I’m taking a break from blogging right now, so this is a re-post of a blog post from my old blog. 🙂

I remember one evening last winter when I was alone in my sister and I’s room, just relaxing. I’m pretty sure I was either watching my favorite Youtube channel or journaling or both, but anyway, I just remember having such a wonderful, comforting, therapeutic time. I remember that whatever I was doing was just feeding me and making me feel so healthy and happy. I’ve carried that memory with me ever since and recently as I’ve been feeling a little too busy and stressed, that memory has kept coming back, almost haunting me, reminding me that life used to be different. 

I wasn’t always busy every minute of the day, I didn’t used to rush and work until the very last minute when someone called, “dinner time!” and I’d have to stop for the day. I used to have time when I was just relaxing because that was what I was doing. I remember times, years ago, when I would sit for an hour or more, listening to a podcast and crocheting or knitting. My wise little self. Yes, the younger version of me wasn’t so burdened with tasks and responsibilities that she didn’t have time to sit and create and be fed. 

On the one hand, I love growth, I love hard work, and I love what God has given me and what new opportunities I have, but on the other hand, I want to go back to those days when fourteen year old me didn’t struggle to spend an hour or more quietly relaxing. I feel an urgency these days to get out of this mindset of hurrying to get things done before it’s’ too late and trying to stay on top of a massive list of responsibilities. As I recently wrote in my journal, “I want to be the master of my time”. I don’t always want to be the one racing behind, trying to keep up. 

Because when I think about my life and the small bits of experience I have, I know that my happiness has not come from the times of extreme busyness and stress, when I was trying to be ultra productive. When I think about the memories that stand out to me as “happy”, I realize that those are the times when I wasn’t pushing myself, those were the times when I was just living in the moment and enjoying what it was giving me. 

Now, I’m not saying that productivity is bad or that we should never try to be productive. If you’re in my “close circle” it’s likely you know that I can be very ambitious and that I’m always seeking to be productive, sometimes to a negative extreme. But what I am saying is that I want to start prioritizing joy and the love of life over productivity and how much work can be accomplished. 

Is balance possible? 

So if you’re like me, you may be wondering, “is it possible to prioritize joy over productivity and still get things done?”. And taking it a step further you may be wondering, “is it possible to incorporate joy into work so that the act of “being productive” brings joy, therefore accomplishing two things at once?”. (Isn’t that the essence of productivity anyway?) 

I’m going to say yes, to both. With planning, a few well thought out systems, and prayer, I believe we can have the best of both worlds: the peace that comes with a life of joy and the satisfaction that comes from getting things done. 

And for me, this whole process has to start with developing a habit of choosing joy over the momentary dopamine rush that comes after I get a lot done but drain myself dry in the process. I have to choose to stop before I’m exhausted, I have to choose to schedule in rest times just like I schedule work, I have to choose to see just as much value in rest as I see in work. 

After I have that mental foundation of viewing joy as having the same significance as work, then I can start to incorporate the two. This, for me, is where the magic is possible. This is where work can become a joyful extension of who I am, not just something that drains and exhausts me. This is where instead of work being something that I’m always chasing to keep up with, something that’s always pushing me to my max, it turns into something that fulfills and feeds who I am. 

But this only happens when I’m chasing the joy and not just the productivity. When I just chase productivity I’m only thinking about what I can produce, what I can drag out of myself. When I chase joy, I can focus on nurturing my creativity. This in turn, allows me to be more productive over time, but I first have to focus on the joy. 

And this, of course, is a balance. We’re not always going to enjoy what we’re doing and there will be times when we just have to sprint to finish something. But recently, I knew that I could incorporate a lot more joy into my life, despite the things that will inevitably be less-than-enjoyable. And so, with help from the Lord and the wisdom from a wonderful book, (The 5 Choices) I’ve gotten closer to my goal of having more joy and less work-induced stress in my everyday life and I’m looking forward to getting even closer as time goes on!

