Friday Feature: Callie Rose

Today can only mean one thing . . .Friday Feature, and today's spotlight will be on the lovely Callie from 'Callie Rose'. I know there are many of you who lead very busy lives; juggling home life, university, family and etc, often leaving you struggling to get organised. So today's post (which I think is really good and helpful) will definitely be of some help to the majority of you. 

How to stay organised with work, uni and keeping a blog

Hello lovelies! Today I thought I'd share a few tips on how to stay organised. A few people have asked me how I stay organised with running my shop, my blog and managing to fit in all my uni work, as well as looking after a three year old. So I thought with the summer holidays coming to an end soon, and many of you either going back to university or school, or starting jobs I'd give a few of my own tips on how to stay organised.

First of all you need to prioritise everything. For example make sure you do your uni work before you concentrate on your blog. You may think that running your blog should be first but no, your education should come first. 

Schedule posts! Scheduling posts is great if you have loads of university work coming up or if you are bombarded with interviews to write up that your lovely boss can't be bothered dealing with. Scheduling things gives you more time for university, work and even family time too.

Scheduling tweets to promote your blog posts are a great way to get people to see your new blog posts too. Yu can schedule these tweets at the same time as your blog posts so that when your post goes live, the tweet can inform everyone. A good app for this is Tweet Deck, which is available on your desk top or phone. 

Do things in bulk. If you have a lot of time on your hands one day why not take all your product photos or out fit photos in one? Then you could always write them up at a later time. Or if you can't sleep at night, or there's nothing decent on TV on a saturday why not write up loads of blog posts, or at least draft some up. These can then be scheduled for a later date.

Alternatively do all your university work (or at least make a start on it) rather than leaving it to the night before.

For me, one of the easiest ways to keep organised is to have a clean working area. Keep your desk area tidy and you will be able to find things so much easier. Important things should be made visible so you don't forget about them, or you could use post it notes and dot them around your computer screen or on the wall where you work. If you work on a laptop sat on the sofa, then you could always have notes on your desk top so that you don't forget those all important things. 

Keeping handy things close by makes a lot of difference too as you're more motivated to do things if the tools you need are right in front of you. I keep my pens, note books, post it notes, house phone and mobile phone all close by. 

I have a Filofax which I have had for about 5 or 6 years now. It's a great little organiser which is really helpful for when you have appointments or events coming, or even for jotting down deadlines and exam days in uni. I also use it for jotting down when scheduled posts are due to go live so that I can tweet and promote when I'm stuck on the morning train to work. You can buy cheap versions of the Filofax from Paperchase if you don't want to folk out the money for a branded one. Either way, an organiser is an organiser and is the main way that I've been keeping organised for years.

Note books are great for keeping organised. I have several note books (although I do love 'collecting' note books too and many are still unused!) but my main three blogging note books are some Cath Kidston ones (but you can get cheap dupes in Home Bargains). They're small enough to go in my handbag too. I use note books to jot down lists including things that need doing, blog post ideas, or even lists of emails and people to get back to. Keeping separate ones for work, uni and your blog is a good idea as it means that you're not going to end up writing blog post ideas down in your dissertation. 

Keeping time slots of things is a good way to organise as it means that you can set aside certain times when you're going to concentrate on your uni or blog. "Do a certain things at this time, only do this project during these days". If you're really busy then you could always set aside full days or weeks to catch up on university work and schedule your blog posts or put your blog to the back of the to do list for a while.  

Please, please, please remember that your blog should not come before your work or university. If it does you could risk becoming sacked or expelled for failing.

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Hope you've all enjoyed this guest post from Callie. If you'd like to find out more, keep up to date with what Carly is up to then you can find her at the following places:

If you'd like to know anything else about organisation just drop me an email ([email protected]) or tweet me @catdicko - I'd be more than happy to help :)