Transcription
Between running a six-figure video editing agency, being a full-time YouTuber, traveling for like six months out of the year, and attempting to keep up my hobbies like learning Spanish, doing yoga, and reading, I got a lot going on and I need an effective productivity system to make it all happen.
I imagine you probably have a lot going on as well, which is why you're here, so welcome. I thought I'd share my five essential rules for productivity for content creators and, look, I'll just say this now, you're not gonna like number four, you're not gonna want to hear it, but trust me, you need to hear it. Sometimes tough love is necessary and I have a feeling that you've probably been neglecting this.
So if you're struggling to stay consistent or to grow your audience online or to simply balance all of that with living your life, which is so fair, these tips are for creators who want to turn their content into a thriving business. And I firmly believe that if you want to turn content creation into your job, you have to start treating it like one. So if that's you, keep on watching.
And thanks to Notion for sponsoring a portion of today's video.
Rule number one, you need structure. Structure in my opinion is the basis for all success. People think that being a content creator is about having inspiration all the time or always feeling motivated to create, but it's not. It's about structure and routine. Contention and motivation are fickle creatures. They come and go, you don't know when they're gonna be there. Routine and structure are reliable. I know it sounds so boring, but it is true.
My personal approach is to have a weekly routine where different days of the week have their own focuses for my creator work. Basically, I have a set of recurring tasks that happens each day. So, for example, Wednesday is the day that I always sit down and write the scripts for my YouTube videos. It's basically a way of making content creation part of your weekly routine.
For this to be most effective though, you need to go through and identify your tasks as either deep work or what I'm gonna call surface work. Surface work can be done in those 15-minute breaks that you find throughout your day where you might have otherwise picked up your phone and scrolled. Examples might be posting an Instagram story, replying to your comments or DMs, or posting a reel or a TikTok from a draft that you've already set up, or even writing down a couple of ideas or drafting out a script for a short-form video.
Deep work tasks on the other hand require at least an hour chunk of time minimum to get them done. So we're talking filming a YouTube video, editing a YouTube video, or writing a long-form script.
Okay, so once you've got that figured out, here's what you're gonna do. Start by setting up your existing weekly routine or schedule in Google Calendar. So you're gonna add in your current work schedule or shifts, any regular workout classes you're attending, standing commitments you have with friends or family. Once that's done, you're gonna add in your deep work time blocks. So if you decided that you're gonna post one YouTube video every week, you gotta make sure you put the blocks in for writing that script, filming the video, and editing it. Those type of deep work tasks are simply not gonna get done unless you schedule them.
Finally, I recommend adding those surface work tasks to a kind of ongoing to-do list. I'm personally not a big fan of scheduling my days out down to the 10-minute chunk; that just feels a bit suffocating to me. I'd rather just keep a list of like two to three things that I know I need to get done at some point during the day that I can return to when I have a free 10 minutes here or there.
And remember, this schedule that you've made, that's a commitment that you now have with yourself. If you wouldn't cancel on a friend that you set up a coffee date with, then you shouldn't cancel on yourself either because you and your future self and your dreams deserve that time commitment.
So rule number two, if it doesn't get written down, it doesn't happen. I absolutely live by this rule. When I think of something that I have to do, I immediately write it down in my Notion because I know if I don't, it's never gonna happen.
Speaking of Notion, why don't I show you how I have it all set up? So first up, I have my dashboard here. This is where my entire life runs from. I have this set up in a basic six-grid format. So all of my weekdays and then a little someday section. Also, yeah, all my titles are in Spanish. It's a little like micro-study method for Spanish. I've created these preset buttons for each day of the week, which I love. So basically, how I plan out my weeks is on Friday, after everything's checked off, pretty much what I'll do is just go through and select everything that I finished and delete it. That's very satisfying. And then all I have to do is for each day of the week, just press my little preset button and it will generate the tasks that I try to do those days. This is basically the task list version of having your weekly routine, right? Like I planned out what work I'm going to do each day and then I just have these buttons auto-populated for me when I'm planning out my week. Of course, you know, things can shift and change and you can be flexible. So then you can easily just grab a task and, you know, move it over to a different day if you need to.
The other essential part of my Notion system is my content calendar database. This database is the absolute heart of my content strategy. So I've got all of my upcoming content plotted out and I love viewing it in calendar mode like this, but I also have my list view right below it of all of my upcoming sponsor deadlines. And these are the two that I look at the most often. So I keep them both on the page like this. But of course, there's so many different ways that you can view a database in Notion. So I also have like my YouTube schedule, which is just like the list view version of the calendar that we were just looking at. I also have separate lists for like my YouTube ideas. So videos that I haven't started making yet, I haven't scheduled, but I'm thinking about doing them. And then the same thing goes for my short-form content.
