Maximize Your Time: Proven Strategies for Effective Time Management

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 227. Today I'm talking to you about maximizing your time and proven strategies for effective time management. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance in movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

Welcome back to the PT Profit Podcast. I am your guest host, Chris Little, returning once more to talk about a special topic that, that I personally greatly value because my life requires a lot of different project and time management. I wear a lot of different hats in my space. And so we are going to talk about how to make getting the things that matter done easier to start off with. I'm going to remind you that if you have been enjoying the PT Profit Podcast, if you have some time right now to go to Apple Podcast, search for the PT Profit Podcast and give us a five star rating and review. When you type out your review, screenshot it and send it to me at chris bimson fitness.com if the podcast has been helping you in any way, even if it's a past episode, screenshot the episode, send it to us so that we know which guests you've been enjoying so that we know what kind of content has been helping the most and it helps the show grow and it helps us to get even more guests on the show. With that said, we are going to dive into today's episode. So the first thing that I want to talk about today is defining your priorities. Because what I have found and what inspired me to help Beverly with this episode is a lot of people will get super excited about getting started and the first thing that they think about is how they are going to craft their social media or their logo or just something that maybe isn't directly serving anybody yet and maybe, maybe it is and it's just not the most efficient way to do it. So when we are thinking about defining our priorities that can be looked at in multitude of different ways can be with regards to our work life balance, it can be with regards to the amount of income that we want to make and the way that I'm going to frame this and something that's been very helpful for me is look at your expenses, the things that are in front of you, the things that you actually have to deal with within the year. So calculate your rent for the year or your mortgage for the year. Look at your insurance, look at the business costs that you're facing, whether it be liability insurance, your business license, rent, your lease payments, anything like that. Calculate that all out and get like an actual number for what you need to make. To be able to buy your groceries, to be able to pay your bills, your Internet, your car payments, everything like that. When you have that number, that can help you create a sense of urgency when it comes to breaking down your priorities. So often what I'll do is I'll get a spreadsheet and I'll take a spreadsheet to basically sometimes if I look at my past taxes, I can calculate how much it costs to just be me for a year and I'll put that into the spreadsheet and then I'll look at maybe what are some things that I've vocalized that I've wanted to do and how much that costs. So that could be attending a conference, maybe investing in a coach, or investing in a course, or paying for something for my own wellness, like my own training or my own gym membership. Things like that. When you have that number is going to make it so much easier for you to think a bit more literally when it comes to defining your priorities. Keep in mind that as we're doing this, we are going to be carving out time for things that don't necessarily generate money. And so that is going to help you assess how much you have to value your time at. So when you have that final number that you think you might have to aim for, then you're probably going to want to divide that by the number of working days in your year. You don't necessarily want to divide it by 365, because I don't think it's realistic to expect that you're going to be working for 365 days of the year. Even the most diligent, high performing people will fall ill, they'll have to take some sick days. So it's a little bit more proactive to plan for a couple days off a week or a couple later days of the week. So just plan for five more high intensity days of work and assume that a majority of your income will come from those five days, or at least a majority of the income generating tasks will occur on those five days. With that said, you may very well have come up with a number that you're going to be aiming for per day. So based on that number, whether it be $200, $300, $700, $2,000. It's going to really depend on the individual. So this is why it's important for you to break it down based on your finances. Because depending on the region you're in, the country you're in, your living expenses, you might not actually have to generate that much income to live a good quality of life. But maybe you live in a very expensive region where you thriving business to be able to pay your bills, be self sufficient and not acquire bad debt. At this point we've got it down to daily. So within your daily time, something that's super important to do is time blocking. So time blocking is more than just looking at what times you have zoom calls or one on one sessions or meetings. You have to start looking at it as time blocking. Literally everything that you do, perhaps with exception of going to the bathroom. But if your morning routine takes half an hour, you might want a time block for that to assure that you actually have time to do that and that you know what time that you have to wake up at. I'll give you some examples of how I time block in this way. So I will typically have to wake up at 5am in order to make it to my first session on time and also to get some admin work done in the morning. So I will time block accordingly to make sure that I'm up at a certain time. I give myself a 15 minute buffer to get out of bed and then I spend about half an hour on the admin stuff, another 15 minute buffer to transition to leave the house and then I get to the gym for 6:30. So little things like that are what allow me to be on time and then being able to calculate what it takes to get to your destination on time. So when you are putting something into a Google calendar, if you input the address, that'll help you time block. Because if you input the address and click on maps, it'll tell you the estimated time that it'll take to get there. And if you're familiar with the area and weather changes, you might want to give yourself an extra 10 minutes. If you are in an area that is high traffic or weather tends to fluctuate, it's going to be even more important that you give yourself an extra 10 minutes. You get your location and you want to be able to