- This video is sponsored by Milanote.
Try it for free by using the link in the description.
Let me know if any of this sounds familiar to you,
you have trouble staying organized,
you're easily distracted,
and the ever important planning process
is the hardest part of every video that you make,
me frigging too.
And yet every person that you talk to
will tell you just how important that planning phase is.
And the worst part is they're right.
So in this video, we're gonna take a look at how I simplify
and declutter the planning process of my YouTube videos
with the help of a tool called Milanote.
I'll show you my planning process, my template
and also explain why I approach things the way that I do
so secure the cup and let's do some planning.
(downbeat music)
For five years now I've been making a video
for my YouTube channel every single week.
Throughout that time, I've learned a ton
about how to get from idea to publishing
and there are a few things that really work well for me.
First of all, keep it simple.
If you take a look at my YouTube planning template
on Milanote, it might look like there's not a lot going on
and you're right.
What I've done is taken the tools that Milanote offers me
which is a lot, and I've boiled it down to just
what's necessary to get me from point A to point B
so that I don't get distracted or overwhelmed.
One of the things that I've tried to do
with my planning board is to make everything
that I need easily accessible and clean.
I do this by trying to have everything that I need
on a single board and arranged almost like post-it notes.
If I do need more detail on any specific project
or video I can absolutely create eight more layers
of boards within boards.
I can use reference images.
I can use arrows to point to things if I wanted to.
Any number of organizational tactics that Milanote gives me.
But for me, if I add too much
I just get distracted and overwhelmed.
It can be very tempting to make my boards
as aesthetically beautiful as some of the other creators
that I see doing more detailed and complicated plans,
but my brain just freezes up when I have too much going on.
What I love about my board
is that there are only seven distinct sections.
And if I hit Z to zoom out, you can see the entire board.
It's all very obvious and simple for me to find exactly
what I need at that moment in time.
But let's break that down a bit
and I'll show you exactly how I go about planning the video.
When I first open Milanote, I have a kind of homepage
that gives me flexibility to expand
for any high level organization that I might need
as it currently stands I've got three boards on there.
There's my project ideas board, my inspiration board
and my current YouTube projects board.
I've linked these with lines
because I just think it looks cool.
And I've also dropped an image on there
that I created just to remind myself
of the things that I can do when I'm feeling stuck.
I haven't actually started using the project ideas
or inspiration board yet
but those will be things that I'll use
that don't necessarily fit into the YouTube category.
So hopping into the current YouTube projects board
I've basically created a kind of
a pseudo kan ban board style page.
This is basically just to keep track of the projects
that I'm currently working on.
And the stage of the process that they're in
each of these are just a column that I dragged in
from the left hand side and customized by adding a title
and a color.
We've got planning, production, scheduled
and posted categories.
And then there's a placeholder for my template board
in case I want to edit it.
So when it's time to start planning a new video
I drag a new board into the planning column, give it a name,
a color and an icon.
And I dive in right off the bat Milanote asked me
if I want to choose a template.
They've got a whole bunch of premade templates
if something like that would work for you
but I created one for myself so I head to more templates,
your custom templates and choose that one.
Now we can see the blank version of those seven areas
that I was talking about before work.
Once again these are super simple columns
that I then add things into.
The first column is my inspiration and research area.
So before I dive into outlining or scripting,
I start by doing some research
and seeing if I can find any useful information
or inspiration for how I want my video to be.
If I come across anything, I'll copy be that link
and paste it here in case I want to reference it later.
Milanote makes nice little previews here
which makes it nice to look at
but it's also super easy to navigate.
The next section is for title ideas
and while this might seem like something that should happen
after I've planned the video,
coming up with a good title can actually be a great way
to decide on the direction of a video.
A good place to start is by asking a question
that you would be searching for
when you're trying to find out about the topic
that you wanna make a video on.
Then from there, you can try to make it more intriguing
or more appealing for people to click on.
There are a couple of tools that I use to help me decide
on my titles.
There's a site called morning fame, where I can search
for keywords and see what people are looking for.
And another site called headline analyzer,
that gives you a score based on how effective
your title will be.
So I try to come up with a couple of good title options
and I put them in here.
