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My Current Workflow Tools and What I use Them For

It’s been quite a while since I’ve been working on a workflow that works just right for my life. As an entrepreneur life gets really hectic at times and difficult to keep organized. But aside from being a business owner, life is so hectic in itself! I think I’ve found my system of keeping my personal and professional life as organized as possible, but it took a lot of trial and error to get here. No one told me that it took organization and time to actually be organized. Go figure!
 
 
First thing’s first – what is a workflow? Technically, workflow is defined as the sequence of industrial, administrative, or other processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion. As an entrepreneur, creating a workflow is sometimes really overwhelming. You don’t know what works, you don’t know how to get started, and you don’t know what you need.
 
I downloaded a lot of apps over the years to try and test out different platforms. Tools like apps, notebooks, and planners are all a matter of preference. What might work for me might not work for you so it’s important to test things out, give it time, and then evaluate how it fits in with your needs. You’re not going to know within a day or a week whether something works for you. You’re going to need patience with each tool.
 
I didn’t realize how much investment it takes to get a productivity tool to work for you. I always just figured that once I download the app or open the planner it would just be “plug and play.” But I was so off base! It takes time to figure it out, make it work, and tweak it based on your needs. Because of the intense time investment I made in my current workflow I’m always hesitant to stray away from my current tools. It has taken me over 2 years to get it just right so if I do change something in my workflow, that must mean it was well worth it!
 
So here’s my current workflow and what I use each thing for. I’ll create a post on each tool so I can go more in depth in a separate post to share how I use these items. Stay tuned for those!
 
  1. iCal for time blocking, events, and meetings.
  2. Evernote for in depth weekly planning, writing blog posts, travel planning, long term projects, and note taking. If you’re interested in my initial set up you can watch my YouTube video here, but I actually need to update the vid. I made a few tweaks. Stay tuned for that! You can also see how I use it for travel planning here.
  3. Todoist for daily tasks and reminders. I have a YouTube video on my set up, you can view it here.
  4. Goodnotes for brain dumping, digital planner, and bible study.
  5. Trello for Blog Scheduling. Trello has been my most recent addition to the work flow. I posted about my current set up this past week, you can read it here. 
  6. Apple Mail for email. This one doesn’t need much explanation except for 2 things. One, I archive my inbox every week that way it’s at zero when the new work week starts. Having messages (read or unread) in my inbox has always given me anxiety. Two, if it’s an email that needs to be saved like a flight confirmation I’ll forward it to my Evernote inbox using my Evernote account email. This will send that email to my default notebook. Comes in really handy!
Yes, I use and open each app almost every day. Definitely every work day. Not only that but I have each app on my iPhone and iPad so I have it at my fingertips if I’m not in the office. First thing I do when I get into work is open up all my apps and plan my day. I’ll start with I’m thinking about doing a video on how I make it all work so if you’re interested in that let me know.
 
I know this may be a lot for some, but quite honestly it’s because each thing has its own function in my life. I’ve tried countless times to just use 1 app or just use a planner but I can’t make it work for what I need and want it to do. Hence, my 6 different apps lol!
 
If you have any apps or services that you suggest please share! I have this tendency to always want the best out there when it comes to productivity.
 
xoxo,
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How I Use Trello for Blog Scheduling

I know I’m late to the game, but I started using Trello for my blog scheduling a few months ago. I’ve had an Trello account for years and used it for others things but I never really had to use a tool like Trello for my blog in the past because I’ve never really taken blogging seriously. We’re talking really seriously, until about a year ago. Since my blog was mostly for me, I just wrote when I wanted about what I wanted and I left it at that.
 
After my blogging challenge I decided that I wanted to continue to post 3 times a week for 2 reasons. I think the most obvious reason is because I want the few readers I have to have regular content that might benefit them. But the other reason is to challenge myself to find what I call “a jewel in the dirt” of the mundane everyday life. I know that being an entrepreneur means that there is a new challenge to face every day, which means there’s a new jewel out there for me to discover! There’s a new story to tell. During the 30 day challenge I realized that I have a lot to say about things I never thought I’d want to comment on or share. I started to find my voice and who I was talking to. It made me really passionate about being consistent with writing.
 
Having to be consistent in posting made me realize that I definitely needed a place where I figure out this whole behind the scenes blogging thing. My drafts on my blog website were piling up, I couldn’t keep track of the post ideas that I wanted to write about, and I was losing track of which posts were supposed to go live and when. That’s where Trello comes in. I’m constantly coming up with new blog ideas not just from every day life but from current events and other entrepreneurs and bloggers. Things get moved around in my blog schedule all the time depending on when I think it’s best to share certain posts. Most of the time I also start a draft of a post and then want to revisit it a couple times before it goes live. Trello helps me wrangle all these things and keeps it all in place.
 
