How to get Organised! | Hannah Witton

- I am very excited about this video, because I love
organisation, and I love talking about organisation.
Ask any of my friends and genuinely, they will tell you,
that I am the most organised person that they know.
And this is an identity that I take very seriously,
and I'm very proud of.
When people ask me how I manage everything I do,
from making videos, to writing the book, to doing the
radio show and all of the other little bits and bobs
of work that I do, when people ask that how do I do it all?
I always answer, organisation.
I'm just organised, I know how to manage my time,
and then it gets done.
Being organised is something that I've never really had
to work at because it comes very naturally to me,
and I enjoy it, but there a lot of people out there who
struggle with organisation, but they want to be organised
because they see how much fun it is.
So I've come up with six practical things that
will hopefully help you get more organised in your life.
So before we get into the actual nitty gritty of
organising your life, you need to do step number one,
which is, prioritise, what's important to you?
What do you want to spend time on and what do you need
to spend time on?
And this doesn't just go for work stuff, it goes for
your personal life too.
Figure out what is important to you, what you want to do,
and what you need to be doing, and then figure out the
things that you don't have time for, you don't have energy
for, you do not give a fuck about.
A classic organisation method of figuring out your
priorities is, the four boxes, I don't know if it has
an official name, but in one box you've got the things
that are important and urgent, and then in the next box
you have important but not urgent, and then
urgent but not important, and not urgent/not important.
Everything that is in the not important/not urgent box,
forget about, don't do it.
Obviously the main box that you need to be thinking about
is the important and urgent, get that stuff done.
I don't personally use this because I've done really,
become quite good at prioritising tasks in my head and I
know what's important and what's not, but if you have
a hard time prioritising, then this is a really great
tool to use to get that stuff down and you can figure
out where you need to spend your energy.
Part of figuring out your priorities is also about
making sacrifices, I would still love to become fluent in
French, I'm okay at French, but I haven't spoken in ages
and it's just rusty and bad, I could, if it was really,
really important to me, learn French, but actually as it
turns out, it's not a priority for me.
And so I'm sacrificing learning French, for other things,
and sometimes you have to accept that.
There are so many things that I want to do and that I want
to spend my time on, but you can't do everything, so
priorities and sacrifices naturally lead us onto
number two, say no to things.
When you're first starting out in your careers,
people often say, say yes to everything, just yes, yes, yes,
and at the beginning, yeah probably, just say yes to all the
things, get to know your way around, dip your finger
in all of the pies, like do everything, but once you
are a little bit more stressed out at everything that you
have to do, that's when you have to start realising,
oh, I have to say no to things now, and that's when your
priorities come in check, and you're like, what's important
to me, what do I need to say no to?
The main thing that people find hard to say no to,
are other people, when it becomes a personal thing,
but it doesn't have to be personal.
Sarah Knight, in her book, The Life Changing Magic of
Not giving a Fuck, which I would highly recommend you read,
uses this thing of personal policies, people can't say no
to policies, and I have used this so many times.
The main example that I can think of is that a lot of
students ask to interview me for their dissertation,
whether they're doing it on feminism, sex education,
online, social media, YouTube, all of that stuff,
and I am so grateful and honoured that they would like,
want to interview me for their dissertation, and I know
how hard that writing a dissertation is, 'cause I've
done it, but because I get asked so often, what I have
to do is, I have to say no to all of them, and so I've
created myself a personal policy to say, I'm sorry,
but I just don't do these, full stop, because if I say
yes to one, then I'll feel like I have to say yes
to all of them, and so when you say no to people,
they don't take it personally, it's just a blanket rule
that I have, and the personal policy thing can be applied
to any part of your life, where you find yourself having
a bit of trouble saying no.
And you shouldn't feel guilty, we're all doing it,
you're going to be on the receiving end of a no,
or a personal policy at some point, so don't feel guilty
giving them out yourself.
Okay, number three in organising your life is,
time management, this sounds super sexy right?
Time is a finite resource.
You know when people say they are too busy,
or they don't have enough time to do something,
that means they either haven't managed their time
properly, because they have exactly the same amount
of time as you, if you can do it, so can they,
so they haven't managed their time properly,
or it's not a priority for them and they don't want
to do it, so again, it's about being honest with yourself,
think about the time that you do have, how do you want
to spend that time?
Another really good thing to figure out, is how long
does it actually take you to do things, how long does
it take you to go to the post office and back?
How long does it take you to shower in the morning?
How long does it usually take you to reply to email?
How long does it take you to film a video,
how long does it take you to edit a video?
All of these things, like how much time does that
actually take you, and so when you are structuring
