Hey guys, Olivia here from Olivia's Catastrophe and today I'm here to answer the
main question that I always get which is:
how? How do I keep up a blog, bookstagram,
and booktube, while going to
university and keeping up with my
workouts and yoga and traveling and
doing whatever it is that I end up doing?
And I thought it would be best if I put
this all in a video to just answer all
of those questions at the same time. So
primarily this video is on time
management. I'm gonna be sharing how I
manage my time but that is in no way how
you need to manage yours! You're just
getting a bit of a behind the scenes to
what I do to keep organized. Ao what I do
have is, I found out, a bullet journal. I
thought it was just a planner because I
see everybody's bullet journal spreads
and it looks all beautiful and
everything - mine is nothing like that. It's to
the point, it's practical.
I do use stickers but I don't really
share it on my channel or Instagram or
anything cause it's not pretty. But I do
make resolutions every year and that's
kind of how I start out my year.
Setting my goals and at the end of every
year I take the time to reflect on those
goals. For example, I'll link down below
my 2019 wrap-up where I talk about my
resolutions and whether I did them or not. Spoiler alert: I did 13 out of 19 and I
call doing 50% of them of success. And
then I set my 2020 goals. And there's
quite a few of them for this particular
year. My resolutions are split into my
hobbies and interests. So I have some
for workouts in yoga, I have some for
bookish content creating and that
encompasses both my booktube, book blog
and also my booksstagram - forgot about that one. And then I also have a reading and
bookish goal. I have writing goals and
then I have a category called food,
travel and other which includes any
other goals that I would like to have
during the year. I then take the time to
split this into monthly breakdowns. I
kind of tend to have a focus per month. So for example January is getting into
bookish content creating and making a
schedule that I can maintain throughout
the year. Then February is going to be
switching to a bit more focus on reading.
And then in March I think I'm going to
be traveling a little bit, so I kind of
have a monthly goal. But that doesn't
mean that I ignore all the rest of my
resolutions as some of them are ones
which need to be done on a weekly
basis. Then I take the time to split
goals and say which of my resolutions
will be done... for example, I have a
resolution that's like keep up my buying
ban until July 2020!
I don't really need to focus on that and
have it on my weekly schedule. But some
of them are to achieve a yoga pose so I
need to include some practice every week.
I separate the resolutions which are
done in one take or done at a certain time,
and then the ones that need to be
encouraged and worked on a little bit
weekly. Once I have those goals set to
the side I can make my calendar which
I do in my bullet journal. And it's
basically a normal calendar. I only do it
for one month at a time so I've just
done January. And I put in all the dates
from January 1st to 31st. And then I
write in every single day what I want to
do that day. So my list can change. So for
example on January 1st I might want to
do a yoga practice, I might want to edit
20 pages of somebody else's manuscript...
I might want to pre film all my YouTube
videos for the month and I might want to
make a new recipe. That's quite a lot for
one day but this was just hypothetical
and I was spinning off the top of my brain and
I just overbooked my day. But imagine
that and then I kind of go through and
do that for all the rest of the days. So
then I have a set daily schedule. However,
I do want to stress that I do not
pressure myself to do everything on my
list. If I don't finish something on my
list
I either cross it out or and move
it to another day. But I'm very careful
with moving things to another day as I
am very aware that you can just move
everything till later dates and then
you're just flooded at the end of the
month. And you feel like you accomplished
nothing. So if I don't do anything I
usually just cross it off because
there's so many other days in the year
that you can probably do it later. Or
it's not that vitally important. Now
we're going to get down to-- now that you
know how I spread my year, month and
weeks and days out so that it's doable... I
want to give you some tips that I follow
which help me to be as productive as
possible while still enjoying myself as
much as possible. The first thing I do is
when I look at my daily to-do list I
over over over estimate how long
everything is gonna take me. So let's say
I say I'm gonna wash the dishes and I
have three dishes to wash
which should
take five minutes. I'm gonna put in 15.
Because then if I finish in five minutes
I feel like I've accomplished a lot. And
if I take a long time it's gonna take
double the time, I finished in ten
minutes... Hmm, that's also fine I've still got five
extra minutes in my day. Then people ask
me the main question which is how do you
spend so much time reading? How'd you get
so many books read in a month and that
is because I don't actually set myself
any time for reading. I just read when
I'm in a mood. I am a huge huge mood
reader. Some days I don't read it all.
Some days the only thing I want to do is
read and I just ignore my to do list.