Here are four of the things I’ve been doing recently that have really helped me manage my time and feel like I’m ahead, or at least just on top of my to-do list!

Assign tasks to days of the week

The idea for this system came during a Saturday “meeting with myself” and I know that it was from the Lord. Before I created this system, I did the work for my blog, newsletter, and instagram whenever I could or right before I needed to post/publish it. Needless to say, that left me feeling stressed, super busy, and behind most of the time! 

Now, each day of the week has a different task and if I stay on schedule (that doesn’t always happen by the way 😉 I will have every piece of content done either ahead of time or right when I need it and I don’t have to worry if I’m missing something. Below are the tasks for each day of my week, it will probably look different for every person, but this is just to show you what I mean and give you some ideas. 

• Monday

Begin blog post draft

Finalize reels (finish creating them so they’re all ready to post)

• Tuesday

Finish blog post draft

• Wednesday

Brainstorm reel ideas (for next week)

Write captions for reels and instagram post

• Thursday

Edit blog post

• Friday

Read a few blog posts of bloggers I follow

Get inspired 😉

• Saturday (this is my big “work day”, so I there’s quite a bit more to do on this day, compared to the other days)

Prepare blog post for publishing (copy and paste onto a wordpress doc, add pics, tags, intro and outro if it’s an interview)

Write email

Film b-roll for 3 reels

Plan instagram week 

Prioritize the activities that pay back the most

This tip is from the book I mentioned earlier, The 5 Choices. And wow, that book was amazing and kind of life-changing! One of the themes is spending more time doing what they call Q2 activities, things like planning ahead, batch creating, having deep work sessions, working on your most creative projects, resting and refueling. They can also include big tasks that need to get done each day, like the tasks assigned to each day of my week that I shared in the last point. 

These are the things that give back so much compared to the amount of time you spend on them. They can help you prepare content or materials ahead of time so when you need to publish or post something or when you finally get time to create, you can just sit down and jump in instead of taking the time to get everything ready. A Q2 activity doesn’t have to just be prep, it can also be the creation process itself. Regardless of what you do during these Q2 times, the goal is to be able to work deeply from a focused place to help yourself and others to perform at your best level.  

These are also the things that can be extra hard to fit into your schedule because the millions (okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration) of little things that feel so urgent. It takes discipline to include these focused sessions in your day when you’re used to chasing after all of those millions of things (haha), but once you get in the habit, you’ll probably never want to stop! 

So I like to focus on two or three of these important tasks each day and then all the other stuff, like going through emails, checking notifs on Ydubs, or anything else that might feel urgent but isn’t really in the big scheme of things, just gets pushed to the back burner until those tasks are finished. And this doesn’t happen perfectly everyday, it’s just what I’m shooting for. 

Plan ahead

This is basically what my Saturday mornings are about now. I spend that time planning for the next week, so nothing is a surprise and nothing gets forgotten about. At least, that’s the goal. 🙂

Batch create

Batch creation is so much fun! It gives you this huge feeling of productivity after you’re done because now you have a bunch of content or ideas for content. It’s kinda like a high intensity workout, you hit it hard for a certain amount of time and then you can rest and you’re so much stronger compared to when you just keep running forever at the same pace. 

At the moment, I use this strategy for making reels and brainstorming blog post/instagram ideas. I would love to eventually batch create blog posts, but right now it takes a lot out of me to write just one, so I think something will need to change to make that possible. But I also have more time to write a blog post compared to a reel because I post multiple reels a week. 

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So those are some of the time management tips I’ve been implementing lately that have really helped me on my journey to joyful productivity. It is possible to be joyfully productive and together and with the Lord, we will soon be experiencing that fullness of joy that is in his presence!

Have you ever struggled with feeling burdened with everything that needs to get done, so much so that you lose some of your joy? Are there any things that you do that help you feel less overwhelmed? Tell us in the comments below!