DAY 2: Making Your Calendar

NOTE: The program mentioned in this training, Your Next $1K, is now called The Profitable Nutritionist™ Program. Same great content, different name.

CALENDAR TIME!

Let's get to it with Day 2, which is where you're going to actually create your weekly and monthly calendar.

Here's the problem with time management:

We have plenty of time. We just don't do what we told ourselves we would do with that time. Plain and simple.

The exercise with Monday Hour One is to plan out your week in advance, with all your action items to support your 3 Essential priorities accounted for, and anticipate that when the moment comes to start the tasks on that list, you won't want to do them.

Your brain will tell you all the reasons not to do it. You will calmly listen to those protests, because you planned for them, and then do it anyway. (More about this on Day 3.)

This takes some practice and some finessing, so it's best to commit to Monday Hour One for 90 days. Give it a shot and keep tweaking until you find your groove.

It is hugely motivating to get done with your work priorities quickly and efficiently when you actually have an end in sight. The never-ending to do lists are what make us want to procrastinate and just stick our head in the sand.

Don't do this! Work time is for work, and then you can turn that part of your brain off to enjoy everything else in your life.

Remember, being "busy" is a choice, not an identity. When you learn the SKILL of intentionally making decisions about your time instead of reacting to everything around you, your life will change.

By practicing this consistently you will learn the skill. Give it time and don't expect to be an expert at this right away.

TODAY'S ACTION ITEMS:

1. Watch the Day 2 video on this page

2. Build out your calendar for this week!

Don't let your perfectionism get in the way; this calendar is just a starting point to see what works best for you. You'll continue tweaking each week.

The process:

Set aside an hour on Sunday night or first thing on Monday morning...even though you don't feel like you have time! Expect your brain to hate this idea but do it anyway. The emails can wait, I promise.
Make your to-do list download totally distraction-free. Turn off all notifications and start writing EVERYTHING you need to do this week. To-do download with ALL the things that need to happen for the week. Make sure you're looking back at your 90 day plan and have broken down the big milestones week by week for your 3 Essentials so you know what needs to get done.
Now you are going to create your digital calendar with your regular hours. I use Google calendar because I think it's super easy, but you can use anything that works for you. Paper and pencil is fine but I think you'll miss out on a lot of the automations that will make your life easier in the long run, so I really encourage digital.

You are going to see that I use different mini calendars inside my Google Calendar for each of the different types of tasks in my business. There is a reason I do this, and it will help you as well. I recommend starting by creating a Focus Time, Tasks, Family Calendar if needed, and then one with your name as the title for your appointments. (Share the Family Calendar with your family if that's helpful.)
Set up your calendar into WEEK view and put all your existing personal commitments and free time activities in FIRST. (Regular work hours if you have another job, kid sports, regular meetings, meal times, workouts, church, school, activities, book reading, nightly Netflix, brunch with friends, date night, etc.)

Put it all in there and start to see how you're already spending your time. Remember to account for driving time before and after as well.
Next you will layer in your FOCUS time with your Focus Time calendar color. This is your best time of the day when you will be producing something for your business. For me it's when I'm writing emails, writing web copy, writing and publishing a blog or podcast, creating trainings and new concepts for my clients, outlining and creating trainings like this, etc. Focus time is when I need my brain to be super sharp, which for me is over coffee in the early morning.

If you only have 2 hours a day to work on your business over the next 90 days, make 1 hour focus time.

If you have a bit more flexibility in your schedule like I do, you can do 2 hours of focus time. This will be the best investment in your business that you ever make, I promise! Schedule the focus time before any other work priorities. You absolutely cannot produce high quality work 40 hours a week. It's impossible. Schedule in 1-2 hours of no-distractions focus time a day and that will probably be more than you have usually gotten done in 8 hours.
After putting in the Focus Time, you will schedule in the rest of the to-do items for your week. I use the Daily Tasks calendar for this. I find it most useful to batch similar items together, so as an example, if I need to call and schedule a hair appointment I will block off 30 minutes in my week to call and schedule all appointments that are going to be needed: hair, dentist visits, orthodontist, oil changes, whatever is on the list.

I also batch anything that will require me to be camera ready! I schedule filming any videos or client calls on the same day, which for me is typically Monday, so I can batch my hair washes. Just being honest.

These Daily Tasks items are also where you'll put in cleaning, laundry, meal prep, groceries, etc.
Look at your week. Now you can SEE where your time is being spent, and everything on your overflowing to-do list is accounted for and out of your brain. This frees up so much bandwidth that you don't even realize you're using looping on everything you think of and worrying that it will be forgotten.

Do you want to allocate some time on the weekend to do your focus time? Do you want to get up a little earlier? Do you want to substitute one night of Netflix for your business?

Notice the use of the word 'want' instead of 'need'. You get to make these choices, but you don't have to. The more intentional you use your time, the more spacious your calendar will get.
Friday Hour Done: At the end of the week, usually on Friday or maybe even Saturday morning, schedule time to evaluate your week and be honest with yourself about how your process could be improved for next week.

Ask yourself, specifically, what progress you made towards your 3 Essentials. Are you staying in integrity with yourself and ONLY working on tasks associated with those big priorities?

Remember, this is a new skill and it will take time for you to get used to it. This is the time to make note of anything still open that needs to be tended to next week so you can make sure it gets scheduled when you sit down at the beginning of the week to create your calendar again.

If you're finding yourself catching up on work on the weekends but you didn't plan it that way, you're not giving yourself incentive to stick to your calendar during the week. You want to get this stuff done so you can mentally check out of work when you said you were going to.
Now rinse and repeat for 90 days and watch how your productivity skyrockets while your free time expands like crazy.

PRO TIPS:

Put everything onto your calendar as it comes up for the first month. There are probably a bunch of little things that you didn't remember when you first created your weekly calendar, but they actually happen over and over again, so add them in as the weeks unfold and then when you evaluate at the end of the week, you'll remember to add them for next week.
Share certain calendars with family or integrate with Calendly so you can skip the back and forth of scheduling with clients and it will automatically end up in your calendar. I even used to share with my entire membership so they could always see the upcoming events on our member calendar. (Now we have a different platform integrated so we don't need that.)
Extra ninja tip that will change your business forever: Schedule time for clients and client consult calls even if you don't have them.

So, if fully booked for you is 10 clients, then you schedule 10 consult call timeslots on your calendar this month and 10 client sessions as well. (FILL THEM! That's priority number one.)

But if you haven't filled them yet, you still sit down at those times and practice the consult call and the client session as if they were there. You will sharpen your skills so quickly and book more clients faster when you feel prepared and ready because you have practiced so much...not to mention your brain will be so much happier to be getting paid for these sessions rather than doing them alone for free, so you are much more likely to market and sell more!