Episode 113: 5 Easy Time Management Hacks: My Weekly Schedule Breakdown as Full-Time Leader, Facilitator, Content Creator and Working Mom
Leaders, do you realize you have as many hours in a day as Beyonce?
Let that sink in.
We all have the same number 24 hours, it’s just up to us how we spend them.
On today’s episode of the improve it! pod, Erin is grateful you’re giving YOUR valuable time and investing in your biggest asset – YOU. She will show you how to manage your time most effectively and efficiently, so you get the most out of every day!
In today’s episode you’ll hear:
Erin’s weekly schedule breakdown
Five easy time management steps that you can implement right now
An acronym for T.I.M.E. that will make you think about how you spend it
Hit play on this tangible episode and drop us a line at info@learntoimproveit.com to tell us what you think! (P.S. you might want a pen and paper in hand for this one)!
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Connect with Erin Diehl:
Erin Diehl is the founder and Chief “Yes, And” officer of improve it! and host of the improve it! Podcast. She’s a performer, facilitator and professional risk-taker who lives by the mantra, “get comfortable with the uncomfortable.” Through a series of unrelated dares, Erin has created improve it!, a unique professional development company that pushes others to laugh, learn and grow. Her work with clients such as United Airlines, PepsiCo, Groupon, Deloitte, Motorola, Walgreens, and The Obama Foundation earned her the 2014 Chicago RedEye Big Idea Award and has nominated her for the 2015-2019 Chicago Innovations Award.
This graduate from Clemson University is a former experiential marketing and recruiting professional as well as a veteran improviser from the top improvisational training programs in Chicago, including The Second City, i.O. Theater, and The Annoyance Theatre.
When she is not playing pretend or facilitating, she enjoys running and beach dates with her husband and son, and their eight-pound toy poodle, BIGG Diehl.
You can follow the failed it! podcast on Instagram @learntoimproveit and facebook, and you can follow Erin personally on Instagram @keepinitrealdiehl here. You can also check out improve it! and how we can help your organization at www.learntoimproveit.com. We can’t wait to connect with you online!
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Episode 113 Transcription
Erin (00:00):
Are you a leader or change maker inside of your business organization or corporation? Are you looking for new, innovative ways to drive morale through the roof? Are you looking for fun and exciting icebreakers, team building exercises and activities that will foster team growth, friendships, loyalty, and completely transform your organization from the inside out. Have you been searching for a fun and unique way to create change instead of the same old, dry, boring leadership books and ice breakers that aren't actually working? Hi, I'm Erin Diehl, business improv, entertainer, failfluencer, and professional Zoombie who is ready to help you improve it. My mission in life is to help you develop teams and leaders through play improv and experiential learning. And this podcast, we will deep dive into professional development, team building, effective communication, networking, presentation, skills, leadership training, how to think more quickly on your feet and everything in between. We have helped everyone from fortune 500 companies to small mom and pop shops transform their business, their leadership, and their people through play. So grab your chicken hat. We are about to have some fun, welcome to improve it! The podcast!
Erin (01:35):
Improve it! Peeps, welcome to today's show. Hello, I'm feeling loose. I'm feeling good. You're actually my first conversation of the day. So if I'm telling you I'm feeling loose, I mean, I'm warming up right now. You're gonna see what that looks like, but I wanted to use today's show to talk about something that is so important, your time, your time. So first of all, thank you so much for joining me on today's show. I am so grateful that you're giving me your time because I know how valuable it is. And I know how important it is to have a proper time management system in your day to day, you are a busy person, you are managing multiple things. You are so many hats. So how can you manage your time? So effectively, so efficiently so that you get the most out of every day.
Erin (02:35):
Remember we all have the same amount of hours in a day as Beyonce, which is just mind blowing. But I want you to think about this. We all truly have the same number of hours in a day. It is just up to us, how we spend them. So you ever hear the phrase? How do you do it all? How are you superwoman Superman? How do you make it look easy? How are you like beyond Beyonce? I get that one all the time. I'm like, stop, keep going. But it takes practice. It takes patience. It takes a lot of failure. It takes a lot of refining. It takes a lot of research to make time management look easy. Now I'm gonna tell you I have Googled it all. I have read all the books. I have highlighted passages in those said books. I've gotten the t-shirt, I've ordered the t-shirt in different colors.
Erin (03:31):
I've hit subscribe and save on Amazon, which I really just started doing, which is a fantastic tool by the way. But I have done it all for you. So today I wanna give you five easy steps that you can do to create the best time management system for you. So I thought it would be helpful to speak from experience. That's how we teach from experience. So I wanted to share with you my weekly schedule and give you a breakdown. How I managed to do all of these things as a full-time founder, facilitator, content creator, and working mom. So let's start with step number one. We are getting right into it today. There is no fluff here. This is tangible. Get out a notebook, get a pen and paper. This is for you. So step one, I want you to define your role just as I did.
