22: Organized AF (Made Simple): The Systems + Energy Flow That Keep Me Productive

Feeling the pressure to “do it all” as a solopreneur—especially when your energy’s low and your schedule feels full before the day even begins? You’re not alone. In this episode of The Creative Bodega, I’m walking you through the simple planning system that keeps my content flowing and my business running—without burnout. You’ll learn how to align your week with your energy, ditch rigid time blocks, and focus on what actually matters. If you’re craving more clarity, better boundaries, and less tech overwhelm, this episode is for you.

Check out the full show notes for this episode here!

Things I cover inside the episode:
✨ How I plan my weeks using energy—not time blocks
✨ The top 3 tasks I write down daily (and why they actually get done)
✨ My loose content batching flow that still gets results
✨ The tools I use—and the ones I skip completely
✨ How I set up a weekly rhythm that helps me stay focused without burning out

Resources mentioned inside the episode:

📌 My fav not-fancy-go-to notebook
📌 Learn about Dani's Google Calendar tricks here! Find her on Instagram or check out her website. She’s the queen of visual organization!
📌 [Why I Don’t Batch Anymore Episode]
📌 [Cycle Syncing & Content Creation Episode]

Connect with me:
🫶🏼 Follow me on Instagram for daily insights
🫶🏼 Join my 321 Create Newsletter for weekly content tips
🫶🏼 Check out The Content Coven Membership

Be sure to hit "Subscribe" or "Follow" so you never miss an episode!

