Transcription
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of Manifest with Tory D Simone. I'm your host, Tori D Simone, and today we are getting nitty-gritty, down to the basics of how I personally plan and organize my life for maximum productivity. I'm telling you every single thing that I do, every single app that I use, every single product that I use, the methods that I use, some hacks that I use to really maximize my days so that I can get the most out of my days without feeling burnt out or stressed at the end of the day. Everything has a time, everything has a place, everything has a reason why it gets done, and I'm going to share everything with you guys today.
This episode, if you guys are listening audio only, might sound a little bit different. I'm using different mics, and I definitely recommend to watch this episode on my YouTube channel, which I will link down below. I'm uploading this on my main YouTube channel, which is at Tori Simone, so I'll link that down below. Um, but I'm using a different mic because I'm going to be using my hands a lot today, and I'm going to be demoing things on camera and stuff. So definitely recommend that this is a more visual episode, but if you guys want to listen to his audio, you absolutely can. You will get the same effect out of it, but I don't want to waste your time. I know how precious time is, so let's just get right into how to plan and organize your day and your life for maximum productivity.
All right, let's start off with some products and apps that I use. First off is the Notes app. I use it on my phone, my laptop, my iPad, and of course, because it's hooked up to the cloud, they sync across all platforms. That's amazing. Next up is, I use Google Calendar, and then within Google Calendar, I create little sub-calendars. I will get to that in a minute, but I personally love Google Calendar for the same reason that it also just syncs across all of my Google pages. So you just use like one Google username, and then it will sync on any device that you're on, and I love that so much.
Next up is a pen-to-paper weekly planner. This just means like a physical planner. Um, I don't use anyone special, I just use the Everyday Girl weekly planner. I got it at Target. Any planner that you guys like, it could be a daily planner, it could be a weekly planner, it could be a monthly planner. The planner doesn't matter, but I definitely use a planner. I've used daily in the past, I've used weekly in the past. It kind of just depends what phase of life I'm in, but I'm currently using a weekly planner. I also use sticky notes, just regular like Post-it notes. Doesn't really matter, it doesn't need to be fancy. Another thing I use is a blank notebook. I love having a blank notebook, which you guys will find out in a little bit. And lastly, I made these templates on Instagram that I love for tracking. I will link all those down below. They are totally free, you guys can screenshot them. I will get to them later on in this video, um, but that is going to be at the end. But those are the products and apps that I use.
So first up is, I have a master to-do list in the Notes app, and I want you to think of this as just like a running list of things to do. And normally, I have a list that is called "This Week," or I'll even have one that's called "Next Week," where I'll put to-dos for next week in there, or even I'll have ones that are like "Month of April, things to do," things like that. And this really is just so I can declutter my brain. If I think of random things like, "Oh, I need to call my mom," like I can write that in here, or "I need to invoice clients," like I can write that in here. And I normally mix both personal, work, workouts, like anything that I need to do that week, the upcoming week, the week following, like whenever, I will always put in this list. And then, yeah, I kind of just work off this. So just have a running to-do list that you add to all week whenever you think of like, "Oh, I need to do that," just put it in a running to-do list. Let your brain get emptied of it and then move on.
Okay, next up, Google Calendar is Bible. So I like to think of the Google Calendar as my Bible, my rough draft, and my catch-all. And a tip that I have is to make separate Google calendars for everything in your life, and then color code those Google calendars. So for example, over here to the left are all of my calendars that I have for Google, and they all have different colors. So these are all different calendars. The way that you make a Google Calendar is you just go down here to the bottom, and it just says "Add Calendar," and then "Create New Calendar," and you can make it really whatever you want, and then you just assign a color to it. So some of the, uh, some of the calendars that I have are like social life, birthdays, I do consulting work, content, me time, like I always like to schedule in like when I get my nails done, things like that, podcast. So it's just like all these random calendars. So what's really nice is that I can turn on and off separate calendars. So like if I don't want to see my podcasting schedule, I can just untoggle that calendar, and that comes off. If I just want to see social life, I can turn off everything else and then just look at my social life calendar. I could take it away, you know, things like that. So this to me is really, really helpful when it comes to planning out my life is having a different calendar for everything.
And in my Google Calendar, I will put down the appointments that I have right then and there. So like if I'm at the doctor's office and they're like, "Oh, do you want to schedule your next one?" "Yeah, sure." I can just pull out my phone and I can schedule like, "Doctor's appointment, Tuesday at 2 p.m." or "Man meeting, Monday 10 a.m." You can also make recurring events in Google Calendar. So if you have a meeting every Monday at 10:00 a.m., you can just put that as a recurring event, which that's really awesome. I used to track paydays, any dinners that I have with friends, like let's say dinner, Saturday 7:30 p.m. Anything like that goes into the Google Calendar. And this sort of begins to build the structure of my days. But then I also throughout the week will remember like certain very specific things that I need to do on certain days, and I put them as like an all-day event. So, so for example, if I have to edit a podcast episode, I will just put that on a Thursday because I know I normally like to edit on Thursdays. I just don't know what time yet, so I'll just put it as like an all-day event on Thursday, and then I'll go in later and kind of fine-tune when in the day I can go in and do that task.
