CBA Discussion | How I Organize

Posted on Thursday, October 10, 2013 4:30 AM
 
 
 
My life is a little crazy right now. I work full time, go to school and I have two kids (7 & 5 months old). As you can imagine it is a little hard to keep up with things. In order to keep a little bit of my sanity, I decided that I needed to come up with some ways to keep everything blog related straight and I thought that I would share my organizational skills with you.
 
Blog Schedule:
 

I love that I’m able to schedule posts in advance with the scheduler feature on blogger. But, since it doesn’t have an actual calendar for me to look at, it was getting a little hard for to me to know what days that I had posts scheduled or which days that was lacking a post. So I printed me off a calendar and now I use it to keep track of all of my scheduled posts and the posts that I know I want to publish on a certain day.
 
 
TBR List:
 
I have so many books on my TBR list that it was just impossible for me to keep track of what books I need to read by a certain date, release dates, etc. by memory alone. I have tried other organizational methods before, like Google Drive, but I didn’t really care too much for it. However, I deal with Excel A LOT at work so I’m kind of an expert on it, so I thought it would be the best way for me to keep up with deadlines, books I need/want to read or re-read. Here is a few screenshots of my handy work
 

 


 
 
These have really helped me out tremendously. Now I don’t have to wonder about if I have posts scheduled, I can just look at my handy little calendar and see. I also LOVE my excel spreadsheet, I keep it updated on a flash drive so that I can look at it no matter if I’m at work, home or school.

 
 
 
Talk to me

What kind of things do you use to keep organized? What do you think about my organizational skills?
 




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

10 comments:

  1. I think it's great you have found some organizational tools to help you out! I can't imagine trying to do everything you do AND blog! You're a machine! :P I do think having a calendar is huge. I use one on my laptop because it's my only place I work on blog stuff so I don't feel the need for a physical copy, but aside from that it looks exactly the same as yours (oh, except I color code that as well)! When it comes to reading list, I only keep track with Goodreads BUT I don't do any review books so it's much easier for me. Still, looks like yours is working well :)

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  2. I use blogger as well and I do love that you can go ahead and schedule posts in advance. Wow, your calendar and excel spreadsheet are great I basically have nothing. I just joined Goodreads so I'll probably start using that for my TBR list, but I haven't looked too much into it to see if you can organize it like you have done (and I love your color coding). As far as posting, I just try to keep a couple of weeks ahead (except for STS which I do week to week based on the books I actually get). That's the extent of my planning. I'm impressed! ~Pam

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  3. Hmmmm.... well, this post tells me that you are defintely 10000x more organized than I am. HAHA! I don't have a calendar, or a Google Drive document or anything. I kind of just like to go with the flow-- I post whatever type suits my current fancy, so my features appear at different days of the week (except for weekend recaps, which I like to post on uh, weekends :D). As for picking books to read, I just pick the most interesting one from the shelf. HAHA! I do use Microsoft One Note though, because its SO convenient for taking note of discussion posts for recaps, and ARC deadlines, and post ideas :) But that's it for me. Great topic Christy :D

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  4. I don't organize at all. I tried before with Google Calendar, but I hated opening it every single time and I just gave up. Now, I just look and see if it has the same date as another post. What sucks is that Blogger and Google Cal are Google's, so just sync the two. *sigh*

    As for TBR books, I couldn't really care less. I'll take what comes my way.

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  5. I would be lost without google calender to organise my posts. I colour code them so I know what's done and what I still have to do and I love that I can move everything around so easily. These two features are the main reasons I don't use a normal calendar that I'd have to write on. I really love the idea of using excel to keep track of my TBR pile. I'm definitely going to have to give that a try!

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  6. I love sitting down and organising content for my blog. I work in a similar way to yourself, planning out the month of posts ahead of me. With my TBR I'm not quite as organised though. I set small TBR goals each month because I never know what I'll be able to manage numbers wise. I post 4-6 reviews a month and usually write up a review after finishing a book. Anyway, it seems to be working at the moment, but with an ever increasing TBR, I forsee an excel spreadsheet in my future.

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  7. I use a google calendar for all my scheduled post and every type of post has a different color.. I had one of those large desk calendars but that didn't work. AND, I tried to do an ARC spreadsheet like yours and it was tiring having to update it all the time. I have one, just not as... in detail as it was !

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  8. I use Google Calender to schedule my blog because it's something I can look at while I'm writing my posts! Also, being able to change the colours make it look pretty! Haha! I would love to do an ARC spreadsheet but I think I'd be AWFUL at keeping up to date with it....!

    Rita xx

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  9. I love Excel. I have my TBR in an Excel spreadsheet as well, though I have it organized differently than you do. Though I may need to find a way to incorporate color into mine now... yours is so eye-popping!

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  10. Wow this is awesome! I'm a little bit of an organization freak...I love being organized, and seeing other people's crazy organization as well! Your spreadsheet is pretty awesome.

    I'm not sure if something like that would be necessary for me, though...although, after seeing yours, I seriously want to have one of my own, haha. I have my master TBR list on Goodreads, which is separated into general TBR, TBRs I own, and ARC TBRs. And then I have a list (that I keep on my blog) of what month I need to/plan to read certain ARCs in. I'm not sure that a spreadsheet would be any more effective than my list...what do you think? Why did you choose a spreadsheet to begin with? I guess maybe it would be a lot more useful for me if I didn't use Goodreads' cataloguing feature as much as I do.

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