Recently, Notion's released some new AI features as well. And the one that I've been testing out is the meeting notes feature. What's really cool about this is Notion will automatically take your meeting notes for you no matter what platform you use. So whether you're using Zoom or Google Meet like I do, it'll transcribe what you're chatting about in your meeting. And I can even highlight action items for you to complete after the fact, which I love. Honestly, Notion has so many helpful features for me as a content creator, but also for me running my business, Creatorly Media. It's hard to even list them all because it runs deep. But you can explore all of the amazing features that Notion has to offer when you sign up for free for yourself using the link in the description. I have been a die-hard Notion fan for like six years now. I literally run my entire business off of this app. Can you imagine doing my work without it? So truly the biggest shout out to Notion, not only for making my business function, but for sponsoring today's video as well.
Rule number three, decrease your scroll time. It's important to note here that I said scroll time, not screen time, because let's be honest, when you're a content creator, even when you're creating things and you're not consuming, you're still looking at a lot of screens. There's no getting away from that. But the honest truth is you need to spend less time gathering inspiration. Yes, I know that's how you justify it to yourself. If we're honest, what you're really doing with all that scrolling is procrastinating and spending an unhealthy amount of time comparing yourself to other creators. And it's making you feel bad about yourself. And we don't want that. That's very counterproductive to producing good content.
So here's what you're going to do instead. First step, absolutely first step is to set up screen time limits on your phone. You don't need to listen to them, but you do need to allow them to annoy you a little bit. Personally, I have a 15-minute screen time limit on both Instagram and TikTok. What this means in practice is that both of these little icons are constantly grayed out with a little hourglass icon next to them on my phone because I max that out and more every day. I just checked my like screen time usage on my phone the other day and this hurt a little bit to realize, but on average, I'm spending like anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half on Instagram. It doesn't feel like I spend that much time on there, but I do. And you probably spend more time on there than you think too. And it's maybe not actually helping you with your creator stuff. But the point is, even if I'm spending an hour and a half on Instagram, I am being reminded every 15 minutes that time has passed. And it's a little bit of a hack to get you out of that infinite scroll situation where you've kind of forgotten how long it's been because it's reminding you.
Okay. So once you have that screen time limit set up in your phone settings, your next step is to find more intentional modes of inspiration: books, movies, magazines, physical media is so underrated. And especially when as a content creator, like I was saying, it's very hard to have non-screen time because even when you're being productive and you're creating, you're using a screen probably to do that. So if you can find physical media that's outside of the online screen world to find inspiration from, I just feel like that's so valuable.
Returning briefly to the world of the internet, I also think places like Pinterest and YouTube can be really great. And the reason I categorize these differently from Instagram and TikTok is because I just kind of personally think that they're less addicting. Pinterest is borderline depending on how you use it, but I just feel like I've never gone on there and been on there for more than like 10 minutes at a time. Cause I kind of go, I find what I'm looking for, and then I leave. YouTube is a place where you kind of come, you select what you want to watch with the exception of shorts. Shorts is no different than reels and TikTok, but regular long-form YouTube, you kind of seek out stuff, you choose to watch it, and then you either leave or stay. So personally, I don't struggle as much with like losing all of this time to those apps. And I think that they can be great places to gain inspo.
Finally, and this is probably the most important rule about reducing scroll time and your creativity, you want to create before you consume as much as you can. It's honestly kind of cliché to even say that at this point, but I want to encourage you to, before you try to scroll to get a bunch of ideas, even just try to challenge yourself to come up with a few concepts of content ideas, inklings of a plan that you can keep in the back of your mind while you scroll, because then you can use what you see in your scrolling to help you shape and maybe format those ideas that you already had. If you just go in completely blank and you're trying to get inspiration, you might end up kind of copying people or just doing something that's really cookie-cutter or has been done before. But if you can just sit with your phone off and be with your own brain, thinking about the audience that you want to create for and the kind of stuff you want to talk about, even if you have a few bullet point notes of what kind of stuff you might want to make, then when you go ahead and scroll, you can figure out what are the current trends? What are the kind of formats or setups that I can use that would take these concepts that I've come up with and package them in a way that's going to really resonate with my audience in this exact moment?
Just to give you like a really practical example of this, let's just say I'm sitting and I'm thinking, you know, I really want to make a piece of content for Instagram that talks about the importance of perseverance and sticking to it as a creator, even if it takes a long time for you to grow. So I have that in the back of my mind. Then I go on Instagram and I see that a ton of people are making carousels right now that are showing their romantic relationships where the setup is, oh, how many months have you guys been together? And then the next slide says months. And then it starts counting down all the years they've spent together as a couple. Then my mind goes, oh, I've been wanting to talk about perseverance, how long it takes to become a content creator. I could do it in this viral carousel format. And there you have it. That is how you come to the online space with an idea already in mind. And then you gain inspiration about how to format it, how to package it in a way that's going to help it perform better. That is how I want you to approach your scrolling time, not just showing up to an app, scrolling, thinking, okay, eventually I'll come up with an idea, seeing what other people are doing. It's best if you can come up with some ideas and then just figure out how to package them based on what you see online and set those screen time limits. I'm so serious about that. I'm so serious.