Okay, so once you have your master to-dos and your Google Calendar all kind of rough drafted up, I then go in and I pick a day of the week and I plan out the following week. And for me, this typically happens on a Sunday night. So on Sunday night, I look at my master to-do list and my Google Calendar and I see what days of the week I'll have time to do my to-dos. This is when I also pull out my physical planner. And like I said, this is just like a weekly edition of a planner. This one I got from Target. It has a monthly layout, which honestly I don't use, and then it also just has like a weekly layout of little lines and then just weekly to-dos. You can really use any planner that speaks to you. Now, normally when I plan on a Sunday night, I'm much more ambitious on a Sunday night than I am like, let's say on a slow Wednesday afternoon when I'm a little tired. Plus, life happens, things change. So like what plans to be perfect on a Sunday night might not be your reality when Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday comes along, and life happens.
So this is where I like to plan out my to-dos with sticky notes. And this is what I call the sticky note method. So what I do with the sticky notes is I take one note per day and I put them in my weekly planner just like this. So if you guys are listening on audio, I'm just putting one sticky note on Monday, one sticky note on Tuesday, one sticky note on Wednesday, so on and so forth for the entire week. With all of my sticky notes in the planner, Google Calendar up on my laptop or my phone, and my master to-do list pulled up, this is when I will go in and start delegating out what tasks to do on what day. This is sort of where it gets really personal, and I can't tell you, you know, what to do is to do on what day because you know your schedule better than anyone else. So for example, on my weekly to-do list that I always have in my master running to-do list, I normally have things like edit a podcast episode, film a YouTube video, invoice clients. Like those are three things that typically always come up. Edit a podcast video normally takes me about four hours. So I'll start to look at my day, see when the video has to go live. So if it has a deadline, it obviously needs to be done before that deadline, and how much time it takes. So I need to look into my Google Calendar and kind of navigate around appointments that I have, schedules that I have, meetings that I have, and see when in my week do I have a four-hour time block to where I can get done a video podcast editing session or something like that. And let's say that day is on a Tuesday. So I'll go into my planner on my sticky note and I'll write down "edit podcast video." And now I just kind of go through my weekly to-dos and I do that for everything. So like Monday, we'll write down "plan content." Monday, we'll also do "reply to emails." And I'm also going to do that on Friday. I'm going to say, Thursday, we'll "upload a video." On Wednesday, we're going to "invoice clients." I need to "meal prep," so I'm going to do that on Sunday. And I'm going to "grocery shop" on Friday. And let's say Tuesday. So you guys get the gist. I'm looking at my Google Calendar, seeing when I have time to do things, I'm looking at my master to-do list, and now I'm just scheduling out when I can do the to-dos in my weekly calendar.
And now this is probably my biggest tip that I have, and that is, once you have all of your to-dos delegated out on your sticky notes, this is when you're going to time block your to-dos into your calendar. So I'm just using a random week in September as an example. So I'm going to look at my to-dos. I know that on Monday, I have to plan my content, which is roughly going to take about, let's say, two hours. And I know that I'm most creative in the morning, right? So I'm going to make right here from 10 to 12, and I'm going to write "plan content." And then I'm going to go down here and I'm going to switch my calendar to my content calendar and then click save. And then I also know this day I want to do some admin work. So let's give myself an hour right here after that of admin work. And I like to write in the description what exactly that work is. So for example, this one is "invoice clients, reply to emails, and check inventory." And then in my calendar, I put this under my work calendar and then I click save.
I use this for literally my whole life. So not only do I do this for all of my work things, but I also do this for all of my personal life things too. If I know that on Monday, I really want to make sure that I read 30 minutes of my book, let's say I'm going to do that after dinner. So 6:30, I'm going to write "read," and then in my calendar, I have a calendar called "me time," and I just put that in there. If I want to make sure that I definitely have time for eating, like scheduling a lunch break for yourself, I might put "lunch" in there and again, put that under me time and then save. If I know that I definitely want to go to a Pilates class, maybe I'll do 7:00 a.m. Pilates, and I have a workout calendar, so I will time block that into a workout and then click save. Something for me that is important because I film a lot is I want to make sure that I have time to get ready, so I look presentable on camera and stuff. So maybe before I plan my content, from 9 to 9:45, I will get ready, and that will be like a me time sort of thing. And then you just do this throughout the week. Like I know on Tuesday, I want to go grocery shopping. I normally like to do errands in the middle of the day, so I'll do grocery shopping on this day, and I have a whole to-do calendar, so I'll just put that under to-do. Let's say Tuesday night I'm going out for sushi with friends. So I will write that here, "sushi with friends." And then this is also something that I like to do. I have that on my social life calendar is if I know the restaurant is 30, I guess, 45 minutes away, I will write "drive," and then I have a travel calendar so that I have my commute time in there as well. And if I need to, you know, get ready before, and I want 45 minutes to get ready for dinner, I can write "get ready." And then this just really helps you plan your whole life out. And on Tuesday, if I need, you know, four hours to edit a podcast, I can just write that here, "edit podcast," and then put that on my podcast calendar.
