If you are overwhelmed and your calendar is just loaded, we are going to help you structure your calendar and get your time management back on track. Have you ever said, I'm crazy busy? Maybe you can relate to that phrase! I’m giving you my favorite ways to help you manage your time to stay productive AND make time for yourself.
#1 is getting an online calendar
One of the big reasons I love my online calendar is because it syncs with my iPhone. So when I'm on the go and I need to schedule something, I don't have to have my paper calendar right there with me. I'm able to whip out my phone (which most of us have our phones on us all of the time…am I right?!)
Another great thing is that it can sync with your spouse or your team. So if my husband ever wants to schedule something he has my calendar right on his phone and same thing with my team. Now, the best part is if you're thinking, I don't want everybody seeing what my calendar looks like, you can just have it be marked as busy so they can just see that you're busy during that time. They have no idea what you're doing. It’s going to make it a breeze when everybody's trying to schedule something and you're trying to figure out where you can best plan that.
#2 is to grab a pen and paper and we are going to do a brain dump
If you don't know what a brain dump is, I want you to get everything out of your head on to paper! This is everything you need to get done personally and for your business. Maybe it's the kids stuff, maybe it's your significant other, whatever it is…we're going put this down on paper!! It's kind of like when you organize your closet. It's going to get a whole lot messier before it actually gets better.
That's okay! You're on the right track, so just start brain dumping everything you need to do like working out or meeting certain people, having team meetings, phone calls, when you're checking your email, maybe running errands, anything you need to get done! This is going to go on paper right now.
#3 is I want you to chunk all your tasks
Now, you might be so overwhelmed after step #2. You've got this huge piece of paper and it’s loaded, there's just no other room to put anything else down there. That’s where chunking comes into play and it really helps you with the overwhelm! You might have said I need to create a Facebook live, I need to go on Instagram, I need to go over on Twitter. Chunk that down as social media. It feels so much better when you can say one thing versus 17 things that you have to do.
Maybe there is some personal time on there. Maybe you have time where you're going to meditate, work out or you're going to get your nails done. Whatever that is, again you can chunk that down into something called ‘personal time’. As you're doing this, look at that piece of paper and start chunking it down into what specific topics you think that is.
I really want to make sure that you get everything set up where it's systematized. You're repeating tasks if you're using an online calendar. It's very, very easy to do that where you can set something up in your calendar and every Monday it repeats or every two weeks or every six months. You can customize it, so this is a really, really big deal when you're trying to create that rhythm!
Step #4 is picking rhythms to your day
One thing that I've seen people do and I've done it myself that really helps is by picking rhythms to your day. So maybe your big priority on Monday's is marketing. Every Monday that is your day to just get organized for the week and figure out where you are going to spend time on your marketing efforts. I've had people do financial Friday and every Friday they go into their QuickBooks or online software and they figure out where they should be at, where they're currently at and where they need to go.
What can you do to create those rhythms and to batch? If you’re doing a social media post every single day and you manually write it that day, you post that day…I've got news for you. If you learn to batch, and what I mean by that is, instead of coming up with a social media post, typing it up, putting it into Instagram, hitting send, putting that photo there, doing all of that step by step by step manually. If you start to batch it where you pick 30 photos, 30 captions, 30 subject lines for your email, whatever it is, when you go to batch it's going to streamline it a lot!!
So take my podcast for example. We might come up with six topics that we're going to talk about over the next six weeks. We look at it, we make sure it all makes sense and it flows together. After we come up with the topics, then we come up with the content. After all six topics and content is created I might then go in and record three or all six of them at one time. Then somebody is taking them and turning them into a blog post at one time. Do you see how this can just streamline it and they could go so much faster than if you were to do every step by step each time?! So what can you batch in your business??
Step #5 is to make sure to leave white space in your calendar
If your calendar is really pretty and all color-coded with back-to-back appointments, there's probably going to be a little bit of a mess coming up. You're going to have to put out a fire. The inevitable will happen in your business and you're going to have to be the problem solver and fix whatever it is. I want you to leave white space because there are things that are going to pop up and sometimes we forget to schedule in things like checking email, checking voicemails, returning text messages, so make sure that you leave that time where you are able to do that. Sometimes I even put a little section in my calendar that says ‘miscellaneous to do’s’ because I know something will pop up that I have to work on that day.
One tip that I may have shared with you before is the Google Chrome extension app called Boomerang. Boomerang has this amazing thing called ‘pause’ where it pauses your inbox so you don't have to worry about checking your email all day long. You can just use this pause inbox and tell it when to un-pause your email inbox! I can wake up first thing in the morning, jump in my email and no new emails will be in there and then I can tell it every day to release it at 3:00 p.m.. Magically, they all come flooding in and I can batch it again in just a few minutes and be done with my emails versus checking it all day long.
There you have it! Some quick, easy steps to get you to managing your time well.
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