How I -barely- manage to not drown under blogging and reading

Hello friends !

A while back (a very long while back, yes… i’m very on top of things shhhh) I had asked on Twitter if people would be interested in seeing how I organise my reading and blogging because I have a few tips and tricks, but mostly a ridiculous amount of spreadsheets, and quite a few people said yes so here I am, an eternity later finally getting around to talking about it all.

I’ve been a blogger for over two years now so along the way I tried things, some that failed, some that succeeded, to try and stay on top of reading and blogging organisation wise. So by now, I’ve stuck with the things that work and encompass every aspect of said organisation and I think I’ve been using the same system for a little over a year and it’s working really well so I thought sharing it would give some tips and hacks to make things a little easier for some of you. I am in no way an expert, this is just a result of a bunch of winging it and make it til you fake it until I found what works for me.

Without further ado, here’s how these parts of my life are organised:

The way my reading is organised is pretty simple to be honest. I have one spreadsheet for my yearly reading progress and one page for each month in my bullet journal. Let me explain with pictures, it’s way easier and will save your eyes from reading my excessive ramblings.

This is my 2018 reading spreadsheet. It has three main windows I use. The first, and the one I use then most, is for ALL the books I read, they all go on there once I finish them with all the necessary book information, my rating, the date I read it and whether or not I’ve reviewed it (which helps with the blogging aspect as well because I know which reviews I wrote and which still need to be done). The ones highlighted in yellow are the ARCs.

Then there’s one to track all the series I’m reading and…y’all can see, I’m not kidding when I say it’s bad. I think that goal of getting my series reading under control is going to flop miserably. ANYWAY. Not the point. I use this because otherwise there’s no way in hell I can remember all the series I start and then forget about for MONTHS, as well as how far into them I am, the series status and the next book I need to read. Because let’s be real, a lot of us forget the name of the next book we need to read in a series.

Last but not least is a sheet to keep track of all the ARCs I have separately. Read and unread alike. I’ve been a really good girl with requesting arcs so far this year (mainly because of restricted access on Netgalley, not gonna lie) but yeah the colors have a purpose here as well. I highlight the ones I’ve read. Green for Netgalley, orange for Edelweiss and blue for physical ARCs.

The monthly spreads on my journal are for the books I read month to month, general stats and new releases. I suck at keeping track of the latter so I figured this would be a nice way to do it… if only I remember to fill it and not be a lazy butt about it.

Oh I also have a new addition I started this year. It’s a spread to keep track for the backlist books I want to read and the ones I’ve read (by coloring them).

The actual reading part (as in, you know, picking up books) is me prioritizing ARCS and putting them on a *mandatory* monthly TBR, because those are the ones I ABSOLUTELY need to get to (I never read ARCs late, it’s not that I’m a snob, it’s that I get physically stressed and I can’t handle it) and then the rest of the books I pick up depend on my mood. I used to be a strict TBR kind of reader but that hasn’t been working for me lately so I dropped it and I’m happier for it.

My blogging organisation basically follows the same layout, with a few variations. First, we have the reknown spreadsheet. I live by it. Swear by. Would be lost without it. It’s my precious blogging schedule. I know a lot of people can manage without it and honestly GOOD FOR YOU, but I wouldn’t be able to function if I didn’t have it.

You can see it’s pretty self-explanatory. It’s yearly (you can see down there that I have one for 2016 and 2017), divided by months and has dates, post category, post *temporary* name and then the status. I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this before in a post, but it’s color coded and I highlight posts once they’re up. I also have one dedicated to the #DiverseBookBloggersDiscuss posts which I won’t share because it’s not definite and has people’s info on it but it follows the same general pattern, with date, post topic, status, plus who’s writing it and their info.

I also have a monthly page on my bullet journal with stats, trackers for scheduling posts and blog-hopping as well as a monthly to-do list (which I then transfer to my general weekly when I want to do the thing) AND the highlights of that month, you know… to celebrate the small AND big things.

You know how we get post ideas in the most random situations , promise ourselves to write them down and then forget about them forever, as they get lost in the pit of forgotten thoughts and never remembered ideas? Well, to prevent that, I have a note on my Google Keep phone app where I write the ideas AS SOON as I get them and then whenever I need to write a post I look at that list and see whichenever one speaks to me the most is the one I pick.
I do all the writing on weekends, I generally write a post on Friday, one on saturday and one (or two if I don’t have anything planned) on Sunday. And I’m two ahead of posting schedule (thanks to my January hiatus), depending on whether I’m on top of things or slacking, so I don’t actually get stressed about sitting down and typing anymore.

So that’s it folks, as you can see, I’m an organisation freak AND I just handed over all my well kept secrets. I hope they’re helpful!

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That’s it until next time.

Do you have any tips and tricks to make reading and blogging tracking easier?

Hope you enjoyed, write to you soon.

• Blogging advice
• Book Blogging
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