Okay. We've arrived at rule number four, which I know you're going to hate, but I'm going to tell you, you've got to organize your files. My friends, my friends, listen, file organization is a cheat code for consistency as a content creator. I'm so serious about this. I know you're dreading sorting through your camera roll. Me too. I took thousands of photos on my three-week Euro summer trip. And the last thing I want to do is sort through like 10 very similar photos of me standing in front of the Eiffel Tower to try to decide which one looks best. But look, we just have to do that. We have to.
When you neglect to properly organize your photo and video content, you're basically throwing away future content opportunities. Let me give you an example of this. So on my phone, I have a folder called "Story Stock Photos," and basically it's a collection of aesthetic, if I do say so myself, about my own photography work, just pictures that I've taken that I think would work really well for a quick story post when I want to throw a little bit of text over top of it. There are some days when you're not feeling like taking a selfie, sitting at your desk for the thousandth time, but you do want to post something. You have a link to share. You have something to say. And so you can grab one of these images that you've neatly categorized away and use it again in the future.
Remember, as a content creator, the media you create, your photos and videos, are a valuable asset to your business. Like, if you think about it, if you created an image for a brand deal that you did and the brand wanted to use that in an ad, you would 100% charge them usage rights to use that image. Like, your content is worth money, right? So why would you just let it gather dust in like the background of your camera roll? Organize it, put it somewhere you can find it again in the future and treat it like it is a valuable asset.
Okay, so here's what you're going to do. Follow these steps. Write them down. This is what you're going to do. Okay, so first, back everything up. I personally like to use Google Photos for this, but there are several methods. Like, you could take all of your photos, put them onto an external hard drive. You can use iCloud if you want, whatever. You just want to back everything up so you don't permanently delete anything. The thing that I love about Google Photos is like, once you download the app and you get logged in, it's constantly backing up your camera roll. So it'll just keep it up continuously for you.
Okay, next, you're going to create albums in your photos app on your phone. Like I said, I have my "Stock Story Photos" album, but I also have albums based on category or theme like "Content Creator Photos," "Travel Photos," "Lifestyle," whatever. And then this is the hard part. It's going to take forever, but you're going to go through your camera roll, picking out images that you think, yeah, I could genuinely use this again. Like, I want easy access to this on my phone because I could post this to a carousel, I could put it in my story, and I want to be able to find it easily. Take those images, put them into a categorized album. Then, if you need to free up space on your phone, which I'm going to take a guess and say you do, we all do. Then you're going to go ahead and delete the rest. And the easiest way to do that is to go into the albums you created and you go into each of them individually, select all of the images in there, just hit "select all." And then if you tap on the three dots, you can press "hide." Basically, what this does is when you hide an image in your camera roll, it puts it into this password-protected hidden folder. And it's a really great way to save stuff from being mass deleted.
So once you've gone through all these different albums and you've hidden them, now they're going to look empty, but don't worry, those images are still there. They're just in your special like hidden folder. You're going to return to your recent section. So your full camera roll of everything, and you're just going to start selecting all of that. Unfortunately, there's no select all button. So you just have to like kind of tap and hold and wait until you've selected the thousands of images you're about to delete. And then you press delete, very anxiously, because you're like, has this all backed up? It has. Don't worry. And even if it hasn't, it'll be in your recently deleted for 30 days. But yeah, you're going to delete it. Now you'll have all of your best pieces of content that you plan to reuse in the future easily accessible on your phone.
Now, if like me, you don't primarily create content from your phone, if you're a laptop girly like myself, then you might want to go a step further and get an organizational system set up on an external hard drive. Okay, this is where my truly intense organization happens because I do edit all of my content, even my vertical social stuff, on my laptop. And I highly recommend using this system as well because it's served me well for the past like five years now. Let's just take a look at my short-form folder, for example. The most important thing to note, I have a different folder for the different months of the year. So let's just take a look at January. Inside of these monthly folders, I create folders for each different piece of social content that I'm making. I label the folders by the date that I intend to post them. That way, they all end up in this beautiful chronological order. And it's super easy to go back and find stuff as well. Like, for example, if I want to find a specific B-roll clip from a reel that I posted on January 2nd, for example, well now I can go back and find those clips right here just by going off of the posting date.
