066: Tasks vs. Templates

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

One of the big central themes of free time comes from my favorite Agile development quote. You've probably heard me say it many times. Each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it. This is also consistent with what Michael Gerber drives home in his bestselling book the E Myth Revisited of taking time to work on the business. Not just in the business, that by working on the business, the business itself and its attendant systems and process and way of doing things becomes the product. In a sense, it is the most important product and outcome of the business, not necessarily what you sell to customers. Previously on the podcast I've talked about, the floor is lava. Not getting in the hot lava by working in the task, but building the furniture that you hop to that you work on the process. That's what I want to pull out in particular here today in this conversation on tasks versus templates in episode 62, I shared my made by Monday little game that I'm playing with myself to build momentum in terms of content creation. So just to give you a super quick recap, I started with this goal. What if I make all the content I need to for the week by the end of day every Monday that I would be following the Mark Twain and Brian Tracy adage of eating my frog. I would be doing the most important strategic creative work that I tend to procrastinate on. I would be getting it all made by Monday and then I could go into the rest of my week feeling solid. Breaking this down further, Made by Monday comprises a series of tasks I could say two newsletters and four podcasts that I recorded. And don't forget the important piece about ritualizing it by going somewhere else I find it much more helpful to get my Made by Monday Sprint done when I'm out of the house and just not in my regular day to day environment, not exposed to the same interruptions, even interruptions from myself. By wandering into another part of the house, I quickly realized that it's one thing to sit down and just start my Made by Monday Sprint, but it's another to create a template for doing these. So that's an example of stepping out of the task just every Monday saying okay, get this done and designing. What does my Made by Monday template look like? We'll be right back just after this.

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Now I actually do create templates in notion because everything I do for my business happens in notion. If you want to learn more about this, there are a couple podcast episodes in the archives that I'll put in the Show Notes where I talked about how I collect ideas and stories and anecdotes and then organize them into the book. You can also sign up for the free Author Toolkit. I have the video versions of these Notion walkthroughs. That's@itsfreetime.com authors and if you're interested in being one of the early beta testers, part of the inaugural cohort that gets the FreeTime dashboard for organizing your entire business operations, let me know. There's a wait list up there currently@itsfreetime.com dashboard because I am going to release the initial version to a small cohort at a reduced rate to help me test and I'm going to be giving the most hands on input that I do for the life of that product. I'll do it up front so I can learn from and with all of you about what the product really needs. So I digress. The whole point is that in notion, not only am I creating a little checklist for myself on Mondays, but it was also important to me to step back and create a template. So I created a Made by Monday template that every time I'm approaching a Monday, I click on this template and then it pre populates a little list for me. So it says a generalized version of Record Podcast 1, Record Podcast 2, Record Podcast 3, if Time Record Podcast 4. It says FreeTime newsletter, pivotless newsletter. And then there's a section down below where I say biggest project frogs, where if I have time during the sprint and there's one or two big project frogs that I could also make headway on the Monday that I'll do those things. The template also links to all the relevant pages within my notion dashboard. So it links to my content calendar, it links to the podcast production boards for pivot and free time, because that's the template leading up to the specific Monday is where I get into the tasks. That's where I start to map out, well, which episodes am I recording? And I don't put my recording notes in the Made by Monday entry. I link out to the appropriate place so I might link out to the podcast production. I have a little card for every single episode that I record, where I keep notes and resources, things I need to put in the show, notes, announcements that I want to make sure I don't forget. But everything gets linked to from this Made by Monday hub checklist. So first it's a template of what is the structure of these Made by Monday sprints at a high level, then leading up is where I fill in the details of the tasks so that when I sit down, I'm super clear what I'm working on, what I'm trying to get done, and that's when I work in the tasks. But that I've also taken time to step back and design the template for what is the ideal way that this works. Generally speaking, and you'll notice this follows the free time framework. So align. In this case, I was asking how can I align content creation with my week, my time, my energy, my strengths, so that it actually gets done and gets done consistently? Because content is one of my big values, it is one of the big ways that I add value in the world so it is aligned. But I was experiencing a lot of friction with being able to do it consistently. Design is about designing the process, the ideal outcomes. Wouldn't it be amazing if every Monday I could be done for the week. Yes, and designing the impact and also the process. So what is this really going to look like? Everything from designing where I'm going to do the Made by Monday sprints to what I'm getting done and how then assign. In this case, I'm assigning myself all of the things I need to create and record, but I can also by the end of Monday assign out for next steps. So right now I'm in a lot of team transition, so it's a little bit up in the air. Maybe I draft the newsletter, but someone on my team programs it in Kajabi, which is what we use to actually mail and send it out. Maybe I record the Super Raw podcast episode, but I hire an editor who has a great ear, who's not just fixing the overall volume, but they're actually listening and correcting for where I misspeak or the pauses are too long or you can hear me clicking something on my keyboard. So the ideal outcome of Made by Monday is that everything is done to where my role is done and then it can be assigned out for the finalization and next steps. Hope you found this helpful. I know it's building on the episode 62 made by Monday, but it's also a reminder not just to work in the tasks in your business but but as you do that to create templates that will make those tasks easier to tackle moving forward. I would love to hear what works for you along these lines. Don't forget you can submit your favorite time saving system as a special featured episode of this podcast. I would love to hear it. Do you have something similar that you do to work on your business and not just in it? Do you have something that helps you batch content creation or your time or shift your energy into a different, more strategic mode? Send me a voice memo. Record whatever it is that you want to share. The more specific the better. Send a voice memo. You can do that right on your phone in the Voice Memos app. Send it to hi'sfreetime.com youm can also leave a shorter note if you go to itsfreetime.com ask. Thank you so much for being here. Listening everybody. Today I saved you extra time because this episode is shorter than our usual. So thanks for being here and don't forget to leave a rating or a review if you can. Wherever you listen. I really appreciate it.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries. And insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful, and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time even me, visit itsfreetime.com join remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.

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