Win Back Time In Your Day
There’s always more to do!
Do you ever feel like you have a million priorities and things to get to that will improve your business but you can’t find the time to get to them?
I know I sure have, and the standard time management approach rarely works to open up more time. As a fitness business owner your time is valuable, but it’s also scarce. You’re already working 14+ hours a day and 6 or 7 days per week.
There are a few key solutions to your problem…
Be Okay With Things Not Getting Done
Most time management issues are really prioritization issues. If you know your top priorities, the things that are most likely to move your business forward, then you can be okay with some things not getting done.
Every week there are hundreds of little tasks, to-dos and activities that I don’t get to. I’ve assessed them, compared them to my current top priorities and made the conscious decision to put them to the side.
I’ll keep a list of these things in my weekly priority tracker, a tool we use to keep our team in check and share with our coaching clients. If after a few weeks I’ve not gotten to the item it probably isn’t worth doing and I can kill it from the list.
The first step is knowing your priorities. Once you are aware of what is most important, usually just 3-5 things, you can start to accept that you just won’t get some things done.
And that’s okay! Some of these things aren’t going to move the needle or get you closer to your goal anyhow.
It’s mostly busy work. Eventually you’ll start to create more time for yourself by protecting your time.
There’s never a perfect schedule, especially as a small business owner. You have client issues to deal with, training to do, marketing, and things sometimes just come up.
Start by protecting just 60 minutes of your day for uninterrupted work. Stick to the highest level activities for that period of time and acknowledge what you’ve accomplished in that time each day.
Create enough momentum that it rolls into 2-3 hours of amazingly productive work.
Over time you’ll find that some days you create enough momentum that it rolls into 2-3 hours of amazingly productive work. If you’re working on the right things you’ll start to gain traction.
I have a personal rule that I list, at most, 5 things on my list for each day to get done. That’s probably a little much at times. If I can get 3 done 80% of the time I consider that a success. Limiting myself to 5 keeps me at the top of my priority list and forces me to evaluate the activities I’m spending time on each day.
This also leaves room for the regularly scheduled things I have to do like meeting with our team, performing coaching calls, planning thinking time (yep, I schedule out thinking time), and other actions.
Outsource the Little Stuff
I’m terrible at spelling and grammar. I write a lot, so there are a lot of opportunities for mistakes to be made.
Instead of spending my valuable time and energy on proofreading and edits for things like this blog post and the emails I send we’ve hired an editor on Upwork who has a contract with us to edit for an agreed upon hourly rate.
We created systems to make this efficient and effective. I don’t post this blog post. I write it, it gets edited and then we have someone who is skilled at posting make sure it gets up on the site.
There are dozens of these little activities that you can outsource to freelance workers on sites like Upwork for a minimal fee. You don’t have to hire a full or even part time admin to do it.
The toughest part is finding someone you work well with and then making sure you have an effective system for getting the tasks done.
What could you outsource:
- Editing
- Blog posting
- Video editing
- Website building/updates
- Creating PDFs
- Graphics
- Customer follow-up
- Social media posting
- Interviewing clients for testimonials
- Updating customer records
- Following up on billing issues
- Scheduling marketing appointments like lunch and learns or speaking opportunities
The list could go on and on. Starting with something small and progress as you get better at hiring freelance workers.
There is a time to hire a part time or full time admin to help you, but there is a lot of opportunity to get things off your plate that could add a lot of value to your business.
Honestly if you have a budget, you can outsource anything, even your dry cleaning, grocery shopping, etc. 🙂
Two Steps to More Time
If you put the two solutions in place from this blog post you’ll find that you can win back an hour or two of your time each week.
What would an extra hour of time do for you?
You can spend it with your family, work on your business or take a nap (you probably deserve it!). Simple solutions will start to snowball into more and more time won back each week.
Get Access To Our Time Saving, Productivity Tools
One of the best ways for us to positively impact your business is to help you become better at prioritizing your time and increasing your productivity. The right tools and coaching can make all the difference in the world.
Apply to join the High Performance Coaching Program to see if our tools and coaching may be a good fit for you. We’re excited to help you reach your biggest business goals.
