How I Manage My Week As A Part-Time Content Creator With A 9 to 5 Job
In 2023
Are you a part-time creator with a full-time 9 to 5 job? You’re in the right place! As a part-time content creator myself, I wanted to share the method I use to plan my week to achieve ultimate productivity.
I’ve spent a long time trying out new productivity systems, apps and techniques in an attempt to find something I can commit to using in my everyday life and whilst I think the tool I’m currently using isn’t perfect, it works for me.
That’s the thing about productivity, you can have all these amazing tools and techniques, but if they don’t work for you, what’s the point in using them? That’s the issue I had with Notion.
It’s an excellent tool, but I don’t use it to manage my everyday life as I feel it’s too complicated for that, I want a minimal tool that doesn’t have many customisation options so that I’m not stuck there playing with all the features.
In fact, I currently only use three tools for managing my week as a part-time content creator, Google Keep, KanbanFlow and Google Calendar.
Here’s how I use them…
Google Keep: Capture Ideas & Quick Notes
As the title states, I use Google Keep to capture my ideas. I find that sometimes the best ideas come during some of the most unexpected times, that’s why I use a basic app that I can just use out of the box and note ideas down, quickly and effectively.
I don’t know about you but for me, when an idea comes to mind, I have to quickly note it down, otherwise, I will lose it, this has even proven to be the case when using certain apps due to the amount of time they take to load and create a page the page.
Google Keep is a great app to use for this sort of thing because I can access it from almost anywhere and it loads instantly. I have it installed on my smartwatch, my phone, my iPad and in the browser and it’s never let me down!
I use Google Keep as stage one of the CODE framework featured in Tiago Forte’s book, Building a Second Brain. For those of you who are interested in this framework, it stands for Capture, Organise, Distill and Express.
As of recently, I’ve been using Notion for organising and distilling ideas after a one-year break. There will be a separate, dedicated article on this soon.
KanbanFlow: Organising My Week
Once my ideas are captured in Google Keep and organised in Notion, I use an online app called Kanban flow to organise my week. This is separate from Notion, as I currently only use Notion for managing content, but I use Kanban flow for everything.
I am fully aware that you can make Kanban charts in Notion, but Kanban flow features a straight-to-the-point interface combined with some basic, yet useful features that help me keep track of time.
The idea is simple, every Sunday I sit down and plan my entire week starting in the Inbox column which is where I put all the tasks that I need to work on at some point. I then drag the tasks into the relevant days and prioritise them.
Kanban flow lets you organise the tasks into colours, something I found useful for understanding the priorities. I colour-coded the priorities as P1 — Needs to be done ASAP (Red), P2 — Needs to be done today (Brown), P3 — Should be done (Orange) and P4 — Optional extra (Yellow).
I use the Today column to move all the tasks I am completing on that day, any tasks I decide not to complete, go into the Later column which I then reorganise for another day.
Kanban flow also allows you to set the length of the tasks and then monitor the actual length it takes you to complete the tasks. You can either set a Pomodoro timer or a standard timer to monitor the time.
I find monitoring the length of time it takes to complete a task useful as it enables me to concentrate just on that task and understand how long I should be spending on similar tasks in the future.
As a part-time content creator, I decided to limit the number of tasks I can complete in a day to 6 not to overwork myself, to be honest even 6 is a bit over the top. I try not to add more then 3 larger tasks per day.
I found KanbanFlow thanks to a video made by John Sonmez from Bulldog Mindset, where he featured his workflow. But I adapted to my own needs.
Google Calendar: For Managing My Calendar
The final app I wanted to feature in this article is Google Calendar. At present, I use the default Google Calendar app on my phone and iPad but when it comes to my PC I use the browser version.
I don’t know what it is about Google Calendar, but I like the easy-to-use interface as well as some of the features such as the ability to use it with third-party apps as well as my smart home devices.
I use Google Calendar to add all the tasks I have in KanbanFlow that I have to complete at a certain time. I tend to block time where possible in order to be better organised.
Summary
I’ve been searching and trying out different ways of managing content creation alongside my full-time job for a long time, and at present, I find that this system works best for me.
In the future, I may find a better way of managing my week, maybe even with one app and if that happens, I will keep you updated.
Based on my own experience, I really think it’s worth searching and trying new things, you never know what you may find and learn. I mean I was over the moon when I discovered KanbanFlow, which I honestly think that it’s underrated!
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