Transcript

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I write down my three to-dos every morning by hand in my notebook and that's it. And if I don't get them done, I really feel it like that's like my three non-negotiables. I'm not writing 17 things down. Okay. Like I know I have other things that I have to do and maybe I can write them down below, but these are my. Must do today or I will feel like a failure and they're realistic. I'm not like, build your course. Like clearly not. I'm like, review module one. I break it into smaller things. So it's not endless to-do list. It's just the essential, doable, super energy aligned tasks for that day. Welcome to the Creative Bodega, a podcast about content marketing, Instagram growth, and personal branding for female service-based solopreneurs who wanna grow their business without letting it take over their lives. I'm your host Em Connor, and each week I'll share actionable tips, expert advice, and unfiltered truths to help you create engaging content, connect authentically with your audience, and turn followers into loyal customers. All without the burnout. If you're ready to simplify your content creation, navigate the ever changing trends and build a business that works for you while staying sane in this crazy season of life, then you're in the right place. I took to my stories this week and I asked you guys for some episode ideas. And I got a lot of fantastic ideas and I had remembered that I had done this, I don't know, probably two months ago as well. So I grabbed the screenshots from all the responses. I put them into chat, GBT, of course, and I said, here are my content pillars. Can you organize these podcast ideas for my audience? In a way that makes sense. So it, she went ahead and organized them, and there was a definite theme that I was seeing, and it was around organization and time management. So somebody asked, how do you plan your work days, especially when motivation is low? Somebody asked, what does your daily, weekly, and monthly schedule look like? Somebody asked, what do you focus on when you only have four hours a week for content? Which I loved that question and that is so near and dear to my heart because that's all I had when I first started the Creative cega. So I totally can get down with that question. So it's really funny to me though, you guys, because it's not like I'm an organization expert or anything, but I know it is a bit of a superpower of mine. It's like a low key like superpower and. I don't have any like insane strategies or products to buy or subscriptions like for organization. It's really just systems I've created for myself that work for me and, um, I don't chase shiny objects, so. Let's be honest, like being organized as a solopreneur is really hard because you got a lot going on. You're juggling your business. You might have a family. I mean, I have two kids to take care of. They are eight and nine. They are in club soccer. They play additional sports in addition to soccer year round. We are every which way when they get home from school and. Hi. We have to feed them. Oh, and then I have a dog to take care of and a home and a yard and you know, the list goes on, right? And my membership and clients and courses that I'm running live. And it's, it's a lot. So I took a moment, and I'm not gonna lie, I went to chat GPT, I'm just gonna start telling you guys how I use it and when, and I hope it'll help you. But I said. I am called out for my systems and my organization as a solopreneur. You know, what questions can you ask me so that we can really zero in on what it is that I do? Because it's so close to me, I don't think I can see it, and I know you know what that's like. I would assume, especially if you're an expert in something, you just take things for granted and you're like. Duh. Everybody knows how to do this, but you know, actually they don't. So I'm gonna walk you through the actual systems and energy flow that keep my business running smoothly during school hours without the burnout and without needing 15 different. Apps. By the end of this episode, you will know how to plan your week in a way that honors your brain and your life. Use just a few tools, not a text stack that overwhelms you and stay consistent with content and without working every single day. And how to protect your energy like it's your most valuable asset and resource because honestly. It is, it absolutely is in what we do. If you have no energy or you're so disorganized, you can't get stuff done, like how will your business thrive? It really won't. So here's what you're gonna learn today. Here's the flow for the episode. I wanna talk about energy led planning, not rigid time blocks, uh, simple systems that keep me. Sane, loose content batching that still gets me results. How I set boundaries that protect my brain and my business. How I use weekly rhythms and top three priorities to stay like on track and grounded and what I don't do on purpose. Okay, so let's dive into the detailed steps here. Step number one, energy led planning. I know this sounds woo woo and if you know me, I am, I'm a, I'm a little woo and I'm here for it so I don't run on time blocks. I had an amazing past student who like teaches everything about time blocking. I even hired her one-on-one to work with me, and I, it, it just, it did not work. It did not work for me. I really truly do run on energy awareness, and I think once I learned the time blocking system, it helped me realize that I do run on energy awareness. So really being in tune with myself and my energy. What does that mean? I've talked about it before. I track my menstrual cycle and I know when I'm most creative and when I need to rest. I know when I can push myself. And when I need to say, okay, it's all right. Go watch TV for like an hour and step away from this because it's not working right now. And there's a reason for that. I know my brain power hours. So mid-morning, morning, mid-morning after my kids get on the bus, all I wanna do is run up to my office and start working. Anytime after lunch, things start to go downhill for me. So. What does that look like? And from about eight 30 until two, I'm good. Um, but anytime really after that, I'm starting to really lose focus. I also do a quick weekly kind of pulse check on Sundays. I am very intentional with my Google calendar. I have a personal calendar. I have the Creative Bodega calendar. I have my children's calendar and I, they share one. I don't need one for each. And I have, I'm connected to my husband's calendar so I can see what he's got going