BellaOnline Forums Beauty and Self Life Coaching Help Jilly Schedule her Life! :-)

Jilly, being productive is about producing results, usually. So, for you, it could be producing relaxation, producing a romantic evening, producing a creative piece--an article, a painting, a photo, whatever.

To me, productivity is about getting your stuff done, whatever that "stuff" is.

I think you already are all those descriptors, Jilly!

I know, outside looking in, but really, you are, which is what the gurus teach is, isn't it! LOL

Now, if I could just realize the same "stuff" for me!

Deb, that is so sweet of you to say. It's funny how differently others see us than how we view ourselves. :-)

I think of you as a super productive person, for example. I hope you see yourself that way.

Hmmm, 'producing relaxation'.... interesting idea. Today I am working on getting small but necessary things done. It's going well. And then i will take a look at my Five Things List and see how this week's is coming, plus write next week's.

Hi Jilly:

Thanks so much for starting this discussion. Figuring out **how** we�re going to do all that we want/need to do is one of life�s major dilemmas.

I noticed that much of what you listed can be grouped together. Reading the RV mags, enjoying the RV lifestyle etc can be grouped together the same way you grouped together all of the chores.

I think I noticed five groups. 1) New lifestyle exploration 2)time with hubby 3) writing/editing 4)wellness 5)chores. Forgive me if I missed a category. What I would do if I were you is to do one or two things from each category every single day. Even if it's only for a few minutes. And I'd try to combine things like walking to the grocery store counts as a chore and a wellness exercise. If you do some of the RV resort things with your husband again, you've taken care of two things at once.

In my own life what I've done is to assign a priority to each day. For example today is my long fiction day, yesterday was blog, amazon and internet instruction day. Monday is my short story day.

Here's the thing and this is so important. Just because Wednesday means that long fiction is the priority does not mean I spend the most time on it. I know this seems contradictory but it works. I�ve written whole novels writing 10-20 minutes a day. The reality is that I actually spent the lion share of my day in an office completely concentrating on a project I'm consulting on, but I will not go to bed unless I've worked on one of my novels for at least 10 minutes.

In other words I don't think it's always about the time you spend on something--unless you have a set in stone deadline--rather it's about your consistency.

Oh and use some of those things you love to treat yourself when you�ve worked on something you�ve been putting off. For example. I LOVE to look up books/people/ideas etc on the internet, could do it all day long, but I say to myself Leah, first edit/write these pages FIRST then treat yourself to a google search. LOL.

Again thanks for sharing. I�m looking forward to hearing about your progress.

Okay, re-reading this thread. What are people's POV on these elements (ie - what would you all do?):



Oh, and this one:

Leah, that is AWESOME information. You are so cool. I really appreciated this idea:



It's a neat idea to think about assigning a project to certain days, even if it means to get just a little bit of it done.

Let me mull over that.

Jilly,

For example, I'd devote one day a week to each effort ie

Monday--Mused
Tuesday--Bella topics
Wednesday--Blogs

For the priority project, I'd work on it for say two or three days a week. For example Bella--Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

When you think of it ALL at once, it all seems overwhelming. Instead just focus on each topic for a specified period of time on specific days.

Also as Lisa always suggests, carry a pen and notebook with you and throughout the day if you have an idea, figure out where it fits. Is it a Bella article a blog topic etc? write it down, keep track of your ideas so when you sit down to focus on the project, you can just write instead of trying to figure out what you're going to write about, you already know.

Please keep us posted on your progress.

My mother's sister in law prepared seven dishes - each night of the week it was the same thing - She cooked the same things for 50 years. She was organized - a little boring but organized.

Angie,

Your mother's sister-in-law was like Einstein. Don't know if this is true or not, but I saw a movie that said he had several sets of the same exact clothes. So when he got up in the morning there was no consternation over what he was going to wear. LOL. He was going to wear the same thing he wore yesterday and the day before and the day before that. LOL.

I do a version of this with black pants. Almost all of my pants are black. But I live in New York and everyone wears black plants every day. LOL

Jilly,

I just thought of something else as I was working this morning. I recently started the practice of working on three Bella articles at once. And that's how I think of them as ONE thing and I list them as such on my to-do list. For example this week I'm working on these three articles

April is Stress Awareness Month/May is Family Wellness Month/ See the Good in a Bad Situation.

I list them just like that on my to-do list and I work on all three of them together. I open one work on it for ten to twenty minutes minutes. Close it and open the next one. Then the next. And I do this just about every day. I devote specific days to fiction, but I work on my self-help stuff just about every day.

Now the first two articles are basically straight research and I'll finish them first and post them. Then "See the Good in a Bad" situation will move to the forefront and I'll add two more articles to the to list to accompany the article I'm still not finished with. So I can take as much time as I need with that particular article as I'm working on others.

I also use the same exact approach to the magazine queries I'm sending out now. I work on three at the same time. And also I think of them all as one thing. Not as three different queries but as one project with many facets.

My mother once asked me "how many places are you writing for now?" And I told her. "I don't even know." LOL. Then I sat down and made an acronym. BASHT CN MA WA SS P. Each letter stands for either a website or publication I write for or a major aspect of my life. The B stands for Bella and the P is for parenting.

I have to categorize things, work on several things at once etc and these are my keys to productivity...and sanity. LOL