Three Steps You Can Take Right Now to Become More Consistent and Productive - Janina Goldberg
Three Steps You Can Take Right Now to Become
More Consistent and Productive
Would you like to carve out more time to be consistent and productive?
I’m betting you said “Yes!” 😀
Surprisingly, I have found that there’s always a few tweaks, and in some cases some major shifts, that you can make to your calendar to have more consistency and productivity in your days.
5 BASIC DEFINITIONS & CONCEPTS
Let’s start with a couple of basics that might help create a framework for more balance and consistency.
- TIME ON – this is time allocated to tasks like invoicing, networking, blog writing, content creation, social media engagement, etc.
- TIME IN – this is time allocated to you showing up and working with your clients. It’s the time you get paid for.
- TIME OFF – this might be obvious. It’s important in your planning and a topic for a deeper dive another day.
- TIME BLOCKING – this is creating blocks of time to focus on a project.
- TASK HOPPING – this is multi-tasking and it’s not sustainable. Please don’t take this as a challenge to prove me wrong. There’s plenty of evidence that jumping from task to task is not efficient, tasks end up taking longer to complete and therefore is not effective.
THE MINDSET BIT
“Setting a schedule makes me twitch! I’m a creative and a schedule makes me feel caged. I like to do things when the spirit moves me!”
“I have too many balls in the air, and I have to touch them all otherwise something is going to fall apart!”
I’ve worked with plenty of entrepreneurs like you who have a hard time with setting a schedule. You want to be available to your clients. You might be hoping this is showing them that you’re available to them. You’ll see anyone pretty much any time. I get it. It’s how I started out, too.
When you make an appointment with your dentist, doctor or hairdresser, you get a couple of options and because you want to see them, you pick one, right? Your clients and your business are no different. They come to you because they want to engage with you, therefore, giving them a few choices shows them you have other things going on. They will pick one.
CREATING YOUR SCHEDULE
Let’s create a first draft of a schedule for you to experiment with for a month or so, gather some evidence of what worked and what didn’t and then tweak from there.
What is your START time and END time for each day? This creates the foundation to your productive work schedule.
I can hear your resistance so here's a suggestion...if “schedule” makes you twitch then use the word “routine”. Feels better, doesn’t it? The point is having the intention to do all that you want to do in a day begins with setting yourself up for success with a plan. And plans with boundaries are a great foundation.
ADMIN DAYS
Mondays are great for TIME ON. People are coming back off a weekend and “getting caught up”.
TAKE A STEP: Create a recurring appointment on your calendar to repeat every Monday as Busy called Admin Tasks.
BENEFIT: You’ll see it on your calendar as your reminder and by marking it as busy your client scheduling software won’t see it as available to client sessions.
CLIENT HOURS
Carve out blocks of time or days for client work. This is TIME IN. An example is Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. No admin work (because that was allocated for Monday) and no social media posting in between clients. If you have a few minutes, stand up, walk around your house, stretch, breathe. Be more centered for your next client.
TAKE A STEP: Create a recurring appointment on your calendar to repeat every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday as Free called Client Time.
BENEFIT: You’ll see it on your calendar as your reminder and by marking it as free your client scheduling software will see it as available for client sessions.
DAILY TASKS
In this section, I’m talking about setting up routines for consistency.
Carve out smaller blocks of time for activities like social media engagement.
TAKE A STEP: Create a recurring appointment on your calendar to repeat every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday as Busy called Social Media Engagement.
BENEFIT: You’ll see it on your calendar as your reminder and by marking it as busy your client scheduling software won’t see it as available to client sessions. Yes some of these are client work days but you’ll work on your social media first thing of your work day and the rest of the day will be available and focused on client work.
➡️ You can follow this approach for any daily or frequent task you want to do like those noted in Adal’s Relationship Marketing Strategy here.
Want help with setting up the next version of your schedule?
Contact me to uncover what’s in your way of setting yourself up for more success.
