So in this post, I am gonna share with you how I manage all my stuff from my freelance work to my personal project to content creation, skill up-gradation and will all these, maintaining my physical and mental health

So Hi, my name is Darshan and I provide my software development services as a freelancer to businesses and professionals. To know more about you can visit my website

So basically I have this automation system for myself which I have created with months of brainstorming and observing my daily life and learned how I can sync it with the priority things in my life.

And today I will share my way to do it and maybe it's gonna help you to create your once in order make your your life productive and to achieve possibly more things in less time.

If you want to understand this concept through virtual content then I already have a video on this topic on my YouTube Channel, so you can check it out as well;

CHECK THE VIDEO

Now this article can basically be categorized into two parts: -

1. In the first part I am going to tell you some basics things that are important for being productive and are essential to being able to automate your days
2. In the second part I will share some of the apps and services on which I have built my automation system.

So let’s start with the first part-

• The first thing you have to understand is the importance of routine. Now in today's world, most people think that routine life is boring stuff and you should live and explore your life by doing new things and stuff, And that's true till some extent but what after you have to choose something which you like and want to build your carrier on. Then you need a routine for yourself in order to do something impactful in your desired domain. And trust me without having a routine you probably cannot achieve anything significant in the least possible time. So just get this fact cleared in your mind that you need to have a routine in your life and no matter what anything you want to do eventually gets done by routine.

• Then second is the conversion of bad habits So we all have some good habits and some bad habits. Now, most of the time our bad habits tend to steal our time from us each day and we don’t even realize it. Now the harsh reality is we cannot just wake up one day and can eliminate these habits from our life. On another hand what we can do is we can covert that bad habits into habits with the right context. And what is the right context, anything related to our goals or whatever we want to achieve in our lives.

• Then third is Productive Downtime. In your typical day if you see carefully then you can observe many small chunks of time when you basically do nothing. It can be while you are going to your college or work, or maybe in the afternoon when you feel tired, Or maybe when you are waiting for work to be done in waiting lines. At all these times instead of wasting it on social media or chit-chatting with people for no reason, You can use these small chunks efficiently to increase the magnitude of your productivity or to plan some upcoming stuff. I use my downtime to generate more ideas for my videos, other content, new ideas for my existing apps on PlayStore, and for finding more efficient ways to do stuff so that I can make more done in less time. So learn to use your downtimes productively.

So these were some things that you have to work on first in order to get most of your days and from the system you build, towards your goal.

So now let’s move to the second part of this video which is about the apps and services and use that can work as assistants for me throughout the day and ultimately take me to achieve whatever I want in the minimum possible time.

-> Notion

So the first is Notion. Now Notion is such an amazing thing, it's basically my second brain. It's a process management tool as people state's it and most big companies and organizations use it daily to manage their process pipeline. And once you understand the notion and get into the habit of using it, then you just kind off become additive to it(in a positive sense obviously).

Now you can download Notion from the website and can also install it on your phone. It's available for each and every major platform for mobile as well as desktop systems. So basically anything which comes into my mind I basically dump it here.

Because as David Allen says

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them

-> Google Calendar

The second is Google Calendar, Now I have recently started using it, and let me tell you if you know exactly how to utilize it then it can help you to build a great and optimized automation system. In google calendar, there are events and tasks which I mostly use. So as notion helps me to describe and organize my ideas and goals in a certain way, google calendar plays the role of injecting those ideas and goals into my daily schedule in a generalized fashion and then it further goes down to other tools used in the stack. I keep changing these schedules often based on my priorities.

-> White Board

The third is using a whiteboard. I had the whiteboard for many years now and as the notion was to describe ideas and goals, google calendar was to schedule it as a plan into my day in generalized form, The use of the board is to write specific things from those categories for the days. It's like basically a to-do list usage but in a more systematic manner. I have also used some to-do apps in past, but what works for me is to have everything in front of my eyes all the time. maybe you can go with a to-do app if it helps you better.

-> Pen and Paper

Next is Pen and Paper. No matter how advanced things you used for doing all this stuff, the feel of writing with a pen on paper cannot be replaced with anything in the world! At least that's what I believe. Now I actually use a paper to basically do brainstorming or to get a rough sense of ideas or plans that I am thinking to implement. And then when it gets cleared then only I add it into the notion in a structured form to work around further.

-> Google Keep

Next is Google Keep. It's like a sidearm gun for me to use and I use it as an instant note-taking tool. Although you can do this thing on the notion as well, but notion takes a little while to open up in mobiles which for me doesn’t make it an instant tool to put up things, So that is why google keep works awesomely for me, But you can use it or there are many others as well that you can use.

-> Google Sheets

The last one is Google Sheet and I am sure that you have already heard about it, and for those who have not, it’s basically an excel by google which works on the cloud-based system which makes it platform-independent.

Now I am sure every one of you has used or had a glimpse of Microsoft Excel in your schools or colleges. However, even after having a hands-on experience with excel most people still didn’t get the idea that how powerful the excel or google sheet is and what a hell of amazing things you can do with it to make your life easy.

Now I mostly use it for my finance or budgeting-related stuff and its works really well for me in that section. But because google sheet is a cloud-based solution, you add people to your sheet and can give them access to use it. And because of it, Google Sheets is also used by people for team management stuff.

And that was all I use to make it work as a second brain or as a personal assistant for me. and you can also use this app for free. But if you are wondering that Is there some other options as well. And the answer is yes;

These are some of the honorable mentions:-

• Todoist

• Evernote

• OneNote

• Trello

So I hope this post helped you to understand how the systems get built for personal or even for the large scale companies it's pretty much the same concept but maybe with different tools. And I hope now you can think to build one for yourself or for your company. And don’t worry if you are currently feeling overwhelmed or confused because all this takes time to understand to be able to get utilized in the way you want. It took me months to understand all these tools and their technologies and to implement and sync them the way I wanted, So be patient start with one in the beginning and slowly keep updating with new ones.

So If you felt this article useful and if it has added any value to your life then don’t forget to like ❤️ it as it motivates me to post more such stuff for you and also share it with your friends and family because

|| Sharing is Caring ||

Don't forget to check out the video, there is more into it 😊

https://youtu.be/tBPOAozwXsg