Speaker 1: How can we stay on top of things? I will give you some amazing strategies in this video that you can use over and over again to be able to accomplish everything that you set out to do. Welcome to the Efficiency and Organization YouTube channel where I talk about everything to do with being well-planned, having strong time management, having good efficiency, productivity, being super organized to be able to achieve everything that you set out to do in your life whether it's in your personal life or in your career. In case you haven't seen any of my other videos I can share with you some things that will help you to understand where I'm coming from when I share these these strategies with you. So I am currently a public school administrator. Besides that I have my home, I have my children, I have two side businesses and I also grade papers for what's called CalTPA that's for up-and-coming teachers. So you can imagine I have a lot going on and my job as a public school administrator is very time-consuming. I typically put about 11 to 12 hours each day five days a week in at work whether I'm there or I bring it home with me so I have a very very busy life as I'm sure you do. Now one of the questions I get asked the most is how do you do it all? Like at work for example I have 90 million projects going on right as I'm sure you do. So then the question is how do you do it? Well I have these strategies that I use for me and I'm gonna share them and I want to see which ones you think would work best for you. First things first what I do is I write everything down and I think this is the biggest mistake that people make. They rely on their memories a lot and then they forget to do things and then they have to apologize. Then they are seen as unreliable even if people don't tell them they start to lose trust in them. They start to see them as scatterbrains right and so that used to happen to me a lot. So I began to write everything down and it's worked wonders for me. Even on the go in passing when people ask for things I automatically ask them to email. I'm very organized with my email. I read every email and I delete quickly the ones that I'm done with and or I have to save. I save and so that way everything is in writing. Please get in the habit of writing everything down so that way you can accomplish as you go. The second strategy is actually three parts. Number one is post-it notes. Number two is checklists. Number three is what I call my project folders. So with post-its sometimes people would ask me to do quick things that I need to get done. I would write them put them on my desk and the goal is by the end of the day to get them all accomplished. So I don't use post-its for things I need to remember long term to do. That does not work. The best thing post-its are supposed to be temporary. They're sticky notes temporarily. The idea is for post-its to be thrown out before you leave. Checklists are amazing because especially when you're doing projects you can write down everything that you need to accomplish and then check them off as you go or cross them off as you go. The third way is project folders which also work very well for me and I will show you. So this video that I'm making right now it has to I have to have it recorded. I have to have the title for it. Then I have to edit it. Then I have to put it on YouTube and put it on the website. So there's lots of things I need to do with it. So I have these folders that I make. So basically it's just a pocket folder that you could buy from like Amazon. I'll have the link in the description and I use these over and over again and then on top of it I just put my checklist for what I need to do with this project. And I have a lot of these projects because I have several things going on all at the same time as I was mentioning to you. But I put them in priority order so that way I could tackle the most important ones and make sure I do not fall behind. Which leads to strategy number three, prioritizing. So whether you're using checklists, whether you're using post-its, or you're using the project folders, you have to prioritize which ones have deadlines associated with them and also which ones must be tended to like right now. So after making the folders you can actually put them in priority order. Which ones are like number one, number two, number three. So with the folders what I like is you could put this goes on top of this therefore this is more important. This is what I like about them. It takes everything that you need to do and puts it in like some kind of a physical form right. This is something physical, tangible. That's what I like about them. Same with the post-its you could put them in priority order on your desk. Which ones are high priority, medium priority, and low priority. And I'll actually share another video that I did just on prioritizing in the link and the bottom of this video in the description that you can watch. So with checklists, post-its, and all these things prioritizing is key so that way you don't fall behind. Next strategy is calendaring. The importance of having a calendar and a planner so that way you could go and put things that you need to start working on, things you need to follow up on. It is key which again goes back to the whole premise of writing. If you write stuff in the future you're not gonna forget, you're not gonna say oh I forgot this, I forgot that. Because every time you forget something you're like blaming yourself. Whether you like it or not, you realize it or not, you're blaming yourself. Each time it's that negative self-talk. It's like oh I forgot to do this again. To build your self-confidence you need to have self-discipline and not procrastinate. And you also need to have a good system for writing things down that need to be done a week from now, a month from now, a year from now. Put them all in a nice planner whether it's on the computer or it's on paper so that way you could keep track of everything you need to do. And the last way to stay on top of things is when you have large projects to break them into smaller more achievable parts. It's so important to do that. So just like I was telling you for like this YouTube video all the steps I need to take, if you notice I already told you I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna do that. So there are if I look at my list just for like the video I have nine things I need to accomplish from start to end. And that's what you want to do with big projects is every time like even if it's like something at home that you need to do like event planning or anything like that you want to have all the steps written so that way you don't fall behind, you don't lose track of something and everything gets done because there's like a nice checklist associated with what you need to do. So the more self-discipline you acquire to not only write things right not only having post-its, not only having checklists but also like to actually implement them, do them and not procrastinate them is gonna make you better and better and better with time. Do what works for you but don't hold off on making decisions because again that's a form of procrastination that you don't want. And each day have that mindset that you are gonna be on top of things and you're gonna get a lot done. It all starts with how we wake up and how we project the day is gonna go. If we have a positive projection, if we say we're gonna do it, we're motivated and we tell ourselves that we're gonna achieve a lot today, we're gonna get a lot done today so that way we could be fulfilled by the time the day is done the better it's gonna be. Thank you for being with me and I will catch you in the next video.