and then let me just roll my sleeves up before we start i would just like to point out that my
earrings today are a coffee bean and a coffee mug and that makes me very happy welcome back to the
bliss bean today i'm going to take you on a tour through my calendar which is an extension of my
brain because if something is not on my calendar it's probably not going to happen in real life i'm
going to show you how i take my calendar from this to this this is something that i do when
i'm doing my weekly planning it is but one step of that process so if you want to see the whole
weekly planning routine i do have a video on that but we are going to dive into the calendar so the
first calendar that i have is kind of the one that my life revolves around these days and that is my
class schedule so what i did for this was i went to blackboard which is like the online platform
that we use and i copied the link to the calendar and then i went to ical and i said new calendar
subscription you paste the link into there and then it will always like see those little wavy
things there that means that you're subscribed to a calendar that belongs to someone else
so any changes that happen on blackboard are automatically going to sync to my ical as well
so i definitely recommend doing this as opposed to like manually entering in your classes because
then even if your class schedule week to week is very consistent which mine is not something
might change and you might not notice it you won't update it on your calendar and then you're gonna
miss your class so this always stays updated it also includes the room number that i need to go
to the only thing that i don't like about it is that sometimes they will create these really long
events like this this was an enrollment period for what was this for the labs an enrollment period
for the labs that lasted literally two weeks it just kind of clutters up the calendar and when
you're subscribed to a calendar you can't delete or hide any individual event so that's my only
complaint usually it isn't a problem because before then okay we did have this before but
usually i would just have this really nice clean class schedule the next important calendar i have
is my personal events so i thrive on consistency that's why you see me eating breakfast at the
same time each day i like to have breakfast from 8 to 8 30 dinner from eight to about nine and then
lunch is a different story we'll get to that later um so i have these set as repeating events
so that it automatically populates in my calendar and it's just one less extra step to
do the personal calendar also includes any other personal commitments that i have so this week
for example that is my counseling appointment had my first counseling reporting today i'm visiting
this castle with friends this afternoon a meeting for school student government meeting i'm going
to madrid so i've got my bus ride i've got calls planned with friends next i have my work calendar
which usually doesn't involve a lot me and maia maia is my assistant we do have a weekly meeting
um i had two miscellaneous meetings at the beginning of the week and then another thing
i like to do is sort of use my calendar to remind me of things that i should be doing so you'll see
these events here these tasks don't have to happen at that exact time and date the important thing is
that it just appears on my calendar as a reminder that i should do it around then and then i can
move it maybe i'll do the weekly content refresh um friday before i leave and the monthly one
we can push that to monday and let me actually undo that because i don't know about that
when it comes to work one thing that has been saving me a lot of time is that six months ago
i started to work with a virtual assistant so some of you might have heard me talk about her i just
mentioned her in this video her name is maia she's fantastic so the sponsor of today's video is magic
magic is a place where you can find a dedicated virtual assistant for personal use for business
projects that you might have at an hourly rate or you can also hire a monthly assistant for
your business i was pretty reluctant to start working with an assistant in the beginning
and so i totally understand if you are just because like the bliss bean is my baby but
let me tell you once i got over that and actually started working with a virtual assistant it was
a game changer i knew that i would not have time once college started to do all of the things that
i used to do for the bliss bean and i knew that it just could not grow as much as i wanted it to
unless i got some help with it so these days maia helps me with like organizing emails editing and
uploading podcasts uploading videos brainstorming ideas for videos so many things and one thing i
want to emphasize is that there's no like rule book for how to work with a virtual assistant
a lot of youtubers for example the first thing that they outsource is video editing but for me
i love editing videos and i feel like my editing style is a very important part of my channel
and so i did things a different way i outsource different things and i've been so happy with what
the results have been i did not meet maia through magic i got lucky to meet her in a different way
but whatever project that you're looking for a virtual assistant for i definitely recommend
going to magic the link is in the description and see what magic might happen if you find
a virtual assistant to help you take that project to the next level alright so those three the
classes the personal and the work calendar those are like the pillars of my calendar then i have
a few other less important calendar so one of them is songkick song and there's no concerts happening
this week um songkick is a website where you can sign in through your spotify account and then
it'll automatically track upcoming concerts for all of the artists that you listen to
that are in specific areas that you select so i track concerts that are happening around madison
chicago and then madrid i have this exercise calendar and there's nothing on here so let me
just scroll back a few months back when i was at home i had a gym membership and i loved going to
group exercise classes this was a really nice way to keep track of those recurring events and just
see how they fit in within my schedule so that i could decide which classes i wanted to go to
the birthdays calendar is very nice and simple so all i do is i put in the person's name i set it to
an all-day event and then i have it repeat yearly basb is of course that i'm taking right now it's
called building a second brain it's actually i think it's glitching a little bit so this is just
the reality of digital calendar sometimes they do go a little bit wonky and you don't know why
so technical difficulties but maybe i'll get it working basically the way that i use this
is i would normally hide the calendar because i don't want to attend every single one of these
mentor sessions i think some of them in my time zone were like yeah in the middle of the night
and so instead what i would do is normally i would hide it but then when i was doing my sunday weekly
planning i would open it up and see okay which mentor sessions do i want to attend this week
and then i would basically um duplicate them to my personal calendar so for example what
is this frank's mentor session and then hide the original just like that finally
we get to the daily schedule calendar i just need a dramatic pause here so this is what makes my
calendar such an invaluable tool for me all of these other calendars basically show events that
