notion

Okay so, I have a notion, but I need to track all the tasks I do by priority and though I’m getting better at Notion, I’m no pro. Every time I see someone showing what they do with their notion I just marvel in awe. So with Notion, I am constantly trying to test the bounds of possibility of what to do with it. And I’m always surprised at what’s possible.

What’s in my Notion?

HQ is my headquarters, it’s got all my projects aligned in their pages listed out by category. And if you’re wondering, the categories are:

• Admin — A place for all my administrative things like my five-year plan journal.
• Personal — My personal journal, mood boards & reading notes
• Work — Things like this blog, my YouTube, and other freelancing writing I want to work on.
• Projects — Things I want to work on within my work
• Archive — A place for things I don’t want to throw away yet.

 Then I added an inbox as an inline table because I recently saw this video by Kharma Medic and he had an Inbox in his notion and I needed that for my HQ, and so far it really helps.

Google Keep

There are at least 100k things rummaging around in my brain at any given point in time, ideas for videos, phrases I want to work into specific blog posts, drafts of blog posts that need to be edited, books I want to read for the Blog or the YouTube, a plot to take over the world, and so on and so forth. What helps me rein it all in has been having a color-coded notes app that connects to my google drive where I can then flesh out more of my ideas. I also sort my notes into specific categories. A rather familiar them, no?

So for my Notes app, I sort things into categories such as:

• Blog — A place for things relating to the blog
• Info — A place to info dump anything I need
• Filming Notes — the scripts I make for my YouTube
• Books — books I want to read, my TBR list, background info for the blog or for a Youtube video

As you may know, much of my mental well-being is created through my productivity. For me, it’s about having a sense of dignity and pride in what I do. it gives me a lot of joy to be able to be productive. And yes, I am still a productivity nerd. But I’m proud to be that kind of nerd.