3 productivity hacks that changed my life!

It’s Time to Get your $#%! Together

At the start of the pandemic (and truthfully, every time before that) my taboo words were organization and productivity. I would cringe every time I heard people use those words, knowing I needed them in my arsenal to get my life together. On more than one occasion, my friends would tell me to use my calendar to get organized whenever I complained about missing meetings or forgetting tasks that needed to get done. It’s almost as if I wanted to live life unaccounted for but yet still achieve massive success with my goals and dreams. What a joke; I suppose I thought accomplishing those goals was going to be just that: a dream.

As the pandemic heightened and most of us realized we weren’t going to see the outdoors anytime soon, our personal and professional lives hit a major intersection. Everything went online and everyone was in each other’s space all day, every day. It was an interesting time in my life as well. My son was in the first year of his life, my wife was experiencing a huge career transition that would impact our lives in a major way, and I was at the crossroads of making the jump to pursuing my life as a full-time entrepreneur and business owner. As you can imagine, life was sometimes a whirlwind. In the middle of all this, we also decided to move our family to a new home. As you can imagine, staying organized and remembering everything from feeding time, diaper changes, and meetings was just flat-out hectic. It was tough! However, in order for me to have my affairs in order and stay on track, I invested in myself and got a coach/mentor.

After explaining how my life had changed to my new mentor, I knew he would have some revolutionary suggestions that I had not thought of before. Nope. The first thing he said was “we gotta get you organized in order for you to be productive”. Those cringe-worthy words again, but it was true and necessary. He reminded me that “you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results”. So, we got to work and started formulating a plan that would help me be as productive as possible in order to gain traction with my goals. It took a lot of work, but these three tips were what I used to get control of my time and start accomplishing my goals. My hope and goal is that you find them useful and they might help you do the same. Let’s get into it.

Using a calendar and time blocking

Eighteen months ago, you couldn’t get me to use a calendar to organize or schedule anything. Even at my last job, I had to be constantly reminded to check my calendar. I wasn’t a bad employee, I just thought my “youthful’’ brain could retain it all like it used to and I would just remember my to-dos off the top of my head. As life got hectic, information overload became a major problem. I would quickly become overwhelmed and anxious. Then my mentor said if we are to work together, you have to utilize a calendar and schedule everything you have to do for the day, from your personal to professional. You can only imagine the anxiety that I felt hearing that. I started off by listing at a high level all the major tasks or goals I had. Within each task/goal I would itemize what needed to be done. Then I also had to factor in my personal time: exercise, dropping off and picking up my son at daycare, checking my finances, checking in with friends as well as carving up some much-needed time with the first lady. Believe it or not, almost everything had to be factored in. Once I had a clear idea of my to-do’s, I had to create time blocks between Monday through Friday from 9 am in the morning to 6 pm in the evening. Everything outside that time was free time. So within 9 am — 6 pm, I had blocks that covered Royal Dynamite, my apparel line, real estate, Cimifly Money, meetings, content creation, and everything in between. With time, I got accustomed to utilizing my calendar to the point where if it wasn’t on it, it wasn’t going to happen. Another major tool that has helped was Calendly. According to their website, Calendly is your hub for scheduling meetings professionally and efficiently, eliminating the hassle of back-and-forth emails so you can get back to work. I synced this to my calendar and it allows for myself and others to schedule appointments based on time blocks that are open or designated for meeting times. While I am still working on my efficiency with Calendly, the combination of utilizing my calendar and Calendly to organize my day and schedule meetings has definitely worked wonders for my daily productivity. I can definitely feel that progress has been made because I can track it.

Utilizing a Virtual Assistant and Editor

As things got busier for me and I committed full time to build and scale my business and my brand, I couldn’t do it all by myself anymore. There was just too much going on every day. So first, I got a great recommendation for an editor, as I had committed to writing and publishing more articles like this one. However, to get them published at this pace and flow, I needed help as well as someone to keep me accountable. So shout out to my editor! She keeps the flow and organization of reviewing, editing, and publishing going like clockwork. This keeps me on my toes and ensures I keep writing.

Secondly, if your business is scaling and there are just too many moving parts, get yourself a virtual assistant. There are many VA companies out there and their prices vary for just about everyone in need. I use a company called Smart VA and they are based out of the Philippines. Getting started with a VA requires some heavy lifting to get them set up, acclimated to the work you do and need to get done. A simple tool to help with that is Loom. You can use it to record videos of your screen while explaining the steps required to get a task done. Once that initial phase is set up, you’re up and ready to delegate and execute like a black belt Ninja. My VA takes care of my business's social media, creating flyers, editing documents, outreach, customer service, and pretty much anything I need to let go of that I can teach them to do. So without further ado, get online and start looking for someone to help you organize and scale your business and brand!

Productivity software

In all this, technology is the great unifier and makes all this quite efficient and much easier. I could go on and on about how technology has changed our lives. However, let me get right into it and share some tools that have helped me tie it all together.

• is an online collaboration tool that can be used for just about anything from managing events, to tracking inventory to managing a team and its tasks. I use it to keep track of my tasks and responsibilities for my various ventures. I use it to catalog and track all Royal Dynamite products as well as using it to build, manage and track my social media calendar for my personal brand. It’s an extremely useful tool and there are many others like it so do your research and pick which ones suit you based on your needs and preferences.
• is a cloud-based software where you can create, share and store files and folders. It has apps like Google Docs which is basically an online word processor, and Google Sheets which is like excel. The beauty about your Google Drive is it syncs to your Gmail email and you can have it on the go. A simple app on your phone, tablet or laptop can access your documents and folders anywhere. For example, all my articles are first drafted and written in Google Docs.
• is similar to Google Drive, however, I consider it a better tool to store large files, especially pictures, videos, and other such related content. Its interface is quite simple and it is excellent for collaboration and sharing and a great tool for backing up large chunks of data. I use it to organize our social media image folders, mock-ups and all other visual content related to Royal Dynamite. I also use it as a host for documents that I need to share publicly as it is easy to access and download files.
• is a business messaging app that connects people with the information they need. It allows for multiple channels, groups, and organizations. You can organize your conversations by specialty, department, and just about any category you can think of. Working from home has become the norm, and Slack is a great tool that easily syncs and works with most of the tools I’ve mentioned above. It is safe and secure and has end-to-end encryption, just in case you were wondering. Currently, I utilize Slack to communicate with my marketing team. You can group all your separate contractors or team members on slack and create your channel to communicate with them. It’s a pretty functional and aesthetically pleasing tool.

I could continue to make a long list of software, apps, and tools that have helped me and can help you as well. However, I know you have some in your arsenal, too. So please do me a favor and share some of those in the comment sections so others can benefit. Like Jerry said “ help me, Help you!” As the saying goes, sharing is caring. As we build this community, let’s offer as much value to each other.