Erin (04:30):
So just as I said, I am a founder, facilitator, content creator, and working mom. Those are my four buckets, if you will. So I want you to give yourself four different titles. So like I said, my first one is founder under this bucket. I am doing things like process improvement, taxes, accounting, managerial tasks, all of, I like to manage. Let me tell you that accounting taxes, not my favorite thing processes. I actually really do enjoy, but all of those things lie under my founder's bucket or the definition that I'm giving myself as founder, number two, facilitator. So when I say I'm a facilitator, that includes all the things that go into a workshop or a keynote. So we've got the workshop prep, we've got the travel logistics. If we're traveling and it's not on zoom, if it's on zoom, we've got zoom logistics, I've got consult calls, which we do before every engagement, and then we've got the delivery.
Erin (05:37):
So all of those things fall under that title. The third one I said is content creator. So this means creating the content that you see here or listening to here, creating the content that you see on social media, helping create the content for our weekly newsletter, which if you don't have a subscription to, you should get immediate lay soft plug, just getting plugged. It pretty hard right there. So all of those things fall under the content creation bucket for me. And they actually outsource quite a bit in that buckets. We'll get to that in just a bit. And then number four, my fourth bucket is being a working mother. So getting my son up every single day, helping coordinate his schedule, making sure he's signed up for all activities, making sure everything for school is in there's so many forms with having a child. So filling out all of the forms that all falls under working mom also, I've got things like groceries, meals, birthday gifts for the million birthday parties for attending.
Erin (06:47):
So all of that falls under those for buckets. So define your roles and give yourself a title and then give some subsection to that title. If you will, some definition, what does that actually mean? What are you doing with that title? So it might be, let's say you're an HR manager and your titles may look like internal management, external management. So dealing with vendors internal management looks like dealing with different teams and team leaders, being a teacher. So facilitating and helping make sure all of the processes and rules and things are in place. Maybe you help with onboarding. Maybe you help with your town halls and then maybe you're a parent. So those are your four buckets. All right. So really the first step is very getting very clear on four, maybe five different roles that you have. All right? So that is step one.
Erin (07:47):
If you need to pause this episode, do so because these are such tangible steps that I'm giving you today. And it is a serious plug and chug. If you can do these five steps, I'm telling you your time will be managed completely differently. All right. So that was step one, step two. Now that you've defined your four to five titles, you're gonna do what I like to call a time audit. All right. So just like I gave you some of the definitions of each one of these titles, I gave you a high level overview of what I do. I want you to get super specific. So even more specific and go down to the tiniest task, alright, you're gonna take each one of those titles and you are going to write every single task that goes under that bucket. So for me, like I said, under founder, I'm doing things like Asana work.
Erin (08:47):
I'm doing things like updating our P and L reports and budget. Every week I am working with our accountant to make sure our taxes are up to date and our payroll team. I am managing the five internal team members that then Inman other areas of our business. On a day to day, I am working in spreadsheets, creating documentation, and I'm also creating contracts in offer letters and really just managing the day to day business tasks. But all of those things take time. So with facilitator, I'm helping coordinate the prep of the workshops. I have to leave room in there for my own travel logistics. I have to leave room for consult calls. I have to leave room for actual delivery of workshops. So there's a lot that goes into facilitation, as well as managing the people that help facilitate those workshops. So you see where I'm going here.
Erin (09:53):
I'm getting really specific of every single task that I do as such title. So I want you to do that for you. I want you to look at, if we'll go back to the example I give as an HR manager. So you manage internal leaders. So that may be weekly one on ones with department heads. It might be sitting in meetings with leadership to make sure that you are conveying the correct messaging. It might be working on offer letters and helping coordinate recruiting roles, whatever those things are. If it takes time, I want you to write it down. Even if it's on a monthly basis, it's not weekly. I want you to write it down. All right. So that's step two. Give yourself a time audit. Step three is I want you to look at each one of these very specific tasks that you are doing under each one of your titles.
Erin (11:02):
And I want you to decide what can be outsourced. This is in my opinion, one of the most important steps. I love an outsource. Okay. I mean, outsourcing is like my Mo I cannot function without outsourcing. And my husband likes to in, in our personal life, be like, listen, it can't, we can do some of this ourselves. And I'm like, no, you don't understand. I don't have time, nor do I want to make the time to do this. So I want you to decide what can be outsourced. So I'm gonna give this as an example of my time. And then I want you to, to really reflect on your time. So under my four different buckets as founder, some of the things that I outsource are Asana management. So Asana is a task management system that we use as a free version. If you don't have a very large team, which we use and we've been using for years and or director of client experience, gen manages all of the internal tasks that we need to do for our clients that we need to do for our culture in Asana.
Erin (12:17):
So Jenna is the champion of Asana. I also have an accountant who helps with just anything that I need help with in our software accounting system helps with our taxes. So I make sure I find it professional, who knows what they're doing in that place. And I also have a coach, a business coach who helps me just continue to think bigger picture, long term. And so those three things are things that I cannot live without when it comes to my founder title. So look at your first bucket, what are things that you can outsource or get help with from a professional who knows how to do this and is smarter than you. We are smart individuals. I'm gonna say that. But what, what we need to really recognize sometimes is that we are not the smartest in every single task that we do. So what can you outsource to somebody who is a champion of that task to free up your time to do the things that you're really great at?
