Working Mami: Organizing For a New Month

February is here! Woohoo! The month of love. As in...love organizing! Last week was...interesting. So, I wrote a post giving you tips on what to do to survive cold/flu season and lo and behold, I got a call on Thursday that the Frog Princess was running a 102 degree fever. Suffice it to say that my entire schedule for the remaining of the week went out the window. That included a fashion post I wanted to share with you last Friday. I had to edit pics and didn't get a chance to do so (do not procrastinate, people!).

Related Post: Tools That Keep Me Organized

Alas, such is life.

It is a new month and guess what?! We have the grand privilege of doing it all over again! Ain't it great?! To that end, I want to tell you what I do to get ready for a new month. This will be short and sweet! Feel free to send me your questions if there's something you need to know. Also, I share thoughts about organization and bawsing on Periscope. If you don't catch me live, you can check out the Katch account for the videos after the 24 hours are up on Periscope. Word to the wise, a lot of the videos get taken down because the info will make it into my e-courses (have you checked out the first one? Class begins soon!).

Okay, here it is:

1. Close out the previous month - so I did this over the weekend although ideally, I would've like to have gotten it done last week. Closing out the month includes perusing my month-at-a-glance in my blog organizer and making sure that I've turned in any links for sponsored posts and have invoiced accordingly. I update the info right on that page and keep it moving to my next step.
2. Write down my lessons learned and outcome! This is important. I say this because I am terrible at it and need to hear it yet again. In the planner, there's a section for goals and a corresponding section for outcome. There's also a section for lessons learned. I realized that I wasn't utilizing these as much and have doubled back to make sure that I am celebrating my wins and working on my misses. Does that make sense? For example, I set a crazy goal in January and made it. On January 12th! WHAT?! [insert shoulder shimmy, glitter and body rolls] That needs to be celebrated and I am trying my hardest to do this every week before I...
3. Plan out next month - why yes, I do move on to the next month's section in the organizer and set new goals. I also open up my week and start brainstorming. Who am I pitching? Are there any topics that I want to write about? Any topics I want to Scope about? That all gets written down and then funnels into my editorial calendar.
4. Do a quick overview of editorial calendar - be sure to make sure you account for special dates, holidays, etc. This month is hard on me y'all. Being real honest. The anniversary of Mami's passing is on Tuesday and 4 days later is her birthday so, I try to take these things into account. It means that the writing for that time period is done in advance. And I can go ahead and plan my writing time before it gets here. Similarly, if the kids are going to be out of school and you know you might not have your regularly scheduled writing time, if you put that into your editorial calendar, you can go ahead and set up a system to ensure that you still have posts going up during that time period.

That's it! Four quick tips to make sure you have a great month! I'm working on lack o' sleep so, what'd I miss here?

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