on. So I, on Sunday will just kind of like check in, what do I have coming up this week? What do I need to reschedule? Uh, because sometimes I schedule too much in one week and I, I know myself and I'm like, I gotta push that out. I gotta push that out. Like I need more time. I also do not schedule calls. On Mondays or Fridays, so I talk about that a lot. I shove a lot into Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So I always know that on Sunday I don't have to panic about anything the next day. Like I know Monday is my day to get my life in order, and that is such a beautiful thing to me. I will never go back on that. It's. Huge. So that's a really great tip and takeaway. If there's a day of the week where you think that it would like really serve you to kind of not take calls or not make, don't put, don't put anything on the calendar, like make that happen. Okay. So I'll talk more about that in a little bit actually. So I. I do this weekly kind of pulse check on Sunday. I look at my Google calendar. I can turn off my kids' calendar, like if I need to, to really just focus on what's between those like nine and three hours, like the work hours.'cause anything for them is after school, right? Or on the weekends. So I look at what's coming up, what, what needs to be moved. Because it feels a little too heavy that week, and this really helps me play my week based on what my actual body and my brain can handle that week. Uh, I also talk about in this episode about cycle syncing and my content creation and my work in general, which I will link that in the show notes, which by the way, all the show notes can be found at the created bodega.com/blog/ 22. Because the best schedule in the world doesn't work if your nervous system is fried. And I definitely have a little bit of a jack up nervous system. I think. I mean, I'm an anxious person. Uh, I've talked about how I take Lexapro because of that. It runs in my family and I've just had to accept it. I've tried to come off. It doesn't go well, and I am just a happier human on it. I don't love taking something every day. Trust me. I have internal battles all the time about it, but in the end, I'm a happier. Just, I'm a happier person. I'm a better mom, I'm a better wife, I'm a better business owner. So no shame in that if it's something that you wanna explore as well. So that's number one. So energy led planning is huge for me. Energy awareness, tapping into my cycle, really knowing my hours of the day, where I'm the most on. Then kind of doing that Sunday check-in, and honestly, guys, I do that every day. My Google calendar is open every day, all day as a tab, and I'm constantly looking at what's ahead that week. I don't look too much beyond that, but it definitely helps me stay aware. Step number two, my system. I have a lot of systems and I, if you follow my stories, you see me, Hey, this is my podcast system. Hey, this is my newsletter system. Hey, this is my content creation system. That's my jam, and I think I need to talk more about it and teach more about it. And none of them require an app. Well, that's sort of a lie. I do use leader for content creation, but I'm a Google girl. Like I literally live in spreadsheets. And Google Docs. I, I don't need anything beyond that. I am not a notion girl. I'm not an Asana girl. I've tried and it just doesn't work for me. So the three main tools that I use is my Google Drive. Everything is organized by folder. I have, um, you know what? Let's just, let's just do this. Let's just, let me tell you, you're gonna hear me click it around in the background. So I have six main folders in my Google Drive. One is the Insta Canva Collective. That is my signature course. One's labeled podcast, one is labeled M times Biz, M and Biz. So it's just Emily and business stuff like taxes and personal stuff. Uh, the next one's courses and collaborations. The next one is social media, and the last one is the coven, my membership. So those are my six main folders. I start them all with emojis. And that same goes for the Google Calendar. I have found, I learned this from my friend Danny from Time is Honey, I adore her. I will link her in the show notes as well. She taught me this and uh, she was in my signature course, the Insec Canva Collective, and she gave us the tip to add emojis at the beginning of our folders in Canva. And I started doing it everywhere, and I don't know why it's. Well, I do know why,'cause I'm so visual, I almost look for the little icon or the emoji instead of the words. And now I do it on my Google calendar too. If my dog has a vet appointment, you better believe a little dog's face is in the beginning. And then it says blitz at vet, like if I have acupuncture and there's a needle, and then it says acupuncture. So I just like see all these little icons on my calendar and it like, kind of makes me happy. I, I actually kind of love it. I also have my Google calendar. Color coded. So again, I have those multiple calendars. M Connor's, personal m, Connor's, TC, B, the Creative Bodega, uh, will and Reese, my kiddos. And then I have my husband's, which I have his off pretty much all the time, unless I just need to check something really quick. I don't have his open. I don't need to see it all the time. So that's what I've got. And then. I've got custom colors on my calendar so I don't stick with like the generic Google Calendar colors. Again, my friend Danny taught me how to find special colors. I I, and I honestly don't even remember how that was, but I'll look it up and I will find it and I'll share that with you as well. So number three in my systems is just a notebook. It's so not fancy, but it is this little notebook. It's smaller than like a big notebook. It's not like an eight and a half by, what is it, eight and a half by 11. It's way smaller than that, and I, this is what I do every day. I sit down, I rate. The first three letters of the day of the week, MON, and then like five slash 12. And then anything I have to do, and I, I stick with three things. Mostly it's my big three. The big three that I need to get done. Don't, this is from someone, I just don't remember who it is. But I put a little square and then I write what I have to do.'cause what I do is I check the little squares off and it brings me so much joy. So, let's see. Looking at my notebook from this week, it was like. Three podcast outlines. Let's see what else. I have welcome email for Start and Grow students, and then I have think about a collaboration for June. So something that I'm working on in the coven. My membership is encouraging people to