your day and trying to figure out what you're going
to be doing, you aren't going to overrun, you aren't going
to run out of time, because you've scheduled it,
because you know how much time it's going to take.
Sorry, I just get really passionate about organisation.
Number four, really important, write it down.
If you have an online calendar that's on your phone,
write it in there, bullet journal, write it in there,
paper physical diary, write it in there.
You're not gonna remember it, write it down.
Is this spoken like a pep talk?
I'm like, come on, you can do it, get organised!
Ideally you're going to want two things,
and they can be in the same place, or they can be in
separate places, but a calendar, so what are you
actually going to be doing, like where do you need to be,
who have you agreed to meet?
And a to-do list, this is your tasks, this is everything
you have to accomplish and do, and you can add things to it,
like, take the bins out, do the washing up, go to the
post office, ya know.
Those are things that, they're things that have to get
done, so they should go on your to-do list.
Also, you should have some kind of a system of where
you write stuff down, so for me, I have my to-do list on
my calendar all in my Calendar app.
My to-do list things just get in as an all day event,
and so they're just there, and I know what I have to
get done that day.
Your to-do list might not be according to the day,
so I put my tasks like, this is what I'm doing on this day,
yours might not be that, you might have a bullet journal
and draw doodles and fancy, fancy things all over it,
that's personally not my style, but you find your
own system that works for you.
I do it my way because I need my calendar and my task
list in the same place, I need to be able to see all of
it because it gives me a better idea of like, what I'm
doing that day.
Number five, in your calendar system, diary, whatever
it is, schedule in breaks and time off.
This is crucial to your productivity.
So for me, I actually block in days, in my calendar,
Hannah, day off, weekend off, like not doing anything,
Hannah is off work.
The beautiful thing about this is that, if you have
managed your time properly, and you've gotten everything
done, you can actually enjoy that time off, rather than,
during your breaks be worrying constantly, like oh I've
got this to do, I've got this to do, like ugh!
That stuff will just stress you out, but if you've done
all of your work and you're on top of it, take the
time off, relax, chill out and then when you get back to
work, you're on it, on it, refreshed, rejuvenated,
new ideas it's great.
What is this video, I'm just like, BBBRRA!
When I was in college and it was revision time,
one of my teachers told me about this method to use,
and it really, really helped me, and basically,
I split my days into three parts, so morning, afternoon
evening, and I revised for two of them, and did something
entirely different for another one, so it could be that
you have a lie-in, and then you work afternoon and evening,
or you work in the morning and you go out and play football
in the park in the afternoon, and then you come back
and then you work again in the evening.
Or you work morning, afternoon and then in the evening,
you go out with your friends to the cinema, or whatever.
And I also think we should be emphasising the importance
of breaks and that work-life balance.
I hear a lot of people, and sometimes in the kind of
entertainment/YouTube/media industry in general,
being like, if you're not putting in like, 80 hour
weeks, then you're not passionate enough and you don't
love it enough, and you need to be like doing 16 hour days,
and I'm like, maybe you do at the beginning, maybe,
to prove yourself in like certain fields, and it's,
it annoys me that a lot of industries require that of
you, and we're not emphasising the fact that having
a work-life balance is also something that should be
valued, and something that you should be proud of having.
I just think if we keep on valuing people that work
ridiculously hard and way too many hours, then just gonna
burn out, yeah, that's just my opinion,
I'm a very work-lifey balance kind of person,
and maybe that's why I'll never be ridiculously
successful because I don't put all of the hours in.
But I'm pretty happy with my life, again it goes back
to the priorities thing, what's important to you?
Last, but not least, number six is Do the Things, alright?
Don't spend more time actually organising the things
than you do actually doing the things.
This is a very easy slope to accidentally fall down,
and it is why I secretly hate bullet journals,
even though I will watch bullet journal videos
until the day I die, but I personally think it's an
entire waste of time, but it works for loads
of people, so I'm like, cool go you, but not me.
Once you've organised everything, do it.
Do the work, do the tasks that you've set yourself.
There's no point in being an absolute boss in organisation,
if you don't actually do the things, it's just how it is.
It's just how it is, you can even skip steps one to five
and just go straight to six and you will maybe, probably,
be more successful, get more shit done, than the
people who spend all their time on one to five and
never get to six.
I'm gonna stop there before this video gets too pep-talky
and preachy and ridiculous.
I hope you enjoyed it, I hope it helps,
please give the video a thumbs up if you did,
and also, let me know in the comments any of your
organisational systems, any of your organisation tips
and tricks, are you a bullet journaler?
Let me know how that is for you.
I love hearing about other people's methods for
organisation, so please let me know in the comments.
Don't forget to subscribe because I make new videos
every week, and I'll see you soon, bye.

How to get Organised! | Hannah Witton

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