I absolutely love what I do and I love teaching other people to do it also. Six and a half years ago, I was where you probably are today. Private social media, no Instagram, I didn’t have a YouTube channel or an active Facebook page. I had no interest in marketing myself and I didn’t want to be a salesperson. But I was very, very passionate about the way I changed thanks to Beachbody and I wanted to share that with other people.
The problem was, I went from being a stay at home mom who did all of the cooking and cleaning to being OBSESSED with my new business venture. What ended up happening was that the rest of my life outside my work came to a screeching halt. The dishes were piling up, the laundry was overflowing, and I realized that I needed to learn how to manage my time and my priorities.
We all have the same 24 hours in a day. It’s what we do with those 24 hours that dictates if we are productive or successful. The first 8 months of my business I spent a lot of time on social media, scrolling through my newsfeed on Facebook. That’s not productive work! Now I’ve turned my newsfeed off so I don’t even feel tempted to waste time scrolling and scrolling (and scrolling). I found myself getting frustrated, irritated, and anxious because I wasn’t doing the vital behaviors and the things that were moving my business forward because I was wasting time.
So I had to learn how to make a schedule and get laser focused on the things I needed to do to grow my business. Every Sunday, I would sit down and have a little planning session with myself. I would plan out my nutrition for the week and also work on my calendar. I use Google Calendar because it allows me to sync my phone and my computer and I can also put in Matt’s email address so we can share what’s going on. I like that shareable function but I also like that it sends me reminders and tells me when it’s time to move on to the next activity or task.
I really want you to get into the habit of sitting down to plan your week. I know you’re always going to say “I don’t have time to plan!” I PROMISE that if you spend just twenty minutes making a plan, your productivity is going to go through the ROOF throughout the week because you took that time to plan.
So first and foremost, put the things on the calendar that you cannot change. If you work a full time job, block that out. If you have an hour break for lunch that you can sue to work on your business, leave that time blank for right now. If you have kid’s practices, a doctor’s appointment, you’re teaching a class, traveling, anything that can’t be moved needs to be added to your calendar first.
The next thing I do is go in and put in my workout. For me, that’s a non-negotiable. I am not a good mom or a good wife if I don’t get my workout in. It’s a priority for me. I schedule my workout – don’t leave it to chance that you’ll fit it in throughout the day!! I wake up at 5 am and put my feet on the ground and get moving. I know that if I just snooze for ten minutes, that’s ten minutes that someone else is getting ahead or doing something for their business that I am not.
I used to go straight from working out to the kitchen table. I’d block out an hour to write a post, do some check ins and follow ups, and work on my business. I knew the kids would wake up after that, so I would block out 8 am – noon as mom duty. At some point the kids would watch TV for about thirty minutes so at that time I would schedule out check ins. Then I knew that every day at 2 pm was nap time. Even when my kids didn’t nap, they knew that was quiet time and that was when I had about an hour or so to do my work. When they woke up, I knew it was family time again until the evening when they went to sleep.
Using these time blocks allowed me to be purposeful and focused. Once I had this time blocked out, I would say “Okay, what am I going to do during that time?” A lot of times we create these blocks but then we don’t know what to do or what our priorities are. So think about what is most important to you – is it a video training, a blog post, sending out invites? Whatever you need to move your business forward and give you a return on your investment.
That is the goal of time blocking – you want to be 100% present where ever you are throughout your day. You want to give everyone the BEST of you, not what’s left of you!