set yourself up for success. So if you have a back to back meeting, you might want to build on a buffer because if you can't control what time that the next session is or when they come. Or maybe you need some time to reset, or maybe you get messages throughout the day and you'd feel better if you're able to answer them for a few minutes in between. Whatever works for you. The alternative is if you're having to place a lot of value on your time, Change it from 60 minute sessions to 50 minute sessions. It will be the kind of thing that if there is continuity among everybody that works with you, they wouldn't know the difference. They'll just know that your sessions are 50 minutes. But that sets you up, that you can provide the highest level of service for your one on one people or provide the highest level connection for anybody that you're connecting with on a sales call or any kind of one on one check ins, zoom calls, podcast interviews, et cetera. The other thing that I do with time blocking is with my own fitness and my own well being. So I will time block two hours for something that takes me one hour when it comes to something like my own fitness. For example, I do jiu jitsu at noon at a place that takes me 10 minutes to drive to. But I give myself a half hour buffer on both ends. And if I have a call afterwards, I give myself an hour buffer from the point that the class ends until the point that my call is that allows me to get home. I have maybe half an hour where I can shower, reset, I can take some calls on the way to the gym and on the way home. Being at the gym and prioritizing that and putting in the boundaries and blocking out the time to allow that to take play improves the quality of both my life and my work. The other thing you might find yourself needing to do is blocking out time that you're spending with your family. So maybe you block out like eight hours on the weekend so that you can't schedule appointments, so that you know that time is finite, that it doesn't just keep going, that you have to get tasks done with a bit more of a sense of urgency, and that you can't just delay, delay, because then your week is going to be done and it's going to roll over to the next week. And if there's priority or if you need to make that certain amount of income within the week, you know that you have to meet your deadlines. So that can help people who have trouble meeting their deadlines is if you time block the things that you do in your leisure time, your recreation time, then it allows you to see that you don't just have an abundance of time, it's very finite. It ends, you run out and you need to either get more efficient or ask for help or maybe outsource certain tasks. On the topic of outsourcing certain tasks, what I will say is as you are looking at meeting your financial goals, I think it's really important to look at it from a grassroots perspective. So let's say you need to work with more people. I would say your priorities would lie in serving the people that you have really well and looking at upgrading the service that those people are getting so that they start to become almost your marketing team. So if you're working with one on one people, maybe asking for feedback as to how the sessions are going, you could also ask for a testimonial, start to have them, leverage them as your marketing. And you can also just spend time on leaning in on the connection, make sure that they can feel the sense of connection. Because that's one of the biggest value adds of this industry is that we are not only offering expertise and guidance, but we might be that person's closest connection in their week. Because in a lot of cases, people within the fitness industry are spending a lot of time with their people, whether it be virtually remotely, over text message, in person, etc. We often are celebrating their birthdays with them, their anniversaries, their major milestones. And so the more connection that you can create, the better. Prioritize that over something like deciding if you're going to be be on one website platform versus the other. Unless you are fully booked and you have other employees serving your people. If it's just a one person show and you are looking to get more clients in that capacity, I would put your energy into bettering the service that your clients are getting and then looking at leveraging those happy people as part of your marketing plan. And then when it comes to marketing, that's where you could look to other experts for help as to how to put stuff like that together, how to scale it out, where to put it, how to sponsor it, how to write your copy, etc. And that's all things that you'll be able to learn inside of Beverly's offering. Now this next segment that I'm going to talk about is distractions. When you are really focused on a task, you want as few distractions as possible. You can't necessarily have your phone open next to you. You can't necessarily have messaging systems active and notifying you because if they are, then you're going to have to stop what you're doing, then restart depending on what that task is, it might make it take twice as long. So if you are, say, recording a podcast and you're getting text messages all the time, it's going to take you quite a bit longer to complete that project. So if you're doing a project like that, or even doing a video call or recording a podcast, you want to have the boundary set in place where things are notified. Your voicemail has the right message to ensure that everybody's rerouted to the place that they have to go. Maybe you need to have an autorespond on your email, depending on how busy you are. Or maybe you just need to have some kind of boundaries set with your people to let them know that you'll respond within the day, but that sometimes it might take a few hours for that response so that they are totally on the same page as to when they'll hear from you. So that you have the ability to have your breaks, have your solitude, have your silence, whether it be for recharging or for focusing on the task at hand, you have to have an environment in which you can focus on working. So for some people it might be at home, but for other people it actually might be in a busier coffee shop because they don't have the distractions of their house. Then they're a bit more held accountable to working because they're around other people that might also be working too. Something that some people might benefit from are actually noise canceling headphones. And if a little trick like that helps you, then I would say give it a try, see how it works. I personally have used gray noise in the past when I really have to focus on a task or I'll use instrumental music. And that allows me to not get so distracted by maybe a video that somebody told me about or what's going