Bonus Solo Episode: How I Keep it Together With Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman

In this episode, I share my tips and tricks for how I stay organized. Between being a full time grad student at Columbia, producing three episodes of my podcast per week solo, boxing twice a week and training for a fight, teaching weekly at a women’s prison upstate, being the assistant director of Just Ideas at Columbia and creating content as a full-time job — it’s a lot to take on.

Summary

In this episode, Taylor Rae shares her personal organization strategies. She juggles numerous commitments, such as hosting/producing her podcast, being a graduate student and assistant director at Columbia University, caring for her family, teaching at the Taconic Women's Correctional Facility, creating content for Instagram, and boxing training. Taylor sets strict boundaries to maintain a work-life balance, including refraining from work after 6:30 p.m. She uses apps like Notion and Asana to stay organized, conducting a 'brain dump' every Sunday in Notion to categorize and prioritize tasks, before scheduling them in Asana. Taylor encourages listeners to use similar strategies for better managing their time and responsibilities.

Transcription

Taylor Rae Almonte-Roman

Hello there. Welcome back. Here is another solo episode with me Taylor Rae of “On the Outside”. I'm so excited to talk about truly one of my favorite topics, which is how I keep it all together, staying organized and having those tools and resources to oversee and manage my life is what helps me be able to do as much as I try to do in a day.

So you might be wondering Taylor, tell us more. What are all the things that you do? I want to know. I want the tea. So obviously, I have this podcast, I conceptualized created edit record, do the social content, edit the videos, manage the youtube channel, everything for this podcast. I do solo. So that is a huge undertaking, especially since I was very ambitious with this first season.

That's kind of the first thing on my plate. I'm also a full time graduate school student at Columbia University, getting my master's in human rights studies. So I'm in classes, I'm commuting from Brooklyn up to campus which takes over like almost an hour each way, which is honestly wild. If you're not from New York, that might sound crazy to you because I'm literally within the city.

And yeah, that's, that's a lot. So I have class, I'm also commuting. I have my little doggie Roy who I need to care for and my husband Richard. And it is very important that we eat dinner together every day. That's important to us. And we also spend a lot of time together. So I have really firm boundaries that I don't do pretty much any work after 6:30 p.m. every night.

And on weekends, sometimes I take early mornings to do work or admin stuff or school work, but pretty much all of Saturday and Sunday, we spend together doing something fun as a family and that also obviously requires time. I'm the assistant director of a program at Columbia called Just Ideas where we teach classes in the metropolitan detention center and I do a lot of the admin work for that.

I oversee our interns. I run our yearly workshop. I also help create content for our videos that we use to get more donations for our program. And that definitely takes a considerable amount of time. It's a part time job at Columbia. So I've done anything from maybe just 2 to 3 hours a week to up to 20 hours a week. It really depends where we are in the semester.

And then I'm also teaching being a course facilitator for a class at Taconic Women's Correctional Facility. And that is once a week. I'm traveling upstate to teach that class inside of the prison. And that's for the entire spring semester. So from the start of the semester in January through the end of the semester in May. Oh, I'm also, I mean, pretty much a full time content creator.

That is where I make my coins. Girl, that is where I make most of my living and income is content creation primarily on Instagram. So I'm creating content and I'm working with brands. How did I forget that? That definitely takes a considerable amount of time. And boxing. I train twice a week with my coach Scott at Gleeson's and I'm training for a fight.

I'm hoping to fight at least twice before the summer. And now I think that's it. Yeah, I feel like those are all the things on my plate. Everything else is just kind of like, you know, habits that are important to me, like having a super clean house is like really important to me. It's something that I strive for at every moment of the day and having that organization in my home is also so so so crucial for me to keep my brain organized.

But all those other things, all those like domestic kind of tasks like me and Richard do a really good job dividing that domestic labor and the home. Everything else is just, you know, normal stuff, food shopping, cleaning my house, doing errands, doing laundry, all of that good stuff that all of us are doing on a daily basis. But I feel like those big things that I mentioned are kind of the bulk of where I'm spending my time in a given week.

So you're thinking, ok, girl. So how are you keeping it together? I have friends that are parents, I have friends that have their own businesses in other ways and different ways than I do. And I see people navigate just so many things in their lives. So I know that all of us are doing a lot. These are the tools that I use to keep it all together. Step one on Sundays.

I do what I call a brain dump. So I use Notion. Notion is a free app or plug in and I was very resistant to using notion because it seemed kind of complicated. But I watched a few youtube videos on how to navigate it and now I love it. I am a full notion girl through and through. Maybe there'll be a sponsor someday because I truly do love Notion. And I start with a brain dump.

