My Simple Productivity System (for Normal People)

If you ever watched a productivity video and you thought to yourself, this is all really great, but I don't have time to build all this out while juggling my life and back-to-back zoom calls. You're definitely not alone. So I run this YouTube channel, my own full-time business, and before this, my full-time job, while being a parent and everything else in between. My husband also works for himself. So our lives are busy to say the least, but we love what we do. So it's not the busyness that's the issue, but how we can make sure we can get the most important things done and being organized. And I've tested a lot of the bigger systems that work for others. While they're all really brilliant and really very impressive. I just felt like it didn't work for me in my day-to-day life as I managed so many things as a working parent. So I stripped it all down to what actually works for me as a normal person in everyday life. It's something really simple, something I could use every day, even on days when everything feels a bit chaotic and just all over the place. If you've been there, you know what I mean? So it's a three-step simple productivity system that helps me manage work, home life, my content creation, and my own brain without really over-complicating it. All right. So step number one is simply called note. And that is to catch everything that you can think of in the moment. And this is where everything starts. So whenever something pops into my head and I'm sure you have the same experience, it could be when you're waiting in line to get your coffee or you're running to catch your train, or it could be an idea, a reminder, something that you need to do. I like to write it all down. And then I can relax knowing that it's saved in one central place without overthinking about it all day. And eventually probably forget about it. Because honestly, our brains are terrible filing cabinets. So they're great for creativity, but not for remembering when it's your daughter's school trip on a Thursday or that email you forgot to reply to. Both happened to me many times. So I stopped trusting my brain will remember it all. So I keep a notion inbox page pinned to my phone. And that way when I'm on the train or walking home from school drop-offs, or even just between sets, the gym, I can quickly record it and just type in my phone before it disappears. By the way, I included a link to get this notion page for free. So check the link out in the description. So now moving on to step two, which is to sort. And that is once a day, usually in the morning before I start a deep work session or before I open my laptop, I open my notes inbox and just sort through everything I captured and I separate this inbox page into a few simple categories. So professional, personal, digital admin, physical admin calls, and also order. And thanks to the author of Uptime, Laura May Martin for the inspiration behind these categories. So professional is for anything work related. It could be a client workshop coming up that I need to prepare for, or maybe video scripts that I need to write for this YouTube channel. And personal digital admin is for anything that's personal that needs to be done on my computer, like booking my daughter's summer camps, or booking the hotels for our upcoming summer holiday. And the physical admin is anything that needs me to do in person. So for example, like popping into the post office, the send off packages and calls are just what it is, but I need reminders for myself to call the dentist, to get a haircut appointment and the orders or anything that needs to be purchased. So we do our meal planning and food shopping once a week to be delivered to us because I find that going to the supermarket each day, feeling lost on what to cook can be such a waste of time. So we do it once a week on a Sunday night. And that's when I also check this list for anything else I need to order online, like new shoes for my daughter, because apparently she's going through a growth spurt at the moment or just any trash bags or things that we need to refill at home. And the real pro tip for this is that while you're sorting, this is where you can turn your scattered thoughts into actual tasks or next steps. So here's an example. So let's say school trip, it becomes signing permission slips by Wednesday or a newsletter idea gets moved to my content calendar list. And then dentist, it gets added to my calls list and then flagged for Friday to make sure I call and actually make the appointment. So doing this way really allows me to automatically separate my to-dos and make it really easily approachable on how to really address each area of my life as the next action step. It's also quicker because it just takes 10 minutes a day and it makes everything feel so much more manageable. And for me, instead of carrying this mental list around all day, now I know exactly where everything lives. And while we're talking about the topic of sorting through ideas and making them actionable, I want to tell you about Gamma, who's also the sponsor of today's video. So you know how sometimes you have all your thoughts down, but turning that into something presentable, it will take hours. And I recently had to create a training deck for a client. I only had a tiny window of time between meetings and school pickups to really work on my first draft. So I dropped my outline to Gamma. And in just less than a few minutes, it turned into a clean structured presentation draft. And now I can work with this first version and it helped me to speed up the whole process of completing my entire presentation. I think honestly it's like having a designer and a copy editor built into your workflow. So if you're building proposals, presentations, or even just a pitch for your next big idea, Gamma can really help you to go from idea to completing your task very quickly. If you want to try it out, head to the link in my description. It's free to get started and it might help you save hours on your next presentation. And let's now move on to step number three, the one that makes the real difference and that is schedule. So doing the action needed for each thing on my list by scheduling a time for it. Because let's be honest, if something doesn't have a time or place, it probably isn't getting done. You probably have a list of things that keeps on getting carried over and over each week. And if you haven't really scheduled a time for it to get it done, you will see this continue forever, especially given my own experience. So after I sorted through everything, I'll go into my Notion weekly planner or sometimes just go straight into Google calendar and block in time to actually do the task. So this is the key part because you're not just organizing your life. You're actually making time for what really matters in your schedule. So for example, I'll block 45 minutes on Wednesday mornings to batch fill my content. And then I'll set a reminder on Tuesday evenings to pack my daughter's school trip back and also sign that permission slip. So we don't have to be late on the actual day. And I'll put call the dentist into my admin hour on Friday afternoon. So we'll actually get done during that hour. And at the end of the day, even things shift because life, it happens, right? It's not rigid. It's in the system and I can just move it, but not forget about it. So that's it. That's the system. It's very simple. It works because it's simple. And as Greg McGill said in his book, essentialism, you can do anything, but not everything. And honestly, it's the only system I stuck to for more than a year. And I use it every single day through school runs, content deadlines, family life, and running a business. So if there's anything that you have questions about on this system or you resonated with this video, I'd love to know your experience in the comment section below. And you might also enjoy this video on how I use the systems in my life to achieve my goals. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one.