How to Plan & Organize Your Life

I am NOT a master organizer, actually, I’m probably one of the least organized people by nature, but when you’re running a business, managing a couple of crazy kids and other random things, you kind of have to at least fake the organization skills. In this post, I want to tell you exactly how to  Plan and Organize your life based on the formula I use.

It must be the whole ENFP thing, but I am NOT organized by nature but a few years ago, my calendar started getting more and more booked up, I added having to coordinate a podcast with a co-host AND guests, I started being asked to be part of summits and guest posts, etc and I HAD to figure it out.

Here’s my system, copy it if you need it because organization can make or break a business.

If you’d rather watch this post than read it, here’s your chance.

1. First things first, I like to plan by quarter. So I take a look at the next 3 months, either by pulling up a Trello board, a Google Calendar or even pulling out a giant paper calendar – the method doesn’t matter at this point, just find a calendar that allows you to see the next three months and go for it.
2. Put in any non-negotiables. Kid’s appointments, YOUR appointments, your gym time. Block off the spots in your calendar for LIFE things.
3. Schedule out the days you plan to work ON your business, not in it. To truly grow, we have to work on our own businesses by creating content, maintaining our social profiles and websites, etc and, if we’re not conscious about it, we can be forced to work that into the fringe time so I like to block this off first, before client work.
4. Now, schedule out your client time and block off days to take calls or work on client work (or whatever your business work looks like).
5. Create multiple calendars that all feed into one master calendar. On Google Calendar, you can have as many possible calendars as you want – one that’s for personal commitments, one you share with your husband, one for client work, one for other commitments, etc – so use them so everything stays nice and organized and then feed them all into one master calendar (view video for example of this).
6. Lastly, if you commit to it put it on the calendar. Don’t waver. Don’t think you’ll remember, get.it.on.the.calendar.

An example of this in my own calendar include the fact that I ONLY take calls on Tuesday & Thursdays. Now, there are extenuating circumstances but, for the most part, that’s it. That way I can keep all of my calls on two days and not be constantly switching my brain from “call mode” to “work mode”. Another example here is that I stop my day at 1:00 every day to go to the gym (me time) and then pick up my kids and be Mom.

Oh, one last note: KEEP IT DIGITAL.

I am the FIRST to be sad that I’m not currently using a pretty paper planner but it’s just not capable of keeping up with everything I have to do at all times and it doesn’t make things easy. Plus, what if I don’t carry it around and I am out at a coffee chat and need to book something, I’m screwed and/or working off memory. I hate to be the bearer of this but keep it digital if you can.

Organization has no perfect way but this is how I do it and hopefully, it helps you.