Scheduling and the Benefits of Having One

     Helloooooo so yeah its been quite some time since I last posted and to be honest I've been really focused on trying to get my work organized. I suffer from poor time management and just poor management in general. I think the last time I posted was sometime in February and as stated then we were going through a lot of crappiness financially and while that has all been resolved we're still recovering from it and trying to get back to saving as well as catching up on certain bills. Life, eh? Needless to say we've been very blessed but very stressed. It has been pretty nice to be back to eating healthier and I'm even doing yoga once a week regularly. I'm about to add another day to do yoga b/c it just feels so good, I love how yoga makes me feel afterwards. It's done quite well as a stream on Monday mornings and that makes me so happy! My mind is kind of all over the place because I want to talk about a lot of things but I think I'll narrow my focus to the work thing!

     If you are a creative person who struggles to focus then good news I have some suggestions to help you out! So let's go back a few steps, work for me has upped significantly yet my management skills had not. I lack organizing my own work severely. I tend to forget things and then I end up working at the last minute on stuff which sometimes works out but most often I'm up into the wee hours in the morning to get it on time. Things had gotten so bad that I didn't even have time for my husband and that's not the first time this has happened so changes HAD to be made. I had to do something to not only help me keep myself on track with work but also allow me time to breathe and not feel overwhelmed all the time. I was struggling with growth on my channel and just felt like I was flopping around the content creation b/c I had no direction. One thing I've learned about myself is I'm really good if I have a direction whether that be with work, general life, or just driving. I was blessed with a weird inane sense of direction; therefore, when I can't find my direction I get a lot of anxiety. So I finally started watching some coaching videos by various people, some of my favorites are Ashnichrist and Gothixmodel. The latter blew up on twitch so fast and I sat there and asked myself what am I doing wrong? We all compare ourselves to others but mine wasn't in a jealous way but more of a ok I know I can do this too so what do I need to change?

     So with the thought of improving myself in mind I went into research mode. I was sick for 2 weeks and could barely do anything aside from sleep so I took those 2 weeks and watched a lot of YouTube videos, I mean A LOT. It started me down a path of improvement and wanting to learn more about what I do. I come from a film background which yes can transfer over to online content creation but there is a learning curve and part of me assumed I'd pick it up but just like with my film stuff there's always something to learn. My hardheadedness was taking over and it was holding me back. And with that realization everything clicked for me, I will continue to improve myself but so far I have made some major changes not only in my stream channel but just in how I work and it's made some general life improvements for me so I do hope that this helps you as well.

     Now that we've gone through all that background I will say, go watch the ladies I mentioned above if you're a streamer! They have great advice. I digress, one of the things that Ashni overwhelmingly says is to stream less, about 3 days a week. I kept hearing her say that over and over so I looked at my schedule and I realized I was streaming for 12 days straight until I had a break between two different channels. On my channel I was streaming M-F and then on GirlStreamers I streamed every other weekend so between the two I would stream 7 days a week every other week which adds up to 12 days between breaks. People can't do that and I was feeling it so I took the advice I kept receiving and went down to 3 days a week. I also started utilizing Google calendar for a schedule at the same time and let me tell ya I've been doing that for 5 weeks including going to Atlanta for a friend's wedding for a week and I've caught up to almost everything that's been overdue for me and added more stuff because I've found time for it! What??!! What a novel idea that creating a schedule would give me more time. Seriously though part of the schedule was to get me out of bed sooner which was a huge part of my issue and I've slipped up some days but for the most time I have stuck with it. I create my schedule every Sunday evening before bed for the week and it has seriously been a huge help.

     With the schedule I've also adopted the idea that motivation is fleeting and that its best to cultivate discipline to get things done. I know crazy that a creative person is saying not to rely on motivation, seriously if that's what you rely on you'll never get anything done. If we discipline ourselves to wake up and get the day started the motivation will come eventually. I have actually found myself more motivated since adopting this principle as well as more productive with my creative content. I now post on YouTube regularly, just picked up a new YouTube channel which will start rolling out soon with content all while still streaming and creating graphics for streamers. I'm sure you're looking at that going uhhh what about breaks and hubby and dogs etc? Don't worry I schedule in dog walks, hubby time, and breaks. I'm usually done working by 6pm every day except the days I stream and I cook 2 meals a day; breakfast and dinner. Oh yeah I have time for all of that because of my schedule and I can't lie it feels great to be this productive! I will admit sometimes I don't hit everything in the day b/c I'm still figuring out what my work pace is so I will move things around but that's the advantage of using the schedule; I can move the things that are not top priority to a slower day if I need or to the following week. Anyway, this is what I've been up to since February and I do hope to continue posting more regularly since I now schedule everything. Below I've posted a picture of my schedule for this week: 

This is just part of my schedule but look it's so pretty!