i need to go to things that happen at a specific time the daily schedule calendar is how i plan
out how i'm going to spend the spaces in between all of the free time that i have so for example
this event homework i don't have to do homework at 9 00 a.m like i don't have to go somewhere to meet
up with someone to do homework no one's gonna know if i don't actually do homework at 9am but
that's just how i like to plan out my own schedule i like to have a general idea that okay today from
9 to 10 am i'm gonna do some homework so basically what happens in my weekly planning process is at
this point i will have in my notebook a brain dump list of everything i could think of that
i need to do in the upcoming week so one analogy that you might have heard of that i'm a big fan of
is the big rocks first analogy so basically what this says is let's say that you have a glass jar
this represents all of the time that you have in your life in your calendar in your
schedule and then you have an assortment of sand little pebbles bigger pebbles
rocks these represent all the things that you have to do all of your tasks so sand represents little
tiny things that don't take very long they're not super important rocks are things that take
hours they take chunks of focused work time they have big results if you put the sand in first
and then you put the pebbles and then the bigger pebbles your jar is going to be almost full but
you still have not put in the big rocks the big rocks are just not going to fit at the top it's
going to overflow the other way the opposite way to approach this is to first take your big rocks
put them in the jar then take your big pebbles put them in the jar and they're going to fall in
between the spaces between the big rocks then the small pebbles and then the sand so if you do the
sand as the last step it's gonna like fall down into the cracks between all of the other rocks
and pebbles that you have this is basically what happens when you're scheduling your week
if you start with the little minutia and the annoying little errand thingies
you're not gonna have time for the things that are really important to you if you do it the other way
around and you first say okay i am dedicating these mornings to these big rocks that i have
and then all of the other things they'll find a way into my schedule somehow you know if a task
takes five minutes you can find that five minutes somewhere maybe you're waiting in line or you're
on the train or something so this is sort of what i'm thinking about when i first start blocking out
my week some of the first things that i put into my schedule when i was planning this week were
filming this video right there editing this video because i have a fast turnaround time so i need
to prioritize that the building a second brain course that was also a big rock and then also
editing the weekly vlog that i filmed last week so yeah usually it's like big homework assignments
filming videos and editing videos those are the big rocks in my calendar so breakfast and dinner
always happen at the same time lunch though is served from 12 45 to 3 30. so that just depends on
what i have going on that day so i'll go through and for example um today i knew that i had my
counseling appointment that ended at 12 30 so i was like i'll go down right after that thursday
that's pretty clear i have exactly a 40 minute block between those two classes perfect for lunch
and similar for friday in between the meeting and my class actually i think this week i'm going
to skip that class so i can enjoy a longer lunch don't tell anyone another thing i do and i'm going
to talk about this in next week's video which is my productive college study routine video is
schedule blocks of time for homework even if i don't have specific assignments to work on
so for example at the start of the week i might have two assignments that i know about
so of course i'm going to schedule time to work on those however i would be stupid to think that
i'm not going to have any other homework so what i like to do is just find a blank space let's
imagine this is a blank space and just put a homework block i don't know exactly how i'm going
to spend this time but by then i'll probably have some readings or a group project or something to
work on and even if i don't well that's great then i just have more time to do other stuff to relax
to move things around the important thing is to anticipate stuff so i'm always anticipating that
i'm gonna have homework and i'm always setting aside time for that one thing to point out is that
not everything in the brain dump is gonna make it onto the calendar and i think a good example
of that is if i write down for example a bunch of people that i need to email i'm not going
to schedule a block of time to email each person unless it's something very intense what i would do
is i would schedule let's say an hour block monday morning title that email and then in my to-do list
i would write down the specific emails that i need to work on i think that in most cases if you
make your time blocking too microscopic it just becomes very difficult to deal with there's less
flexibility it's harder to change things around i prefer bigger blocks that are kind of themed
so emails errands homework overall it's not a step-by-step clear-cut process it's just like a
it's a holistic process it's sort of like putting together a puzzle you're kind of figuring things
out as you go shuffling things around and then as the week flows i think it's really important
to be flexible and also leave yourself lots of buffer time blank spaces i always try to emphasize
that not all of the techniques i talk about on my channel are gonna necessarily work for you so like
i know that a lot of people find time blocking to be stressful because you just feel like you're
always working with some kind of a deadline if you fall behind on your schedule then everything gets
shifted behind as well for me though the opposite would be stressful you know if i didn't have a
time block calendar and i just had this nebulous list of things in my head that i need to get done
but i don't really know when i'm gonna do them that would constantly be weighing on me and that
would be stressing me out so you really just have to find what works for you i'm sorry that's like
really generic advice but it's the only thing i think that anyone can say for certain is find what
works for you one more thing is i want to tell you about how i access my calendar so i have a widget
on the iphone this widget takes up like two-thirds of the home screen but it is so worth it because
it shows you i think pretty much your entire calendar for the day i absolutely love it because
i don't have to do any clicking to find what my next class and room number is what task i'm
supposed to be working on at the moment and then let me just roll my sleeves up is the apple watch
widget that i really like so i recently did an apple watch video showing you how i use it for
college but just real quick on my main watch face i have this siri complication it shows you cards
of information that are going to be most relevant to you at any given time and that is it that is
my entire calendar so i hope you found this video helpful um i'm going to quickly plug my instagram
great place to go for updates on my life and my free weekly newsletter
some great advice in there as well if you're interested in either of those don't forget
to give this video a like and subscribe to my channel and i will talk to you next week bye you