You asked for more time management tips so I’ve got 4 favorites to share today.
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Read the transcript:
[00:00:00] Janice: I am back with another bonus episode. That means a listener asked a juicy question and I’m here to share my answer. Today’s question said, give me all your time management tips. They just can’t get enough. They feel like they’re always looking for more time management tips, and I could probably have a whole podcast just about time management, but no one has time for that today.
[00:00:49] So I pulled out my four favorite time management tips, and I hope they’re helpful for you. Time management tip number one is to reduce the time it takes to make a decision. So one decision I need to make as a teacher business owner who serves other businesses is I need to understand that I can’t solve every problem for every business owner. There are times where I will be the best person to solve that problem and do a task, and there will be times where the best way I can help someone is by introducing them to someone else and playing matchmaker and recommending someone I trust to solve that problem for them.
[00:01:32] So I think very intentionally about my offer suite and the problems that I am willing and able to solve for others. So when someone comes to me and says, Hey, can you help me with X? I can look at my offer menu really quickly and say, yes, that’s something I can help you with. Or no, that’s not, I’m not the best person for that job.
[00:01:58] Similarly, I’ve talked before about my card stock calendar that I keep above my desk where I visually show my client capacity within each of those offers. And if someone comes to me and they say, I have a new podcast on my heart, can you help me with that? I can look clearly and see whether I have an opening right now or if I have an opening coming up soon.
[00:02:22] If someone says, I just need someone to edit my show, I already have my podcast concept out there, the tech is all connected but I just can’t handle the editing anymore, I can look at that part of my offer suite and see what my next available opening is to support someone in that way. Same with the VIP week.
[00:02:42] VIP week clients are my favorite, but they usually want their problem solved yesterday because it feels like their whole business and their whole world is on fire, and I can only really provide them a big custom solution transformation if I put that task in the right place on my calendar so that I can show up and really have my full brain capacity available to make big moves in their business.
[00:03:06] So these little systems that I’ve put in place to visually show me what I’m doing each and every day, to visually show where I have space for in-person conversations and where I don’t, by visually laying out my capacity and what I’m willing to say yes to and what my goals are in that year, every decision that comes my way, I can make very, very quickly because I know where to look to get the answer of yes, that’s something I can do, or no, it’s not.
[00:03:36] Yes, that shiny thing is related to my current goal. No, it’s not. Yes, I have capacity for that. No, I don’t. So when you’re building tools, that’s a big reason that you’re building them, to reduce the amount of time it takes to make a decision. Number two. One of the big reasons that we bother with digital organization at all is to reduce the time spent looking for things.
[00:04:05] So for time management, having your Google Drive organized so you can actually find things is a time management tip. It’s a one time burden that helps every other day after that go faster. Filtering my inbox properly one time was very labor intensive, but every single day, I reduce the time I spend looking for things because my digital ish is organized and I can find what I need.
[00:04:32] So time management tip number one was to reduce the time it takes to make a decision. Time management number two is to reduce the time you spend looking for things. Number three is to have a game plan for the day. There is nothing worse than pouring a fresh cup of coffee, putting your kids on the bus for the day, sitting down at your computer,
[00:04:51] and not having any idea what the best next thing is to do in your day. That’s where you end up scrolling a Facebook group, you end up on Instagram, you end up pretending you’re looking out there for inspiration. Absolutely not. That precious, freshly caffeinated, quiet time that you have is your most valuable commodity as a CEO, and you need to have a game plan
[00:05:14] before you sit down at your desk to start the day. So whether you’re writing that on the paper calendar that hangs above your computer, whether you’re having one focus post-it note on the 50 yard line waiting for you at your desk on your keyboard when you come back, whether your Asana Task of the day calendar bosses you around in the morning like mine does, by telling you exactly what the game plan is for the day,
[00:05:38] you have to have a plan. Your first task for the day cannot be to make a decision from the menu of all the things you could possibly do in the universe of digital business. You can’t start your day with a big decision. You have to sit down with a plan already in place. And time management tip number four is to recognize things that are sucking your time and take action.
[00:06:05] So for example, if editing your podcast episode takes you an entire day, if you speak an eight minute episode into the microphone and then sink your entire two hours of nap time, editing it, that was not a great use of your CEO time ’cause it’s possible that you could pass that to someone who edits podcasts every day and has a really good refined workflow and they could do it in a third of the time that it’s taking you.
[00:06:38] And so you have to recognize the value of three hours of your time versus paying someone for one hour of their time and you earning back those three hours. And you have to think, if I passed this task to someone else who could do it faster, at a higher level, and I got back these three hours, what could I do with those three hours?
[00:07:01] What could I turn them into? Could I make a product that I’m gonna share with my giant email list that’s gonna immediately sell and make way more money in those three hours than what I paid someone else to do that task for me? So there are tasks that we could do ourselves in our business. I’m sure I could have learned how to make a website, but passing it to someone who does that all day was a much better use of my CEO time because that’s not a task that I need to learn how to do just to make one website.
[00:07:34] Me sinking the time to learn how to do that task doesn’t make any sense if I’m only gonna do it once. So I’ve paid people inside my business to set things up for me one time. That’s a win each and every time. And I’ve also identified problems in my business, tech stacks that aren’t working for me,
[00:07:53] um, places that I’m ignoring in my business because they obviously aren’t aligned and set up for success to meet my goals. When I identify something like that, that’s sucking my time and my energy and making me feel icky about my business, when I identify a problem like that, that’s weighing the business down,
[00:08:14] I really try to honor that realization and take action on it right away. And that might be hiring help. It might be cutting a tech tool from my stack and replacing it with a different one. It might be learning how to clean up and optimize something so that I can use the tool I have more effectively. It might mean a coffee chat or a strategy call with someone to be like, how are other people doing this?
[00:08:40] I don’t feel like I’m doing this in the most efficient way. There’s probably a better way out there, and me spending an hour today to be humble and learn what that is could save me hundreds of hours down the line. So the four big time management tips that I have to share today are to reduce the time it takes to make a decision, reduce the time you spend looking for things,
[00:09:03] have a game plan before you start your work block, and recognize a time suck and be brave enough to take action to fix it. Do you have a teacher business question that you’re hoping to hear answered on the podcast? I’ll leave a link for you in the show notes if you do. Thanks for listening.
Here is a playlist of other episodes I think you will enjoy about SYSTEMS and CAPACITY:
