Shadowing Practice: How to Get Organized and Stop Starting Over Every Week - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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You get organized, you clean everything up, you get out your planner and you map out the most beautiful week.
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You're so set, you're so ready, but then sadly everything falls apart because a kid gets sick or because a random wild wonky Tuesday happens.
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If that's you and you feel like you've been trying to get organized and you want to start over again every Monday,
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but it's getting pretty exhausting and you're losing hope and faith that you can even get your life together, I want to show you exactly what I do so
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that I don't have to start over every single week how I've organized things in order to juggle my life, my health, my home, my family,
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and growing and scaling this business.
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Listen, you clicked on this video because you want to get organized, and I understand the desire.
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And actually, you do kind of need to get organized, but not in the way that you think.
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If you're new around here, my name is Chelsea Jo, and I love systems very much.
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I started creating systems over 10 years ago to help me juggle my life and my business.
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I'm a working mom.
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I've always worked.
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I used to work in corporate.
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I was a professional sign language interpreter.
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I ran my own event -based wedding business, partnered with my mom.
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We did full event flowers, decor, planning, running the whole entire thing.
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And then I got married and we had kiddos
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and I did all kinds of things to be able to keep my life in order so that I could keep working.
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And I started organizing things in a really unorthodox way, in a way that no other person is organizing their time,
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their tasks, whether that be in their home or in their work.
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And that is what I'm here to share with you.
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Specifically in this episode, I actually want to tell you that getting organized isn't what you think.
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And the way that I've done it and the way
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that I'm going to teach you in this episode is absolutely going to change your life.
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There's only three main things that you need to be organizing.
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You're organizing way too many things right now.
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It feels overwhelming.
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There's a lot of things that you think you have to get organized from your time, the schedule, the paper planner,
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the Google calendar, all the things that your kids are doing, your husband's doing, where your dog needs to be, where you need to be, all of the emails, the school activities,
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extracurricular activities, let alone every single drawer cubby cabinet in your home are
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you already feeling overwhelmed that's not what this episode is supposed
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to do what I'm trying to communicate to you is
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that there are a lot of things to organize and
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that is absolutely not the way
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that I want you thinking about it I know you know
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how to clean your house maybe you don't feel like you know how to put a schedule together
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or put a meal together or sit down
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and do your work I know you probably don't feel like you have those skills at all.
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But actually, if somebody removed every single thing off of your plate and just said, hey, go clean your bathroom, you could probably figure it out.
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And you probably could do the best job of anyone in your house.
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I don't know, maybe your husband's better at doing the laundry or cooking a meal or doing certain domestic things than you.
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Maybe you're really great at working.
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Maybe you're really great at working out.
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You've got skill sets that you know how to apply.
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The problem is, is when you have to apply those skill sets to a very big
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and full day where you feel like your time is constantly being pulled away from you, it makes it really hard for you to sit down,
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focus, make work happen and make money happen.
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That is where the major conflict lies.
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That is what I'm here to show you.
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You don't have to be overwhelmed by a thousand different teeny tiny things.
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You've got to start thinking about it in three major groups.
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I want you to think about how you're operating your whole
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entire life instead of focusing on a hundred different things in a day.
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All of these things are individual pieces in your mind, but it's actually one consistent through line for your entire day.
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That through line needs to take you from Monday morning all the way back to Sunday night.
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And that through line Monday through Sunday is seven full days
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that needs to repeat over and over and over and over again.
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And I have a baseline template here in my planner that operates my life.
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It's connected to my Google calendar.
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It's connected to every single moving, living, breathing piece of what I have to do, including my work, which we're going to get into.
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But the big, big takeaway, and then I'm going to get into the three very specific things I want you organizing.
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The big takeaway is understanding that you don't have as much on your plate as you actually think you do.
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You're just looking at the micro pieces
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and I'm going to show you right now how to zoom out and look at it in three major buckets.
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Okay, so first is your rhythm.
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I want you to write this down and I want you to like make fun block letters, color it, star it, put lines and circles around it.
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Your rhythm, what is the flow for your life actually need to look like.
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This is the first stop.
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And this is where so many people are like, let me off the bus.
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I don't know how to figure this out.
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My life is chaotic.
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There's no possible way of organizing a rhythm in my life.
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And I'm here to tell you that that is absolutely not true.
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So how do you create organizational rhythm in your life?
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You might call these routines, you might call them habits, but I want you to think of it more like a series of dominoes.
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I use this example all the time.
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I've had a podcast that wasn't on the YouTube channel for the last eight years.
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I've been pumping out consistent podcast episodes and finally I've decided to take myself on YouTube, which I'm really excited about.
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I've been talking about this domino effect the entire time.
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This rhythm is what you have to get really good at.
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This rhythm is when you wake up in the morning and you tip a domino and they all fall.
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I want your day to feel like that.
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And if a curveball comes at you and a few dominoes get taken out, cool.
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Just walk over to the next set of dominoes and tip them.
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You're strategic.
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You're handling so many things in your life.
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You just haven't created a rhythm for yourself that you actually want to go through every day.
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You're letting life tell you what to do instead of you strategically setting up your dominoes.
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So let's look at an example of how you can actually do this.
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First, most important piece of this is for you to build this around the life that you actually have, not your ideal life.
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This is a huge issue.
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So many people that I work with, they automatically are like, okay, Chelsea, this is exactly what I want to have happen.
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Yeah.
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Is that your reality?
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What's your reality look like right now?
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I'm going to take the afterschool rhythm.
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Okay.
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You can do this with your whole day, but I suggest you starting with one teeny tiny part of your day.
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Call it a routine afterschool routine.
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This is a very, of all the dominoes in your day, this is about four or five of them that are going to tip your afterschool routine.
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What happens from the time the kids get in the car or get off the bus or whatever you're doing?
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I don't care if you're homeschooling.
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I don't care if you're online schooling.
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I don't care what age your kids are.
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If they go to school, I don't care.
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It doesn't matter.
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As soon as school is done, what is the expectation?
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What do you want to have happen?
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Well, I don't know, Chelsea.
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Can you please tell me?
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Let me give you some suggestions write down a few things
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on a piece of paper here's how we're doing it right
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now my idea of how i want my family to flow has changed
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so many times on purpose i am choosing to change
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that for certain seasons when we don't have school in place
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and we're on summer break the rhythm gets dictated by me
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and by my husband we decide what it wants what we want it to look like
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and most of the time he's like you're
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so good at this just go do it i just go
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with the flow he's a super go with the flow kind of guy, which is amazing.
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The kids aren't always that go with the flow.
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They want to go do their own thing.
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That's when you start getting chaos.
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When you have everybody in the household, not understanding how we're, how you want the rhythm to be, what is this flow supposed to feel like?
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So after school routine, my kids know hands down, and I have kids in two different schools.
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They get done at two different times.
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So yes, I'm juggling that too.
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My life is not pretty and cookie cutter.
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This is real application for whatever situation you have going on.
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After school expectation is made super clear.
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You can write this down.
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You can make it into a chart.
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You can make it into a list.
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You can make them check it off.
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You can do whatever you want.
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The point is figure out what you want.
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My kids know that they have to come home.
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They immediately have to wash their hands and they have to change out of their school clothes because I'm crazy like that.
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And I don't want germs in my house.
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They do that.
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They unload their lunchbox right away.
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Ice blocks are put back.
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Lunchbox is put back.
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They wash their own lunch bin.
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Everything is completely reset and in the spot where it needs to be to make the lunch for the next day.
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Maybe you want them to make their lunch and pack it right away.
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We did that for a season.
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Doesn't matter.
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You set the expectation.
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After that, they go into 30 minutes minimum for the little one of some type of structured activity.
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It can be playing their instrument.
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It can be reading a book or right now we're doing practicing mouth backs.
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So this is their homework.
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My kids don't have homework.
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They're in Montessori, but your kids may just have a homework.
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Then they get free play.
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That is the whole afternoon.
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Then they know that it's time for dinner.
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And then we have a whole dinner routine on what we want that to flow.
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Like my day, my whole entire day is set up in those chunks.
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That is the organization that I want you thinking about.
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Okay.
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I have three buckets that I promised you.
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That is one that I could literally go so deep on.
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If you want me to share more about any of those things, tell me in the comments, what other videos do you want to see for me?
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What do you want me to nerd out on?
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What do you want me to go nitty gritty on?
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I would love to know.
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I'm here to share it all.
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Here is your bucket number two of what you need to
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focus on getting organized in order for you to stop restarting every single week.
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All right, bucket number two is home management.
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The dreaded home management.
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I actually love it.
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It's one of my favorite, favorite things of all times.
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When I first started out, all I was teaching was literally dishes, meal planning, cooking, cleaning, laundry,
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etc. Not that I love those things, but I love getting rid of those things.
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I love making them so simple that it feels like I don't even have to do them.
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And that is the point of bucket number two.
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So we're talking about three main things that you need to organize in your life.
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Not all the things we're organizing your flow and your rhythm.
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Now we're organizing your home management.
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Do me a favor and don't make this complicated.
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If you're watching videos that give you a 45 long long checklist of all the things to deep clean in your house.
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You may be super woman and you may really love cleaning and you may have ample time, but I do not.
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I don't have time for that.
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And we do from time to time have a house cleaner.
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We don't have a house cleaner right now.
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And so we are the house cleaners.
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So when it comes to home management, there's several things that you could put down, but I want you to think about the major categories.
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There's cleaning, there's feeding people, there's managing the admin side of things, right?
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Put it in those three buckets.
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That's it.
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Just start with that.
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When are you doing it?
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Period.
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And how often does it need to repeat?
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This is as complicated as you need to make it.
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And I know you're looking for me to give you something super juicy that seems like, yeah, I want to sink my teeth into it and go do it.
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But you really just need to decide when is laundry getting done?
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When are you doing the dishes every day?
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When are you cleaning your house every week?
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This is not complicated.
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That is as easy as it is.
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So we do most of our chores on the weekend.
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However, However, because of the way that I have built category number one or bucket number one, we are keeping up and cleaning and tidying as we go.
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Every single person pitches in on the weekend.
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We are all working together
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and every person is responsible for resetting their own things on the weekend and then we split up the house.
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It's really straightforward.
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Some of the weekends, every other weekend, we are deep cleaning on the other every other weekends.
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So on the odds and the evens, we're digging into some type of project, some type of maybe I'm reorganizing something that got out of hand.
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Maybe we're taking on, you know, trimming the trees outside.
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We don't have a lot of property to manage.
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If you do, maybe that needs to be an every weekend thing.
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You're going to have to sit down and look at here's all the things
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that we need to do to manage our house, not into the nitty gritty, go big macro at first, because it's more than what you're doing right now.
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And that's all that matters is let's start creating this experience in your life where you are actually organized, not this expectation of perfection.
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Write down what it is, when it's going to happen, get it in your Google calendar, set it to repeat, and you're done.
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Let's move on to bucket number three.
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All right, we've been talking about your life quite a bit, but the truth is
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you're trying to make money and so am I
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and getting work on the calendar without it being interrupted is
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incredibly hard it's the hardest thing I've ever had to figure out how to do
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until I knew exactly what was going to happen in bucket number three
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so here's the third thing that you need to organize and it is your work.
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I like to refer to this as your work block.
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It is a block of time where you put your butt in a seat and you get work done.
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You're not doing anything else.
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You're not doing the dishes.
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You're not doing the laundry.
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You're not picking up after the dog.
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You're not planning meals.
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You're not answering emails that came in from the group text from I don't even know how.
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I don't even know where my phone is at the moment, but I don't even in the group text about the jump house thing that's happening Friday on the half day.
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Like I don't even know, but guess what?
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I'm in my work block.
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So I'm not responding because I know exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now.
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I'm supposed to be recording this YouTube video and I don't have time to be focused on other things.
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I also know in my brain that because bucket number one
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and two are organized that I'm going to get to those things right now.
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this is my time to focus on work.
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I know that because I have an operating system for my business.
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Bucket number one and two, those are my operating system for my life.
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Bucket number three is my operating system for my business.
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That is exactly how I know what to do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
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So here's a really cool look at what I'm doing on any given week in my business.
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How do I know when I'm working?
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Well, because I've organized bucket number one and bucket number two, I know when I'm managing my house and I know what's happening in my life.
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I've already set my work hours aside.
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So when I sit down to work, I open up my cockpit and my full operating system for my company.
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It is a hub where all my tasks live.
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And whenever it says to sit down on a Thursday
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and record a YouTube video and do my YouTube process for two hours.
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I move the card over into in progress.
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I open it and I do that work.
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And every single day of the week I filter in, I focus on Monday.
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I do Monday.
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I close my laptop and I go back to my life.
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This is exactly what you need to be doing.
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If you're trying to make money, if you're trying to work
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and you're trying to be the keeper of all of the things in your life and in your house, you have to have an operating system.
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You have to have an operating system
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that shows you exactly what to do in your life and exactly what to do in your business.
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I would have lost my sanity
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and I would have gone belly up on this business a long time ago if I didn't have that.
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And the good news is I have a wonderful opportunity for
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you to learn exactly how to build this for yourself for free.
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Come and hang out with me live, me and you together in the same room at my brand new masterclass,
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chelseajoe .co backslash masterclass, where you get access to not only learn exactly how to build your own life
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and business operating system, but I'm giving you access to my trademarked designer.
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It's going to give you a blueprint so
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that you can start using your own life and business operating system right now, like immediately.
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So head over there, sign up a snag at your seat.
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This is a free gift for you.
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And I can't wait to see you show up in the chat.
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When you get there, tell me, Hey, I found out about you on YouTube.
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I want to know where or maybe the podcast, wherever you found me, I want you to come and I want you to tell me live in the chat.
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When I see you show up there, I may have a special gift for you.
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If you drop in the chat that you found me either on the podcast or on YouTube, knowing exactly what deserves my time and my attention
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when I'm supposed to be working is how I've moved the needle in this company.
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I started this business with just an idea, literally started my podcast out of my closet.
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And I've been scaling this business for the last eight years.
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I have been able to completely retire myself out of my other careers, my other work.
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And this is all I do now full -time.
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So I get to homeschool my kids.
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I get to have the luxury and the pleasure of actually making money without really running myself into the ground,
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which is what I was doing before.
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Trying to put all of these pieces together, I understand is insanely hard, but when your life is out of control, it makes it really hard for you to sit down to work.
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Once you get your life under control and you actually can sit down to work, then you need to know exactly what to do.
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If you have two hours a day times five days a week, that's 10 hours, sweet friend.
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We can make a lot of impact in 10 hours a week.
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I run this entire company on 20 hours a week.
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And I got to this point from day one with only two hours a week.
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That's how I started.
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And every moment I had, I knew exactly what to do with it.
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If you could have that kind of clarity, you could do the same thing too.
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That's exactly what I'm going to give you right here and every single video.
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And I'm going to give you the most clarity over inside of my live masterclass.
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I can't wait to see you there.
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And I can't wait to see you back here real soon for the next episode on the Systemize Your Life podcast.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Get Organized and Stop Starting Over Every Week”. This video has 301 sentences and 3662 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:46. The speaker talks fast, about 195 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| organize verb | /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/ | To arrange in working order. |
| bucket noun | /ˈbʌkɪt/ | A container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items. |
| rhythm noun | /ˈɹɪð.əm/ | The variation of strong and weak elements (such as duration, accent) of sounds, notably in speech or music, over time; a beat or meter. |
| domino noun | /ˈdɑməˌnoʊ/ | A tile divided into two squares, each having 0 to 6 (or sometimes more) dots or pips (as in dice), used in the game of dominoes. |
| podcast noun | /ˈpɑdˌkæst/ | A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on… |
| expectation noun | /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/ | The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen. |
| laundry noun | /ˈlɔːn.dɹi/ | A laundering; a washing. |
| afterschool adjective | Taking place immediately after school classes. | |
| overwhelm verb | /ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/ | To engulf, surge over and submerge. |
| planner noun | /ˈplænɚ/ | One who plans. |
| homework noun | /ˈhoʊmˌwɝk/ | Exercises assigned by a teacher to a student which review concepts studied in class. |
| gritty adjective | /ˈɡɹɪti/ | Containing sand or grit; consisting of grit; caused by grit; full of hard particles. |
| juggle verb | /ˈd͡ʒʌɡəl/ | To manipulate objects, such as balls, clubs, beanbags, rings, etc. in an artful or artistic manner. |
| lunchbox noun | /ˈlʌntʃˌbɒks/ | A container for transporting meals, especially lunch. |
| nitty adjective | /ˈnɪti/ | detailed or specific; fastidious, fussy, nit-picky. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| put back verb | To return something to its original place. |
| start over verb | to begin again; to return to the beginning |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
| fall apart verb | To disintegrate, to break into pieces. |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- What's your reality look like right now?
- What do you want to have happen?
- Can you please tell me?
- What do you want me to nerd out on?
- How do I know when I'm working?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been trying · I've been pumping · I've been talking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've organized · I've always worked · I've done |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being pulled · be overwhelmed · is done |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 119 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: rhythm /ˈɹɪð.əm/, unorthodox /ʌnˈɔɹθədɑks/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, backslash /ˈbækˌslæʃ/, organizational /ˌɔː(ɹ)ɡənɪˈzeɪʃənəl/, perfection /pɚˈfɛk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, extracurricular /ˌɛkstɹəkəˈɹɪkjʊlə(ɹ)/, macroeconomics /ˌmæk.ɹoʊˌiː.kəˈnɒ.mɪks/, unorthodox /ʌnˈɔɹθədɑks/, interpreter /ɪnˈtɝ.pɹɪ.tɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like organize, bucket, rhythm.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.