collaborate with somebody in June and thinking of ways that they can do that in case they're not sure how. So those were my big three the other day, and it is things. Well, we're gonna get into this, but it's, it's time sensitive. It's like what needs to happen today? Well, uh, the start and grow your email list starts. In two days. So I absolutely need to write everybody and let them know to look out for an email on Friday and tell them what's coming up next. So that's really darn important. I'll talk about the more in a little bit, but I just write them down. I write down my three to-dos every morning by hand in my notebook, and that's it. And if I don't get them done. I really feel it. Like that's like my three non-negotiables. I'm not writing 17 things down. Okay. Like I know I have other things that I have to do and maybe I can write them down below, but these are my must do today. Or I will feel like a failure and they're realistic. I'm not like, build your course. Like clearly not. I'm like, review module one, like. I, I, I break it into smaller things, so it's not endless to-do lists. It's just the essential, doable, super energy aligned tasks for that day. Okay, so step number three, loose batching. That works. So my batching system isn't super rigid anymore because it doesn't have to be. And I do talk about this in a podcast about why I don't batch anymore and how, how I'm doing things differently. So I will link that in the show notes as well. But basically it's brainstorming and then I've got the production part. So. I've got, you know, lists inside an Excel spreadsheet, obviously with content ideas organized by content pillar, and then I will move on to production. So I will do like a 90 minute sprint once or twice a week where I'm just in Canva designing carousels or designing whatever I have to, or creating reels. So then I don't write captions when I'm creating content, I just get the content done. I create the carousel or the post in Canva, or I make the reel. And the caption comes last for me. I don't tend to do it on the same day. Totally different energy for me, and I tend to save all my captions for a liter, so that that's just what works for me. But this lets me stay consistent without feeling like I have to post every single day. I am really down to posting three to four times a week, and that feels really good for me. So loose batching that works. Step number four. Boundaries, which are magical. The reason I can create so much and still feel sane is'cause I've got pretty amazing boundaries in my business. What I'm not available for? DMS 24 7 emails. Responses 24 7. No, you're you're not gonna find me doing that. Do I have an email response that goes out to everybody? Like, thank you for your email. I do not work during these times or day. No, I don't.'cause honestly, I don't really think I owe that to people and I am timely. I will always get back in 24 to 48 hours. Absolutely. But. I'm not gonna be like, you can expect to hear from me in this amount of, no, I just don't think people are owed that. I'm not really here for posting every day anymore. I'm in my stories every day, and remember when I say every day, that's Monday through Friday. I do not work on Saturday and Sunday, and I'm not really here for like being active on every single platform. Yeah, there's platforms that look real shiny, like real shiny, like right now, Pinterest and LinkedIn. And threads I feel like are having like a moment. And a lot of people are talking about them and a lot of people are telling you to get on them. And like I see people drop everything they're doing and jump on and I'm like, good luck.'cause you don't got a system for it. You're probably not gonna stick with it. Like I don't jump on anything irrationally or like without really thinking it through and talking to people. So instead, I only work during school hours. I keep all, like all my notifications are off, so I don't have notifications on Instagram. I don't have notifications in my email. I don't have notifications on my phone for this stuff. Like I have to intentionally go and check them and that's what works for me. I do not sleep with my phone in my room to just avoid the mindless scrolling and to be really more present. Honestly, sometimes when I do bring my phone to my room, there's only one reason I bring it. You guys are gonna laugh, but like. My kids hate showering. Okay. Like they freak out. There's so many funny reels out there, like when you tell your kid you have to take a shower and they like lose their mind. Okay, so those are my kids. It's so annoying. I'm like, you have to shower. So my stepmom actually got them this little shower speaker. But it connects Bluetooth to my phone. So I give them both two songs. I say, you've got two songs worth of a shower and now they wanna go in. It actually literally works. They get excited to go in, they pick whatever two songs they want. But I need my phone upstairs in order to do this.'cause it's the end of the day and my phone can't be downstairs. So sometimes it has to be in my room and then I'm like too lazy to go back downstairs.'cause once my kids go to bed, I go to bed. So I'm in bed at like 9, 9 30. And my phone will be there. And then the in the morning my kids will come in and I'm like on my phone and I'm distracted and I'm not listening to them. And I'm like, what am I doing? Why is this here? So my laptop stays in my office. It really doesn't come into the kitchen. Once my kids are home, my office is upstairs, like the laptop's up there. And remember I said I never schedule calls or any appointments on Mondays. I also keep Fridays pretty much open for personal things. So whether that's running errands, getting a massage, meeting my mom or a friend for lunch, gardening. Whatever. There's no work unless I feel inspired to work unless I want to. Right. And I actually do write my newsletters mostly on the weekends. And it, and I don't, I don't mind that, like that's, I work on it lightly on Saturday and Sunday and it's like done by Sunday and it's, I just, I don't mind doing that. It's something I really enjoy. So step number five. Weekly rhythm and top three focus. So I touched on this a little bit. So here's what my week looks like. Again, I do not do the time blocking. Okay. I, I just can't, I cannot do that. It's too rigid, it doesn't feel good, and my body resists it and my mind, but what I do do is. Do do. My kids would love that. What I do is I have kind of a focus for the day, so I got my top three that I wanna work on, but I also have a focus. So on Mondays it's my newsletter, I. And