time waits for no woman

Managing my time wasn’t easy, I know that much!  From September through to last week, I was doing 4 A2 levels, gadding about the country for the Tomorrow’s Engineers Week campaign, and trying to maintain a social life.  Oh and running a blog in the meantime, which I’m sure you’ll agree is no 2 minute job!  Above photo is one from a blog shoot I managed to squeeze in there too.  So my typical week in October involved college 9-4 on Monday… catching a train around 7am on Tuesday morning… meeting engineers and filming vlogs… getting home around 8… college Wednesday – Friday… and a whole lot of video editing and organising.  Very busy!  I know most teenagers have some kind of job to manage, but this one was a little different in that I worked either from home, or travelled around.  I had to decide when to fit in my editing and whatnot.

A few people asked me how I managed everything – here you go!

— I knew that something had to give.  The gym, in my case.  I literally didn’t have enough hours in the day.  I know I’ve sung the praises of 5:30am workouts many times, but there’s no way that would’ve ended well with late-ish nights too!  For a couple of months, it was bye-bye gym bunny Lily.  She’s back now though and aching from Metafit already.

— Time spent with family/friends/boyfriend was usually combined with doing something else.  Not every time, obviously, that would be mean to never give 100% attention.  But most of the time I was cracking on with something, be it replying to emails or doing drawings for textiles or whatever.

— I wrote blog posts or edited videos in bed in the mornings (at weekends).  It eases the blow if you don’t actually have to get out of bed!  I’m definitely still a morning person but when you’re tired, a little extra time under the covers doesn’t hurt.

— Obsessive list writing and diary-filling.  Probably the most obvious and unoriginal tip for time management EVER, but there’s no way I could have managed without my notebooks and diaries!  Everything goes in there.  Every. Single. Thing.  [Speaking of diaries, I’ve ordered myself a Bloggers’ Planner and can’t wait for it to arrive!]

— I explaining my situation to my teachers.  Not in a ‘OMG I’m so busy take pity on me’ kinda way, but just so they knew I was doing my best to keep on top of everything and that I wasn’t being lazy if I forgot something.

— I made the most of train time.  If I’m gonna be sat in one place for hours, I might as well make the most of it!  In most cases, this meant physics homework that I could tick off my list and not have to think about for the rest of the week.  Sometimes I felt like I should just stare out the window and appreciate the view from my travels, but there’s only so long I could stare without falling asleep and missing my stop!

— I tried to get as much mileage out of the day-to-day as possible.  Whilst I didn’t have much time or daylight for outfit posts, I at least had new experiences to blog in a ‘diary’ type way.

So that’s how I tried my best to keep on top of things!  I wasn’t always 100% successful (read: had a few mega stresses and was very, very tired) but for a short term, really exciting opportunity it was worth it.  Good life experience!

lily kate x

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