Okay, so you don't have to fill every single second of your day with something to do, but putting your to-do in your calendar as a time block seriously is the key to being productive and maximizing your time. This is not new, this is not revolutionary, but it is life-changing once you implement this strategy into planning your life.
So once I have my sticky notes planned out, my calendar time blocked, then when the day finally comes, so let's say it's Monday morning, and I did all this Sunday night. On Monday morning, I will rip off this sticky note and I will go in and I will write down everything that's on the sticky note onto my to-dos and maybe an agenda over here on the left side of things. And the reason that I do this is because like, let's say on Monday, I didn't get to do my reply to my emails, but it's something that I definitely want to do later in the week. So I can scratch it off of the sticky note on Monday and then just add it to Tuesday's sticky note so that on my actual like weekly planner, it doesn't have all these scribble marks all over it. And you know, things change. Like you can make the sticky notes as messy as you want them to be, but then when it's in your actual planner, it looks nice and clean and put together. That's me just being a perfectionist, but it is the method that I really like to use. And it also lets you just be, you know, it lets life happen. It lets you be flexible. Things change, people change, feelings change. Shit. It's not a song. Um, but anyway, things happen. So I just really like doing the sticky note method. And then on the day of, writing down my actual to-dos from my sticky note and my agenda of my time blocking written down pen and paper, I don't know, it just feels good to me.
I definitely want to give an honorary mention to a blank notebook. Blank notebooks for me are so important. They seriously are a catch-all for me. It's my brain dump, it's my journal, it's just somewhere where if I have free-floating thoughts and I want them to go somewhere, I like to put it in a notebook rather than the Notes app on my phone. Don't get me wrong, my Notes app on my phone definitely has like those frantic moments where like one note it's like, "I need to get my life together," and then the note under of it, it's like, "Grocery list." And you know what I mean? Like it's just like crazy. Like those kind of thoughts, my notebook sees a lot of those thoughts. Like what's inside of this notebook is crazy, but what I like about what's inside of this notebook is that it's free-flowing thoughts, um, that I don't have to go onto my phone on the Notes app for because typically anytime I open up my phone, I immediately get distracted, sidetracked, or I lose my train of thought all together. And then I'm like, "Oh my God, what was it that I was thinking?" And then I get really annoyed. So I like having it in my notebook, and I can just write down random thoughts. But I also use this as a journal, I use it as like a drawing pad. I just love a random notebook. Um, I use pieces of paper. I just always have like something that's a catch-all where I can write down my thoughts and I don't have to use my Notes app for that.
And then last but not least, I created these daily templates. I have three of them currently available. One of them is a daily intentions that has a to-do list, an agenda, a health and wellness tracker. I have another one that's a weekly habit tracker, and I have another one that's like a morning routine sort of tracker thing. So I will link all of them down below. They are all on my Instagram. All you have to do is go on to my highlights and screenshot it. You can fill them in. I like to post these every single day on my story. You guys seem to really like when I post it too. You guys like to know like what I'm up to, what I'm doing, how I structure my day, things like that. But I also love it when you guys do it and then you post it and you tag it. I normally like to retweet as many as I can. Um, and I like reading what you guys are up to. And it also keeps all of us accountable of just being productive and things of that sort. And if you guys use the methods that I talk about today, those templates are literally like primed for that. So it's your to-dos, your daily time blocking, your agenda, all of that good stuff that I talked about today is in those daily templates. And again, they're totally free. There's literally no catch. You can use them if you want, you don't have to. I'm not selling you on anything.
And that's what I do. It's a system that works for me. It's very efficient, and I do this with literally, like I said, everything: content, stride, personal, workouts. It all gets planned, and it's very, very efficient, and I'm able to really maximize my day. Here's what I will say with the time blocking: when you do the time blocking, you have to honor it like a meeting, right? Like if you know that in your time block, you have 3 p.m., you're going to go grocery shopping, don't schedule a call at 3 p.m. Don't say yes to going to sushi with your friends at 3 p.m. Like, you have that during that time of that day for a specific reason. So honor it like a meeting, honor it like an appointment. It's literally a life appointment for yourself. This is the method that I use every single week. I love this method. It's seriously has allowed me to do a lot with my life and allowed me to be fully invested in things because when I am time blocking, I am like 100% in the zone of that one task at that one time. So it's helped me a ton. I hope this helps you guys a ton. But yeah, it's not too crazy. Master to-do list, Google Calendar, weekly planner, sticky note method. It's really those four. And then the blank notebook and the daily templates are just like added on bonus for fun.
So that is exactly step-by-step how I plan and organize my life for maximum productivity. I hope this video was helpful for you guys. If you did, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and to this podcast. Whether you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please follow it, rate the show five stars, and share it with a friend. Put it on your story. It helps the show so much, and I could not be more appreciative for you guys. Thank you so much. I love you guys so much, and I'll talk to you all next week. Bye guys.