Towards the end of 2024 I was in a rough spot. Approaching two years of creating content full time I had finally hit the point where “making it up as I went” and “Planning it all in my head” and “Don’t worry, everything is under control” finally exploded, leaving me stressed, anxious and burnt out. I think when projects begin as big unwieldy things, it feels appropriate to make a big plan and get organized, but in my case, things had slowly escalated in a way that made it much harder for me to see the mess they were becoming. The result? I was exhausted and sad pretty much all the time.

So when 2025 began, I knew I needed to make some changes. Now I know you can actively make changes any time in the year, but I think there’s a reason we fall back on things like new years resolutions. It feels like a good time to make massive sweeping life changes. And since it is a bit of a tradition to do so, maybe we don’t feel so alone in trying new things. The thing I ended up trying that ultimately felt as though it saved my life??? 

A simple fridge calendar. 

I’ve included a photo here. Though reading my handwriting is nearly impossible, I think it will at least give you the idea of what I’ve been doing.

Starting in January, I began filling out my weeks and months with a calendar on the fridge. In doing so, suddenly everything became super visible. Right off the bat, it was apparent that the reason I was so tired was that I was doing an insane amount of work and keeping the schedule for all of it in my head, playing it on repeat multiple times a day in order to ensure I didn’t forget anything. The first thing I did when starting this calendar was to commit to creating less content, which as a content creator might sound crazy!

But consider that I was posting three, sometimes four videos a day. It was completely unsustainable, and worse yet was that with so much content, most of my videos weren’t even getting seen before a new one took its place. All that work and nearly nothing to show for it. Knowing that I needed to build my schedule in a way that allowed for videos to get some breathing room and for me to get some rest, I committed to 2 videos a day with Sundays being the exception where I would (mostly) only post one.

The other thing the calendar did was allow me to space out the different types of content I create. Many of you know that I create content about Books, Boardgames and One Piece. On any given day, I felt like if I wasn’t posting about all three, I was failing. Which, as you might imagine, was not a healthy mindset. With the calendar, I was able to easily color code these things and alternate between them in a meaningful way, creating various content throughout the week and (hopefully but not always) making my different audience pockets happy!

Finally, by being able to cross things off as I did them, I was able to see the progress that was being made. I was able to feel a sense of accomplishment and achievement, something I was sorely lacking. I cannot even begin to explain how much this last part improved my mental health almost immediately. Being able to show what I’ve accomplished in a day or week has always been super important to me and the simple act of crossing out a visual to-do list turned out to be insanely helpful to me and my silly little brain. 

On the other side of that, filling out my schedule in advance also empowered me to say NO, a word I really struggle with. Nope, I can’t do a video on that day, I’ve already committed to something else, can we try another day? Nope, I don’t need to film three more things today, I’ve already accomplished my daily goals! No, I am not failing! I am doing exactly what I said I’d do today!

It’s funny how a simple thing like a fridge calendar or a journal or a to-do list or a daily affirmation can change your life for the better.  As the year goes on, I hope to find new things like this that are simple, yet effective. For example we’ve also implemented a “To-Do” shelf for games and books I need to review. This has also been a great visual for showing progress and accomplishment. And I imagine that as time goes on, we’ll find other fun and easy ways to make my work process even better. 

What sorts of things do you do to stay organized while feeling a sense of achievement in your daily life or work or both? Let me know!!

PS: I’m hoping to start doing more blogging here on Ezeekat Press, let me know if there are any topics you’d love to see me cover! And thanks for reading!!