That's what I call it. I go on to Notion, I have a template that I created. I'm looking at it right now and every week, Sunday afternoons, I make my lists. So I have it divided up by categories. This is what they are, podcast career, social media, school, self, family home. Those are my topics and I write everything that I could think of. They're already populated from the week before.

So I'll check things off that I did and move them to the end. I have another separate list that says, yay, we did it and I just put all of the things I've completed in there, which is a really nice reminder to look at and be like, wow, I've done so much. I am killing it. And so I check off the things that I've done the week before and I repopulate it with anything that's on my mind, those categories basically cover everything in my life and I pop in everything that comes to my mind.

So anything from organizing my soft draw that would go in home to filing or organizing my taxes that would go under career, I have things like looking over thesis advisor under school or getting my flu shot under self. So all of those things can fit into one of those categories at the top. I have a highlighted section that says top priorities and after I do my brain dump into all those categories, I drag into top priorities.

What are the things that are most urgent? Maybe they have a due date, maybe they're super pressing, someone's waiting for something waiting on me for something I have a paper that's due. I have a deadline I have content that's due at the end of, you know, a certain period or I need to schedule a shoot with my photographer immediately. All those things are going into top priority.

These are the things that cannot wait. Maybe I need to order Rollie's dog food, something that's like, ok, time sensitive or if I don't have as many time sensitive things that week, things that are most on my mind. So for example, somewhere down the list I have finish this audio book, girlies, this is not a top priority. That's something that I'll get to it if I get to it and I'll get to it eventually it's on the list.

So I won't forget it. Right. That's key. If I don't write it down, it is not staying in my brain, but it's not a top priority. So I do my brain dump. I do it by category. I drag up my top priorities. Gorgeous. That's done. That's step one that's on Sundays then on either Sunday or Monday, depending on what my weekend is. Like, I sit down with a sauna part two.

I go on a sauna. A sauna is another app, another plug in. I pull up my asana. I have a couple different categories here. Anything from weekly to do. List to social media, home school, a lot of those same exact categories that I had in my brain dump and the things that are in my top priorities only I actually schedule to be due certain days of the week.

So what I realized really overwhelms people and what really used to overwhelm me is looking at a to do list that has everything from organizing my sock drawer and getting my flu shot and ordering Rollie's dog food. And then right next to it, you have paper due in two days podcast due in one day social content due in four days. Not all of those things are of equal priority.

Not all of those things need to be scheduled. Not all of those things even need to be that in this moment. I think my sock drawer can wait. I think my audio book can wait. So that's why all I'm looking at. I do my brain dump. It's out of my head. It's on the page. So I won't forget it in the future. But all I'm looking at is that top priority list. I'm then taking the top priority list and I'm putting it in my sauna and setting due dates for all of it.

I have friends that do this in their calendar. You don't need a sauna. You don't need any of these, right? You can just write these on a piece of paper if you want. But just telling you the tools I use, I have friends that put this on their calendar. So instead of a sauna, they're setting, you know, on specific dates, they're putting what things that they do, what things they're accountable for.

I like using a sauna because my calendar is already so jammed packed. I have my classes on there. I have my boxing schedule. I have meetings with advisors, meetings for just ideas, podcast release days, therapy, doctor's appointments, vet appointments, dog training plans with my husband. Like I cannot add another thing on my calendar without making my brain melt.

So that's why I like to use a sauna. That's also a great tool. If you are putting everything on your calendar and you're like girly. It's a lot, there's a lot of things on this calendar and that my friends, that's how I keep it all together. I dump it out of the brain. I pick the top priority. I assign it to set dates. Then I look, I finish out the weekend and the start of my week by looking at my calendar, taking a little check in.

What do I got going on this week? Making sure that I have all of the things I need to be successful that's going food shopping every Sunday for me that Richard does the laundry, but that's making sure that the laundry is done. All of that good stuff. I think all of those things are so specific and there's a million podcasts and content creators that are going to give you so much more insight into managing all the domestic household tasks that we all face.

But for me, it really, really starts by getting everything out of my head onto the page, calling it a brain dump. Oh, I feel relief. Oh, brain dump. Yes. It's out of my head. It's on the page. I'm not going to forget it. I love that for me. Those are my tips friends. That's how I hold it all together. That's how I organize all the things that I do in a week. And I hope that this helps. I hope that it was clear. I was looking at it on my screen and I feel like it made sense. Let me know, feel free to reach out, shoot me a little DM on Instagram with your thoughts. As always, I'm so grateful that you're here. I love having our solo chats every week and I hope that this was a useful tool to you. So many of my friends text me and ask me how to organize their lives.

So I feel like this is something I'm pretty good at and I think I have a lot on my plate and I find a way to do it. So I hope that you got something out of it once again. Thank you so much for being here. I am grateful for you. See you out there.