I just go by my mood for reading and it
kind of pans out that I read quite a bit.
The only time where I have to set
reading times it probably when a book is
on my uni syllabus and I need to read it as it's
required reading. Or if I have a readathon
because that's me putting aside
time to get reading done within the week.
But mostly I read when I have cups of
tea. I tend to have two to three cups of
tea a day because I am British. But the
real reason is because I love tea. And
when I have tea I usually take about 20
minutes and I just kind of do nothing
but read within those 20 minutes. If I
have three cups of tea a day that's a
full hour of reading a day which is
really really good. I also tend to take
reading breaks when I accomplish
something. So if I'm doing an assignment
I'll write a paragraph, read 50 pages,
write another paragraph, read 50 pages. Or
if I need to get back to doing my
assignment sooner maybe I'll cut that
down to 25 pages. And then if my essay is,
let's say, 10 paragraphs long then that
means I've read... oh my gosh maths. Then it
means I've read 500 pages. So that's kind
of how it goes with me for breaking down
reading. I also read whenever I
commute. So if I take a bus or if I take
the train I'm usually reading a physical
book. If I walk to uni which I do every
time I go to uni, it's about 20 minutes,
I'm listening to an audiobook. Which
means I get about 40 minutes listened
to a day. That's how I kind of just throw
reading into my schedule without
actually putting aside time to read. And
if I have a particularly bad night or
it's a particularly good book I will
probably spend the night reading until
it's finished. Don't advise, but we all do it anyway.
Then people ask me how I manage to do
University and that's because I
split my university time pretty well. I
always plan my assignments way way way in
advance. If we have a whole month to do
it five thousand word essay I've
probably got it done
halfway through that month. I always get
my assignments done as early as possible
so that I just feel like I don't have
any stress, and I can do it at my own
pace. Another thing people ask me about
is how do I keep up my workouts and yoga
when I've got so many things going on.
And that's because workouts and yoga are
the first things to go when I feel
incredibly busy but they are the most
important things when I feel incredibly
busy because they make me feel less
stressed. So I kind of have a rule. I'm an
early riser and I think that's really
good for being productive, you get so
many more extra hours in your day. And
then you can go to bed like, nice and early and
feel very refreshed when you wake up. But
yeah, my rule is wake up and work out!
Which doesn't always mean work out,
sometimes my workouts mean yoga flow. But
I just wake up, I'm bleary-eyed. I put on my
sports clothes, roll onto the floor, my
workout mat is waiting for me and I do
my yoga flow and I do my workout for
half an hour to 40 minutes depending on
which one I'm doing. And then that's it!
It's done for the day. I can shower. I can
have my breakfast and go about my day,
and I've already worked out and I've
already done yoga.
I already feel productive which is a
great spur to keep going for the rest
of the day. And yeah, if I leave it to the
evening often it means I won't do it
because I'll feel lazy and I'll feel
tired because I usually wake up early
whether I workout in the morning or not. Sometimes I even wake up and I give
myself a 15 minute period where I can
complain about the fact that I'm gonna
get myself to do a workout, and then push
myself to do it. At the moment I'm doing
my workouts in the evening but that's
because I'm doing an au pair job. Which
means I have to be awake when the kids
are awake. But kids go to sleep early
which means I can do my workout in the
early evening. I have another rule for
myself and this one is not one that
everybody should do because I know that
some people have no problem being social. But mine is prioritize people. So back in
the day little, shy, quiet introverted
Olivia -- I'm literally the same -- I'm still shy,
quiet, introverted but little shy, quiet,
introverted Olivia tended to pass up on
social opportunities so that she could
stay home and read
book. Or she would just get too nervous
about what other people would think of her and
stay home and read her book. Or her
sister would be like hey, let's watch a
movie but I had a plan of things I
wanted to get done today and the movie
did not fit in there. However, my new plan
is prioritize people if somebody asked
me to watch a film and I'm in the mood
for it I'll say yes. If somebody says
let's go out tonight and I had things
to do I'll say yes and I'll either
cancel off those things we'll move them
to another day. And if I am really really
loving a book but the social event is
coming up I will not cancel, I will go. I
did this primarily for myself for two
reasons. The first is that I usually
enjoy what I'm doing and I can always
come back to what I was intentionally
doing before such as reading or any
other thing those are my to-do lists
like vlogging or booktube and it waits
for me. However, people don't wait for you
because they've got things to do and it's usually on a time limit. And secondly,
I just find it's really important to
socialize and I was not--I didn't have
that good balance and I feel like it's a
bit ridiculous when I let my to-do-list
rule my life. Which is the reasons why I
made that rule fool for myself but not
everybody needs it. Most people are more
extroverted than me and they've got no
problem with stopping what they're
doing and going and socializing.
