Organising workload and quickly captioning videos

Organising and managing projects and tasks as an independent

The thing I'm most excited by (this is possibly going to sound really sad) is that I completed update my music career homepage on Notion so now I've got a much clearer focus. Previously everything was all over the place with random goals and tasks written in different locations.

I've brought them all together in one place, with a few extra features. Here, have a look:

Notion music homepage

Notion music homepage

I've been using notion for years and still find new ways to use it.

The 'Missions' and 'Projects' sections are inspired by things talked about in Cal Newport's book Slow Productivity. He's a great writer about how to manage work in a modern age, as well as lots of interesting things related to detaching from the all consuming habits of modern technology.

My 'Goals' section is set-up based on something called 'Goal Setting to the Now' from the book The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan.

I've got sections on the left for my most used links and pages, as well as space to write general thoughts during my work session of the day.

A central section highlights the current project I'm working on, connected to a database which is setup to show everything within the project that is currently an active task.

Then inspired by my job in hospitality I've got a 'handover' section. This is where I can make a note to my future self of what I have completed and what is still in progress. This means when I next sit down to focus on work I have a quick pick up point, rather than scrambling around trying to remember what I was working on specifically.

Then finally there is a general task list. This is surface-level tasks that I will need to dedicate time to organise and expand on.

Also inspired by Cal Newport I structure my working day so that in the morning I have 3-4 hours of 'deep work' where I intensely focus on one large task. At the moment that is the creation and production of social media content. Previously it has been creating or recording music.

Basically anything that is in the 'projects' section will become something that I tackle in my deep work sessions.

Then during the afternoon I have a more miscellaenous working session. This is when I tackle more smaller tasks. So this is when I will schedule my social media content (because I found doing this takes me out of the creative mindset so is not good to do in my deep work session), any feedback I need to provide, or emails I need to reply to, and also things in that general task list.

I loooove it so far. But it is new and shiny so let's see how it fairs in the long run.

Quickly caption videos for social media for free

My main focus this morning has been filming and editing more videos for my promotion. I had done all the planning for each video last week so it was actually very quick to sit down and film them.

I find the longest part of the process to be adding captions to videos though.

I wanted a way to add captions before I upload to Instagram or TikTok so I can avoid the dreaded social media watermark.

Today I finally found a fantastic option.

On the web version of Adobe Express you are able to upload a vide and it will automatically add captions for you. It is super easy to edit the words, and personalise the visuals. This has made my workflow so much quicker already.

So this is what the progress of my current project looks like. Some videos at different stages, and much more to do, but a great day to start the week.

What Comes Next promotion progress