- Hey everyone.
It's me, Hallease, endeavoring to persevere as always.
If you're new here,
I make videos about my chaotic, good life.
Consider subscribing, it's Monday.
So that means it's time for another Monday motivation.
This Monday motivation actually comes in response
to one of my Patreon producers asking me a question.
Essentially asking how I stay organized
as a video producer and production company owner,
working on multiple projects at a time.
So, thank you Charletta for the question.
Let's get right into it.
("Lemon Wedge in the Sky")
For those of you who don't know,
Monday motivations are my private, weekly videos
for Patreon producers only,
but every now and then I'll open 'em up to everybody
so you can see.
It's a way to check in with me once a week consistently
every Monday because on my YouTube,
on my Instagram I'm not consistent at all,
and so the Patreon provides a way for me
to be consistent with people
and what I usually do is cover things around owning
and running a production company,
personal things I'm working through,
ideas that I am considering doing on the channel
whether it be to Instagram or to YouTube as well.
So, if you're interested, check it out.
Patreon.com/hallease.
Let's get into this.
So, the way I stay organized is two-fold.
I used to be very digital about it,
but now I've learned that actually being very analog
about it is better for me,
and I kind of do a combination of the two.
Week to week I keep a bullet journal.
This one I got from Creators for Change
which I was apart of last year.
I'll link to the bullet journal overview,
the guy who invented this concept of the bullet journal.
I'll link to his video where he describes how to do it,
and after trying it for a couple of months,
actually for all of 2019 so far,
I've learned to do it a specific way.
So I don't do, and again,
this will make sense if you watch his video,
but I don't do a future log at all
and I don't waste time doing the index.
So, at the beginning of each month
in my bullet journal I will put all
the things I know officially that I'm doing for that month.
You list all the numbers and then the days of the week
for each date and you can kind of at glance
see what you're doing for the month.
I do that and then on the right side
I do what my actual goals for the month are,
and then at the bottom I do what my goals
for the year are.
So every month I'm kind of remembering
what I'm trying to accomplish for the year.
It's almost like subconsciously seeing
how does that align with what I'm accomplishing this month?
The big thing is, the way I do it
is every Monday I pretty much know
what I need to do for that week by Monday
which is why I do the Monday motivations.
So every Monday I list them all,
and essentially as my week keeps progressing,
slowly but surely they get knocked out
and I cross them off.
So at the end of each day after I've crossed them off,
I see which ones have been moved to Tuesday,
which ones have been moved
to Wednesday until I finally get them done.
I'm also big on color coordinating.
So for just general tasks, they're usually in black.
Phone calls, meetings are usually in red.
Notes, in my bullet journal I'll also put notes
from calls or notes about maybe a video that I'm,
not necessarily scripting,
but I wanna make sure
that I say certain things in the video.
So, notes for a video or something like
that are usually in purple.
The other thing I do is I will incorporate stickies.
Which is why I actually usually like to have a journal
that comes with one of those little opening flaps
in the back and I can hold my stickies there
so I don't have to worry about them.
I usually actually really like to go through each morning.
It's usually the first thing I do
is see what I actually got accomplished the day before,
and then writing down what is actually carrying over
to that day because it helps me just kind of
set my intentions for the day.
It helps keep me grounded on what I'm actually trying
to get through.
I feel like just having these lists
help me to stay just on track,
and also when to just take a break
or not stress things so much.
Last week, for example,
I noticed that I really only had two major things
I needed to get done
which was an outline for the show,
and a document for another client,
and I saw that those are the two majors things
I needed to get done.
By Wednesday it allowed me the ability
to be like, oh, I can kind of
take a self care day a little bit.
And I just went and did some hot yoga in the morning.
I kind of focused on me a little bit,
thought about doing some more stuff
for the channel a little bit.
It just kind of gave me that space to realize, oh,
I'm on top of my stuff.
I can take time and recharge creatively,
if that makes sense.
When I notice that I'm starting to get to something that
maybe it's been a week, a week and a half,
and I haven't done it yet
and it's not something that actually needs
to get done quickly or in a timely manner,
then the way I do my future log is digital.
I put it in Google Tasks
which is part of your calender, Google Calender.
And I just put it at the beginning
of the next month and so that way on the first
of the next month when I'm resetting up my bullet journal,
the task, it pops up on my phone and I see, oh yeah,
I was trying to think about looking
into adding super phone access to my Patreon
and I hadn't done that yet.
It's on here, let me add that.
Do I wanna add that to my monthly goal
and to look into that and do it or whatever
or do I wanna maybe just push it to the next month again?
There we go, and so that's what I do.
Once I've realized that there are things
in my bullet journal that really just don't need
to happen this month and I can just push them
to next month, I add them to Google Tasks.
For those of you with iPhones, reminders.
That's a thing.
That's how I just manage my life week to week.
One thing I will say about the bullet journal
is I do not bullet journal my weekend.
I started doing that at the beginning of the year
and then it was like, wow, I'm really taking
a little too much control of my life
because I'm the type of person
where that is painfully productive, like scary productive.
And I've learned that, watching other people exist,
that I'm a little scary.
And it can teeter into obsessive.
And I really have also learned
to step away after six or seven p.m.,
and to really set an intention,
if I'm working late, there's an intention,
a very specific intention for why I'm working late
and then I am going to not work late again
for X amount of time
which is something you really have to do
when you own your own thing
because there's not a clock in, clock out.
It's just the thing you're doing.
For projects themselves,
what I do is I use a Google Spreadsheet.
This is a spreadsheet template that I learned
from being a full-time video producer for a video agency.
That agency made way more videos, oh my God.
They made way more videos than what I'm doing right now,
but I find that it still helps
and I update this Google Spreadsheet,
I would say every two weeks 'cause the projects
that the company gets hired for
lasts a little bit longer.
They last a couple months generally.
The other thing that's really good
about having the spreadsheet as well
is that at a glance I can actually start
to see, whoa, I'm doing the most.
Don't need to take on anymore projects for a while.
I need to finish some of these,
like get some of these off of the company's plate, you know?
And that's a really good thing too to see
because it just visually shows you like, okay,
I've currently, technically got five videos in production
on top of what I'm doing personally on here.
Hallease, sit down.
Now this is just a spreadsheet in Google Sheets
that I've altered a lot to fit my specific business
and how I run it including working
with contractors and things like that,
but at it's base I think it's something
that can be universally used across a lot
of different business types, especially if your business
is more sort of service project focused.
So, what I'll do is, for the Patreon producers
that are part of these Monday motivations,
via Patreon I'll make sure to link to a clean version,
if you will, of it so that way you can download it,
save as, do your own thing with it,
and the beautiful thing is,
as you probably keep growing and adjusting,
you'll realize, oh, I don't really need the color coding.
I actually need this.
Again, these are my Monday motivations.
I do them every Monday for Patreon producers only,
but every now and then, I open 'em up to everybody else.
So, if you're interested
in becoming a producer of the channel,
head over to my Patreon, patreon.com/hallease.
At the five dollar level you get access
to these videos and you can ask me questions
and I will answer them.
Sometimes, as you can see, making a whole video about it.
In the comments below if you have additional tips
on how you run your business and how you stay organized
and on top of it, please let us know.
Don't hold back.
Give and it will come back to you, good measure,
pressed down, shaken together,
running over, poured into you.
I'm Hallease.
Patreon producers, I will see you again on Monday.
Everyone else, I'll see you when I see you.