Another thing, another rule I have myself
that I learned the hard way was that if I
need a day off, I take a day off. Don't force yourself to do to-do list. It
waits for you. There's other days in the
year. There's 365 of them. Ee don't need
to be productive all those days. Take your
days off. Also if you're feeling ill or
if you're starting to feel ill, take the
day off.
No workout, no yoga for you. Eat some junk
food, feel good about yourself, watch a
movie, read a good book. Don't force
yourself to go to that uni class. Don't
force yourself onto your yoga matt. It's counterproductive in the long
run. Another thing that's really helped
me is switching to eating clean. It just--
I feel more energized and better. Please
note that eating clean doesn't mean not
eating junk food at all. It means just
doing all things in moderation. Make sure
I'm getting enough fruit and veg, make
sure I throw in some vegetarian meals
every now and again. That's what clean eating is for me and
just overall makes me happier and boosts
my energy. Another thing that I also do
which is limit my social media. It might
not appear to other people like I limit
my social media. I tend to be on my phone
quite a lot. And that's because I do my
blog and bookstagramming from my phone. Sometimes, not all the time, but it really
helps me to be on there. I tend to always
be on my insta stories but I have a
rule which is get in, update my insta story and get out. I set aside like,
an hour when I'm going to do an
Instagram post to take the time to look
at other people's posts and such. As the
Twitter where it seems like I'm always
on there I preschedule all of my tweets. All of those tweets were prescheduled. I'm not
on Twitter when I'm posting on Twitter. Same for Facebook. Same for newsletters.
It's all pre-scheduled. It looks
like I'm there. I'm not really. I'm doing
something else. Prescheduling is a huge
help for you to be active on all those
social media sites without actually
being active one of those social media
sites.
I just set myself time to go in, check my
notifications, reply to people, like
some things here and there and then I'm
out and doing other stuff with my day. What also helps is getting enough sleep.
I struggle with sleep. I wake up quite
often in the night. Something that I've
started to do for the past year which has
greatly helped my nights is turn off my
Wi-Fi before I go to bed. It means 
that I'm not getting notifications. It
means if I wake up and check the time on
my phone then I can just put it back off,
not see any notifications to tempt me,
and go right back to sleep. I also don't
leave the bed when I'm sleeping. Then
bulk filming, bulk Instagram taking of
photos, and bulk writing up of blog posts
is a huge help. I spend about one time a
month filming all my videos, or taking a
whole bunch of photos at once, or writing
up a whole bunch of blog posts and then
all I need to do is edit them and push
them out into the world throughout the
month. And I do a lot of crossovers. So
for example, any photos on my blog are
actually bookstagram photos. I just
double up the use of them. And I pair my
blog post and my booktube videos. So, for
example, I did the end of the year book
survey where I talked about favourites
that were really great favourites of mine,
but couldn't make it onto my best books
of 2019 list. So if you read that blog
post and watch that video you
really get to see all of my absolute
favourite. So by the way if you're on
this channel and you wanted to have the
maximum effect of knowing my true
thoughts on everything you should be
reading those blog posts as well as
watching my videos. And last but not
least if you're not having fun it's not
worth doing. Planning for me as, probably
an infj. I'm also an Aquarius and a
Ravenclaw. I don't identify as all of those
things personally, only as INFJ,
but I'm all those things and for me part
of my personality is planning and
thinking ahead. And maybe something
happens that I can't plan for but that's
just fine. Whereas there's other people
where planning just doesn't work and
it's not fun for them. And if it's not
fun for you then don't do it.
Only do what's fun. Only do what doesn't
cause you stress. And do you know what? It
doesn't even really matter how
productive you are. Soesn't matter if you
post videos infrequently, if you're
enjoying what you're doing then it's
worth doing. That's all I have to say at
the end of this video. I've prattled on
enough about how I schedule my time and
what I do with it. Please let me know in
the comment section down below do you
have a planner or a bullet journal? Do you
enjoy being, you know, schedule-y like this or do you just go with the
flow? Give this video a thumbs up if you
enjoyed it, hit the subscribe button if
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updated every time I have a new video. And I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye!
