The Type A+ Podcast Episode 2: My Color-Coded Life - Links & Show Notes
Episode Description:
In this episode, Beth is sharing her tips on making sure your schedule is balanced and keeping the promises you make to yourself. Whether you are a physical note-taker or a digital whiz, she'll take you through the way she organizes the many facets of her life, even at the busiest times of year.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Resources:
Moleskine Notebook (with custom cover)
Podcast:
The Type A Plus Podcast Instagram
Host:
Beth Lawrence & Company Instagram
Beth will be back each week, delivering bite-sized tips (10 minute episodes or less) on how to optimize your life and work.
Episode Transcript can be found below:
Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Type A+ podcast. I'm your host, Beth Lawrence. I'm really excited this week to talk about how color coding your life. Now, when I say organizing your life, I'm mostly talking here about your business, but of course, we all have lives outside of our businesses and we all have hats that we wear outside of that as well.
So today we're gonna talk about how I organize my crazy hectic life. Hopefully, it'll help you as well. So I think the first place we have to start when we're talking about organization, obviously is, I mean, who doesn't love a trip to an office supply? I mean, huh? I remember going, even as a kid, I loved back-to-school shopping. I'm sure the parents that are listening are kind of rolling their eyes because I'm sure you're getting ready to do that if you have not done so already, but you know, it always, for me represented a new year, a new start. And even when I was having hard times as a kid, it always felt like. A possibility of opening up a new notebook or a new planner. It just felt like there was so much possibility and it felt almost as if it was a vessel for my next big idea. I think where my color coding kind of started, or the reason I have gravitated toward that, is it. For me with memorization. So I've always had a very good memory, even as a child. And I remember, in fact, even playing the match game, if you remember, you would lay all the cards flat and you would flip over, you know, cards one at a time trying to find matching pairs.
And I remember. Even playing my parents as a kid and beating them all the time and thinking they were just letting me win. But growing up, they said, no, you actually, there were a lot of times where you would win. Um, just because memory and memorization always came very easy to me. So I think color coding is a way for me to categorize things in an instant.
When I started in school, it went from having fun with, you know, memory card games to how I apply this to my studies. I started using multiple different color note cards when I was studying for different tests or different subjects. So for example, I would have, you know, yellow for science and blue for history, so that when I was thinking about it, when I was taking a test in my mind, I was flashing.
First, a color made it easier for me to associate it then with the subject matter. And then when I started my career, I didn't necessarily use them right away for my business, or I didn't necessarily apply even the color coding aspect to my business.
But when I took the CMP exam, which again is certified meaning professional, I started using color-coded note cards again, per subject matter. So that when I was memorizing things for this big intense exam, it made it easier for me to narrow down what the answer could be, I suppose. And.
My, I remember my husband coming home one day and I had this long skinny box full of notecards. It almost looked like one of the drawers in a library, like from the Dewey decimal system way back when, um, if you're, you're like me and you remember that, um, at some point in your life, but it was full of note cards.
And he was laughing because there were so many different colors and he just, you know, it was funny to see my, the way that my brain was organized. From there, I actually started really using this in my business life when I started to work for locations where I had multiple clients. So I would be planning a wedding, for example, at the same time that I was planning a national gala at the same time that I was planning a fundraiser.
And so these color-coded files in that case really helped me to narrow down and identify. The item I needed to be working on. It helped me quickly navigate between things and be able to multitask. So when I started my business, I started using this for my calendars to organize all the different types of clients that I work with.
But also now I apply it to my personal end business life to try to balance. So you can use it for, we're gonna talk about physical and digital calendars. In my opinion, I am of a third person for a third kind, who enjoys actually having both physical and digital. So I like to first take notes, and then I actually transcribe it into the digital format, which in, you know, project management case is air table, or obviously Google calendar.
I'm gonna go through how I organize my calendar and I will include a link to a Loom video in the show notes that show you how to do this on Google calendar. But of course, any calendar with this ability with the color coding ability would work. So I start with my ideal work week and that helps to frame.
My schedule in general lets me know when I am and when I'm not available. And shout out to a couple of different groups here for helping me hone in on that. The well-struck community, which is, an organization I've been involved in since I started my business, as well as my coach, Dr. Fran Antonio polls really helped me to implement balance into my life and still be able to have the same amount of output, but feel that I'm optimizing my schedule.
So shout out to. My ideal work week is in yellow and that just frames. Am I taking appointments at this time or am I doing focused work or am I doing something for myself? The next calendar that I have, the next color is orange and that is for my priority client or in this case, my full-time slash in-house position.
That helps me to prioritize that orange is a bright color. I obviously gravitate toward it. So in my calendar, I can see, obviously, this is a priority because a lot of the schedule blocks are going to be orange. And then I have a color for my business. So the times that I work for my clients or have calls or do strategy sessions are blue, and that's easy for me to identify. And then for my personal fun appointments, that includes, you know, dinner with my husband or brunch with friends. Those are pink on my calendar. And then again, that's a fun color for me. It is a bright color. So it's something that stands out on my calendar as. The next thing that I prioritize is wellness, and this can be anything from my morning walks to a trip to the pool, to a massage, a haircut, or even a doctor's appointment. And those are all in green on my calendar which just shows me how much time I'm spending on myself.
And it makes me prioritize myself and my self-care. And then the final color is for outside requests. That's usually in plain black ink, and that is for anything outside of my core responsibilities. That allows me to see, you know, am I able to, for example, um, review a friend's website this week, do I have time to do that?
If my calendar already looks like a rainbow, I obviously don't have enough time necessarily that week and might be able to find time in the future, but it just allows me to see at a glance. How busy I am and what I am able to prioritize. And it actually makes it really easy to count hours for my clients and see how much time it actually takes me to execute tasks, to be more accurate in my billing, and all of the things that I need to do for my business.
Again, it allows my brain to, okay. If I'm looking for something for Beth Lawrence, I'm looking for blue in my Mo skin notebook. If I'm taking notes for my full-time job, I'm using an orange pilot, friction, erasable pen. They do not sponsor this podcast, but that is what I use.
I have multiple different colors all of it is color coded because it just makes it easier for me to see. What I'm doing at a glance and how my life is being prioritized. So I hope that this was helpful.
That is the color-coded life. In a nutshell, we will dive deeper into the ideal work week in another episode, and we will be back next week. Thank you so much for listening.