batching my content for the week if I haven't already. So it's making sure my newsletter is ready to go, making sure that it is scheduled in flow desks and making sure that I have at least Monday and Wednesday and probably Friday and Saturday if most likely batched for the week. So that's really my focus to like. Once those two things are done, I'm like, Ugh, okay. Like now I can work on other things. It's kind of low pressure. It's kind of fun for me. It's a slow start and that feels really good. I have no Sunday scaries'cause I know that I don't have anything on Monday. I can just work on what I wanna work on. I. Tuesdays is my membership day, so I really make sure that I'm logging into my membership, I'm answering questions, I'm engaging, I'm thinking about like upcoming talks, I'm thinking about guest speakers. I focus on the membership, how I can make it better, how I can improve it, how I can get more people into it. So that's like my focus for Tuesdays, Wednesdays. Is kind of like checking in on products or courses or any like email funnels. And again, I don't really have funnels, but even just like are there freebies that need to be retired or did someone let me know that a link is not working somewhere? Or is there a course that's coming up soon that I need to work on the lessons? So if none of that is relevant, then Wednesday's just my day to day. Do what I wanna do, right? But that is my loose focus for then. Then Thursday is podcast and newsletter prep for the next week. So podcast, you know, what episodes do I need to get into Buzz Sprout? What still needs a blog? What upcoming outlines or scripts can I start working on? So it's just working on my podcast. And then the newsletter prep is just duplicating my template that I have inside of flow desks and just kind of updating things lightly. Like now that my podcast dictates my newsletter, oh my God, like my newsletter's even faster, and it didn't even take that long before, and now it's even faster. And I just have to look at what. Podcast is coming out next week, and can I start kind of chipping away at that, especially if my kids have sports and then Friday is off or light work, only if I'm inspired. And I've actually been recording a lot of podcasts on Friday. I don't know why. It feels good. I feel light, I feel excited. For the weekend, I am just like, yeah, like let's just record a couple podcasts. So that's what I do. And then every day I ask myself, what, what's my top three? And I usually choose that based on the energy that I have that day, the urgency that is there for whatever the tasks are. And just like my flow, right? So not doing all three of those, that's totally fine, but forgetting them, that's when I start to feel off track. I really do take those three things into consideration, energy, urgency, and flow. So those are my five. So wait, let's go back here. So step number one, energy led. Planning. So running on energy awareness, not on rigid time blocks. Um, step two is my systems that don't require any special apps, which I love them so much. I could do a whole other episode on those. A step number three, loose batching. So loose content batching that is really working for me right now. It's not super rigid. It's got a great flow to it. Step four, boundaries. That's why I still feel sane and I just haven't burnt out yet. And then step number five is having that weekly, daily kind of rhythm and focusing on my top three per day. And if I don't finish one of my top threes, which is very rare, I just push it to the next day. So I wake up the next day, Tuesday, TUES five slash 13. What are the three things I have to do? So some tips and mistakes to avoid. Mistake number one, thinking systems have to be really tech heavy, and if you're not using Notion or Asana or whatever, like you're failing, you are not. You need to find something that works for you. You, your brain needs clarity, not complexity. Mistake number two, thinking, falling off your schedule's failure. It's just feedback. It's feedback. Your systems are meant to evolve. Something's not quite right. I want you to ask yourself, what would make this feel better? What would make this easier? Mistake number three, hustling through your low energy phases. Okay? You'll just create mediocre work and end up resenting it. So instead, I want you to work with your flow, especially if you are a menstruating female. I. Or just hit pause, like, just give yourself some grace. If the focus is not there, let it go. Especially if it's that time of the month where probably it's, you know, just makes sense, right? If you're not feeling motivated multiple days in a row throughout the entire month, that's a whole other story. Okay? Uh, you might wanna go see the doctor, I'm not gonna lie. So here's a tip. I want you to keep everything in one hub. That's what I do, whether it's Notion or Asana or whatever. I'm a Google Drive girl, so. I've got my spreadsheets. I've got my folders. I'm super organized. The fewer tools I think you need to learn, I think the faster you're gonna actually use them. So you just need simple systems, constant or consistent check-ins with yourself and permission to shift. When you feel the need to shift, like trust yourself in that your consistency is not gonna come from doing more, it's gonna come from doing what's working for you. And I hope, you know, even if none of this resonates with you, but I'm hoping some parts do and you're like, I'm gonna start trying that one or two things that em talked about in that. So until next time, just keep it simple, keep it honest, and remember, you're not behind. You just need a system that probably fits your life. Thank you so much for being here, you guys. If you have the time, if you could rate and review this podcast, it truly would mean the world to me. It'll help more people hear it, and I just will do my heart some good. So thank you and I will see you on the next episode. Thanks so much for hanging out with me on the Creative Bodega Podcast. If you love this episode, please be sure to share it with a fellow solopreneur who could use a little content creation inspiration. And hey, don't forget to check out the show notes for any resources I mentioned on the episode. To help you create content that feels easy and actually gets you results. If you want even more Canva and content tips, head over to my website, the creative bodega.com, or find me on Instagram under the same name. Until next time, keep creating, keep showing up, and most importantly, try and have a little fun with your content. I'll see you on the next episode.