So as I film stuff for these different pieces of content, I will move those over to my hard drive. So I just like Airdrop them from my phone to my external hard drive, then I delete them off of my phone. So they're not clogging up space on there anymore because generally, they're really specific to this piece of content. And then I edit stuff on my laptop and I Airdrop it back to my phone when I'm ready to post it. So yeah, if you're struggling to keep track of all the content that you film, I would highly recommend approaching it this way: a folder for each month just so that I don't have one for the entire year that's like super long with a million folders. So it breaks it up that way and then you can label them with the date, a little bit of a title so you know what it is. And then it's, you know, super easy to find those clips again later.
Rule number five, life is more important than content. If you watch a lot of videos on YouTube about productivity, then you're probably going to hear a lot of men. And yes, let's be honest, it's mostly men saying that you need to carefully guard your time for work. Don't allow any distractions. Lock down your calendar so nobody books any meetings and make sure nothing gets in the way of your work. I'm going to be honest, I kind of hate this vibe. I just kind of think this approach of like, my time is only for me and in particular for making money for myself. I feel like it's almost a selfish approach to time.
My personal mentality around productivity is that I want to get the most done in the most efficient manner so that I have extra time to dedicate to things outside of work. To me, the whole point of entrepreneurship is having flexibility in my schedule. That's why I love doing this kind of thing. I mean, it's fun, it's creative. I've always dreamed of making videos for my job. Like, that's so cool. But I think now that I'm like fully in adulthood, I realize the biggest benefit is the flexibility.
To give you a real-life example, I feel like this hustle mentality says, you know, if somebody reaches out to you and wants to meet up for a coffee and that meeting is not going to meaningfully contribute to you growing your business or making money in any way, then don't do it. Like, guard that schedule, guard your time because you should be using your time efficiently to make money for you. Whereas my approach to productivity says, use the tools and strategies that you have to work as efficiently as possible so that when someone from your life reaches out and says, like, hey, you want to meet up for a coffee? You can say yes, because your schedule is flexible enough and you've already got that work done. So you can go and do that because in my life, like maintaining relationships and building your community, I see that as just as important as productivity and working and making money.
My highest career goal, honestly, is just to make enough money to support myself, get to travel when I want to travel, donate to the causes I care about, and then have extra time in my life that I can go and make a meal for a friend who's recently had a baby, or go help out at my mom's restaurant, pick somebody up from the airport, or volunteer. And I'll be honest that in the past, the way I approached work has not always meant that I had time for this because I've been hustling so hard to grow this business. But I think what I've really realized is like, all of that stuff is so important. And so why would you create a job for yourself where you're so tied down that you can't even like take time away to do all those things in life?
So for me, that's what productivity is about. Not maximizing every single minute of your life to try to squeeze the most monetary value out of it, but instead being efficient about your work so that you can get it done quickly and be able to do other stuff. And if you want the same for yourself, I think it's just important to be conscious of not letting that like hustle culture mentality take over. Because I really think that's kind of the default approach to business, to let it take over your entire life and to think about things in terms of maximizing everything for the business. Instead of my approach is kind of maximizing the business to make my life better. That's how I see it.
Sometimes, and I'll be honest, this was something that was difficult for me to come to terms with, this also means outsourcing some of your work. You don't have to feel like you're in this alone. I feel like for so long, I thought it was like this sign of strength that I did everything by myself for my business, from editing my own YouTube videos to doing all my own bookkeeping. And obviously, there's a time and place when you need to do things solo at the beginning, but eventually, it just kind of became like, Katie, why are you putting yourself through this? Like, you realize you don't have to do it all. I think hustle culture kind of taught me that it made me look better or more impressive or more productive if I did all of these things myself instead of just like asking for help. So don't be afraid to do that. It's not a sign of failure to get other people on your team and helping you. It's a very reasonable way to balance your work and life.
And if you're looking for video editing help in particular, my team of editors at Creatorly Media would love to edit your YouTube videos. It's just such a lovely little team of women who are as passionate about the creator world as me. And yes, my team edits the videos on this channel now, in addition to my vlog channel. If you ever watch that, you want to see examples of travel vlogs that we can edit. There you go. I can wholeheartedly recommend their work to you and all those details are at creatorlymedia.com.
If you want to see how these five productivity rules play out in practice, you could watch this recent vlog where I show you my weekly Instagram content creation workflow, or at least the workflow as it was before I left on this trip. As you can tell, I'm not home right now. I'm in Scotland. These things are always ebbing and flowing. It's okay for your routines to shift and, you know, mold to fit your life as it currently is in the moment. So this is just one example of what your weekly workflow could look like. So you could check that out next.
Anyway, as always, thank you so much for watching. I hope you're having adventures and following your dreams and I'll catch you in the next video.