Below this you'll see the important points column.
This is just a dumping ground for any ideas
that I think are going to be important to get into the video
this has almost no organization at this point.
It's basically just brainstorming as I'm researching
and I'll make sure it all gets organized later on
which brings us to the next column, the outline.
I have this column broken up into five different notes
there's intro, three blank sections and then a conclusion.
This is just a really rough idea
of how I structure my videos to start with.
The intro is usually just a friendly greeting
and a teaser of what to expect in the video.
Then sections one through three
are generally any big important points,
almost like chapters.
Sometimes I end up adding more and sometimes
I don't need all three, but I found that three seems
to be kind of the sweet spot to start with.
And then the conclusion is a quick wrap up
and any specific call to action that I feel is necessary.
For the outline. I'm starting to organize
those important points into some kind of a structure
but it's still not super detailed.
Just below that outline there's a link to
a separate document that's pulled in
from the left hand side.
Again, this is called script
because this ends up being a lot longer,
it's nice to have it in its own document.
And I'll often open up two browser windows side by side
so that I can reference my outline
while I write my detailed script.
When I write my script I do it in my own own voice,
as much as I can.
I just write it how I would naturally say it
rather than trying to sound fancier or smarter
than I actually am.
And I do still like to use a bullet point format
in my script.
I just find it easier to use later on that way,
going back to the main document,
the next column is a checklist style note for my shot list.
At this point, I don't all always need a shot list
because my videos are generally fairly simple
to keep track of.
And I'm the only one shooting,
but sometimes it's nice to have
that extra level of guidance.
If I'm shooting in more than one location
I can create multiple notes with titles
and their own little checklists within this column
to keep myself organized.
These checklists are also nice and easy to pull up
on the Milanote app on my phone to use while I'm shooting.
So I don't always have to have my laptop out there.
And finally, I've got my publishing checklist
which is a list of all the things that I need to do
to either get ready to publish
or after I've published for promotional purposes.
This list includes having captions made,
making chapter markers,
double checking my video description,
title thumbnail and some promotional items
for Instagram, Twitter and my website.
And of course, once the video is done and published
I head back to my current YouTube projects board
and I move it from production or scheduled
into the published category.
And I can hide the published category
as it gets longer and longer
so I don't always have to look at it.
Now I know I went on and an earlier about my simplicity
but there are a few little extra things
that are important to talk about as well.
The first thing that I can't state
the importance of enough is having a solid template.
Making a template is super easy.
You just create a new board, toss everything
that you want to have in every project of that type
on there and then right click
and choose convert to template.
The tricky part is really just refining it.
I started out with way too much stuff on my template
and gradually whittled it down to what it is now.
I prefer to have to manually add a few things here
and there when I need them
rather than to have to delete them every single time
that I don't.
But speaking of which, there are a couple of things
that sometimes can be helpful when I'm shooting,
for certain projects, I'll want to throw together a kind
of a mood board or examples of the kinds
of shots that I want to get.
What I'll do for this is to create a board
in the inspiration and research column
and start dragging pictures in here
or searching them in Milanote itself.
The other thing that sometimes is helpful specifically
for review videos, where I'm gonna need to shoot
a lot of test photos or test videos
is to create an extra board under the shot list category
with its own set of checklists.
This way I can make sure to get all the test shots I need
and I don't need to go back for anything afterwards.
But these two little extras only make it into the process
sometimes when it's necessary.
And other than that, like I said, keep it simple
For me the goal of any organization
is just to declutter all the thoughts and ideas swimming
around in my brain.
So this rather simple setup in Milanote is perfect.
It's just enough for me to organize my ideas
and keep on track, but not so much that it gets in my way
of understanding what I need,
but that's my process and how I'm currently using Milanote
to plan my YouTube videos.
I hope that was helpful for you.
And as always, I want to hear from you
what would you add to your planning board
to make it work better for your projects?
Leave a comment down below and on your way down there
make sure to hit the like and subscribe button.
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so you don't miss out on future videos.
Huge thank you to Milanote for sponsoring this video.
Make sure to hit that link in the description,
try it out for free.
If you're anything like me,
I know you're gonna love it for organization and planning.
Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
(downbeat music)