Here’s a screenshot of how I set up my Trello account:
 
My Trello Workflow for Blog Scheduling
I have 4 active columns: 
  • The “Post Ideas” column is where I brain dump all of my ideas. I always put the posts in chronological order of due date. Ideas that haven’t been assigned to a date go at the bottom. I go through this column once a week to plan out posts and give each one a due date.
  • The “This Week” column is where I put all the posts I need to write in the current week. These might not be going live on my blog that week, these are going to be posts that I want to write drafts for, complete, and schedule for future posting.
  • The “Ready” column are posts that are complete and in the queue ready to be published onto my blog.
  • The “Published” column is my archive of posts that I’ve completed. I archive this column at the end of every month and start a new column which is why you see the current month in the title of the column.
I also have a 5th column which is my “On Hold” posts. They’re posts that I’d like to post some day but just don’t know where it fits in yet. They might be written posts, they might not, heck they might not even make it onto the blog. They’re just ideas that I don’t want to throw away that might fit into the post calendar some day.
 
This workflow seems to work for me so far. As time goes on I start to figure out what is more efficient for me but I’m liking this current set up. If you use another app or system for blog scheduling I’d love to hear it! I’m always interested in trying new workflows to see if it works for me.
 
xoxo,
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Year in Review – Productivity with Evernote and Todoist

 

 

This year I went all in on my productivity. A big goal of mine this year was to get more organized and to get my good friend and assistant, Katie, on the same page. The ability to have the information at my fingertips, available on multiple devices, and available to her was the main reason why I needed to invest in my productivity. I wanted these apps to help us work smarter!

There are 4 main things that keep me and productive and organized – my planner, iCal, Evernote, and Todoist. So let’s go over it in order.

This year I utilized the Happy Planner system and really loved it! I learned a lot about how I need both analog and digital elements to work together to keep my life in order. After using the system for about a year I found my groove with it and figured out how to make it work with everything else in my productivity system. I’ll be sharing my new Happy Planner set up soon so make sure you stay tuned for that! 🙂

The next thing I use to keep myself organized is iCal. iCal is key to keep me on track of my day because I get side tracked really really quickly. As an entrepreneur, I can get pulled in a million different directions at once so I utilize iCal’s notifications feature to notify me when I need to stop what I’m doing and move on to the next thing. I also utilize the travel time feature because I’m notoriously late almost all the time! Yikes, it’s embarrassing to admit! So I input the addresses into my meetings and events so I’ll get a notification when I need to leave to minimize my tardiness. It helps a lot!

Finally, the last 2 items that I’ve implemented into my workflow that has changed.everything.

For long term goals, like yearly or quarterly goals, I use Evernote. If you’ve watched my Evernote videos you’ll see that I mainly use it for long term goals, traveling, anything that needs more of a journaling set up. Take notes? Evernote. Need to create a timeline? Evernote. Have a list of articles I want to read on my down time? Evernote. Planning events? Evernote. It took me a while to get into Evernote because it was so versatile I didn’t even know where to start. If you’ve seen my YouTube tutorial on how I set up my Evernote this was my starting point. I’ve kind of tweaked it just a little bit since then and I’ll be making a follow up video soon so you can see my set up for 2018. Stay tuned for that too!

A few things I’ve learned while using Evernote non-stop this year is:

  1. The notebook set up I used in my Youtube video worked really well for me
  2. The Inbox set up I used changed the game. Thanks to the other fellow Evernote users for the inspiration!
  3. Creating templates in Evernote was a pain at first, but made my life so much easier in the long run

Finally, Todoist is what I decided to use for my short term goals. Trust me guys, I’ve tried almost all of them. But Todoist is by far the best task manager for me. In the video below, I share with you on how I set up my Todoist account.

A couple things I’ve learned this past year about Todoist:

  1. If you categorize your tasks as soon as I input them instead of using the inbox feature I can keep things much more organized.
  2. Keyboard short cuts saved my life
  3. Utilize that recurring task feature, trust!
  4. The today view is my best friend

I’ve given myself a year with the system above and my productivity has increased 10x over! There is still more that can be done and there are still ways I can improve my system (if only these apps could read my mind! ok, that would be overboard and way too scary!) but all-in-all I can safely say that this year has been my most productive ever and that’s thanks to the system I invested in.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, these apps aren’t going to change your life overnight. It’s almost like cleaning out your closet – things will get a lot worse before they get better. But sit tight and ride out the storm because when the clouds clear and you have everything in place you’ll do a happy dance!

Work smarter, not harder.

xoxo,

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