on outside. Sometimes I have to close the blind so I can focus on the things that I'm working on. But whatever you can do to get the most value for your time, the better. Because when we circle back to what we started out talking about, you're going to have a certain amount of money that you need to generate to meet your essential needs. And if you start not being as mindful of your time, you're going to miss the mark or you're going to overwork yourself and it's not going to be as sustainable. The next piece I'm going to talk about is, is taking breaks, which I touched on with the whole eliminating distractions piece. But here's the thing. When it comes to taking breaks, sometimes we're thinking that taking breaks is like a sign of laziness. But oftentimes when a person falls ill or they have to dial it back or something, it's very rare that they'll have looked back and regretted having gotten those extra hours of sleep, or regretted having just not worked for a few hours and just had complete silence, or watched a funny video, watched a funny movie, or gone to the gym, gotten their own workout, gotten in a sweat. Taking breaks also requires you to schedule those breaks. So you almost have to set it up just the same as you had a workout plan where you wouldn't set up a person to work out 365 days of the year all out, 9 out of 10 RPE, you would probably structure in some rest days and maybe some deloads, or maybe you would help them through some times where they they're autoregulating. They are not quite at the same intensity as they were because life got overwhelming. So you want to create structure in your work life that allows you to dial it back while still staying on track with your goals. So keeping that end goal number in mind, then that means that you might need to do semi private training or small group training. Or maybe you do virtual group calls where you're coaching multiple people at once. Perhaps, perhaps you're looking at taking on a few more remote clients and a few less in person clients. Whatever you have to do to leverage your time a little bit better to create that time where you're actually truly able to take structured breaks. That would be ideal from that point. If you are still struggling to get back more of your time, maybe you're at a point where you need to add on more people to your team. Maybe it's hiring another coach, maybe it's bringing on an intern or something like that. And these are all things worth exploring because you want this to be a long term career. You don't want this just to be a fast and scary roller coaster where you screaming to get off because you're totally burnt out. One of the other valuable things about taking breaks, as it were, is that some people, they just don't shut off. They're going to always be productive. They want to always keep learning. And so for them, taking breaks might be like professional development. Maybe they're diving into a professional development podcast. Maybe they're looking at taking like an art course or a graphic design course, or perhaps they're looking at doing some continuing education within the realm of actual practical fitness. So maybe they're going to a seminar where they're relearning how to cue a squat, or they're relearning how to cue a deadlift from an expert in the field who they really look up to, or maybe an expert in the field who they've never learned from before. These things can also look like taking breaks, but they also require some budgeting, some structuring of time, and blocking out that time too. Too. One of the most important reasons why I wanted to help out Beverly with this podcast episode is I find that when people get super excited, they'll often focus on the things that don't help them reach their goal in the most efficient way. And they start to spin their wheels. So they'll be thinking about how they're going to set up their website and which platform. And they haven't acquired their first five clients yet, or maybe they have 20 clients or something like that, but they haven't found the most efficient way to program for them. Maybe just a switch switch to a different programming platform would gain back some of their time. And in some cases it's just a matter of finding ways to focus more on your work so you get more out of your day to change it from working 12 hour days to maybe working 6 hour days. Whether that be setting like a timer to get certain pieces of work done on time, or having a tracking app like Toggl. You can use Toggl to track how long it took you to work on certain projects and to also gear you into one project at where you're not trying to do two things at once. Because many people claim to be very good at multitasking, but a very small percentage of people are truly demonstrating an aptitude in being able to multitask. So what I would say is important is to stay within your realm of competence. So you want to be able to do a task proficiently, consistently. Because day in and day out, this is the career that we have. So if you're programming workouts, you want your workouts to take an efficient amount of time and you want it to be a consistent quality every time. So you want to set up the environment that allows it to happen. For myself, I program workouts for my clients oftentimes in the evening because I have the least distractions. I'm in the best mental space for that and I can just buckle down and get the stuff done. And oftentimes I'll take the same amount to do the programs each time. Sometimes I get even faster, but I don't slow down because I've kind of blocked out that time accordingly to make it the most efficient possible. If I had done it in the middle of the day when perhaps I'm getting texts from people and have to respond to things with urgency, or maybe have some midday meetings, I'd have to stop, start, stop, start. And it would take much longer to get that task done, dragging it out and creating sort of a bottleneck in my day. But with all of that said, we're going to keep this episode nice, short and sweet. Once again, a reminder that if you haven't already, go to Apple Podcasts and find the PT Profit Podcast. If you're already subscribed, please do. We really appreciate it. Go and leave a five star rating and write out a review for us. Just let us know what you're liking about the PT Profit Podcast. Let Beverly know which episode you've really enjoyed and what your takeaways are. Tag her on social media at Bimson Fitness and if you have time send a screenshot to me@chris bimson fitness.com and that way we'll know firsthand that you gave the show a listen, that you enjoyed it, and we might have some things to help you out that we can send you in an email. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch you on the next one.

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