Erin (13:21):
That's what we're really looking at here. Okay. Then if I look at my facilitator bucket, we have things like travel prep for the workshops, consult calls delivery. So I really lean on our director of talent, Christy to prep. Every single workshop. Jenna also helps coordinate all of that. We have a big workshop calendar that once, once something is booked, we put it in there. Christy sees that she staffs the workshop. She preps the workshop and gets the notes and the PowerPoints together. She handles all of the travel logistics for anyone who might be traveling. So I lean on her for that consistently. I could not, would not do that without her Jenna then leads the client through our workshop process. So gets them set up for consult calls, handles all the agreements, handles all the invoicing and then really sets up the client and the facilitator.
Erin (14:25):
So if I'm not facilitating another facilitator will have a consult call with our client to make sure we just understand their company's culture, what their verbiage is, how they interact with each other, the dynamic. And then the delivery happens either from myself or one of the facilitators. So I've outsourced a lot of the workshops to our facilitators because they're so fantastic. And go back, listen to many SOS of this show. You will hear from so many of them, we're gonna have more of them on this show as we continue, but I could not function without outsourcing those parts of the business. And then number three, my content creator bucket. So we have an amazing social media manager and marketing manager here who is part-time and helps us with the posting on our improvement pages, with the newsletters, with website updates that we make every week.
Erin (15:24):
We have a graphic designer. Now who's helping us create some content for our social channels. And I've also outsourced some of the video work that you see with this show, because I can't do it all. There are literally not enough hours in the day. And so I know what I'm good at, which is coming up with content here. It's posting little snippets of this show and coming up little snippets to get you excited to listen. It's the quotes. It's finding things on social media that are relevant to the episodes and to the topics that we teach on here. So I keep myself in that wheelhouse and I outsource because literally I would work 60 plus hours a week. If I didn't do that. And I will get to that in a moment why outsourcing is so important, but just know that's another way I outsource.
Erin (16:14):
And then being a working mom, my son is almost three. He starts school in August preschool, and we've had a nanny who I'm very grateful for. And I feel very blessed and I know and privileged to have. So she is fantastic. She's here with us eight 30 to two 30. She helps keep him on schedule. I manage all of his activities, but I outsource the crap out of groceries and anything that is for our household. You better believe I'm clicking on subscribe and save on Amazon and outsourcing groceries because the time that I'm not here with you and the time that I'm not serving our clients and working in on the business, and that's a clarification on not in the business, that's time I wanna spend with my family and recharging because I spend a lot of time here and those things are important, but my time is more valuable than doing, going into a grocery store.
Erin (17:15):
That is my outsourcing. So just to give you an idea of the things that I outsource and that again comes with time and it comes with flexibility. So maybe you're listening to the show and you're like, Erin, I work in corporate America. I'm an HR manager. I can't outsource all these things. Well, guess what? You can take an audit of your time and realize the things that are not really setting you up for success, that don't drive you forward and talk to leadership about ways you could break them up within your organization. Maybe you cannot hire externally, but maybe you can find things within and people within your organization that can help. Perhaps you start an intern program and perhaps you're in your business. And you're in a leadership role where an intern could benefit you immensely and take some of those administrative tasks off your plate.
Erin (18:12):
We had a fantastic intern system here at improve it, which is how Jenna, our director of client experience started. It's how Rachel, our podcast manager started. And we've just really loved the opportunity to mentor what has been all young women up to this point. And it's just been a fantastic way to outsource a lot of the things that we shouldn't be spending our time on. So I really want you, step three is so important and maybe one of your buckets is parent, and maybe one of your buckets is friend or sister or caregiver to somebody. What are the things that you can take off your plate on a weekly basis that could be outsourced? So maybe you order groceries, maybe it's you are going to outsource drawing a blanker. Maybe you're gonna outsource cooking dinner twice a week. And so you get one of those meal prep systems delivered, or maybe it's, you are gonna outsource some of your time, and maybe you're gonna help.
Erin (19:23):
Maybe you're a caregiver to a loved one in your family. So maybe you ask another sibling to step in once a week because we can't fill. I always say this, we cannot pour into other teacups unless our tea kettle is full. So you've gotta make sure that your Ketle is so full and outsourcing your time allows you to refill that kettle. So step three. Oh my God. The most important step in my mind. All right. Step four. So we've done. Step one, define your roles. Step two, give yourself a time audit where you then list every single small task that you do underneath your role. And then step three, find out what can be outsourced outsource. Step four is what I like to call your ideal calendar. And yes, this is a pun. And my last name ideal step four is I want you to think about if you could have a perfect week, what would that look like?
Erin (20:25):
There is an exercise called your ideal day. I want you to talk about your ideal week. So first think about what an ideal week would look like to you. Maybe it's you don't wanna have meetings on Fridays, maybe it's you don't also wanna have meetings on Monday, just out loud here for a friend. Maybe you don't wanna have meetings before 10:00 AM, and maybe you don't wanna have meetings after 5:00 PM. These things can happen with strong boundaries. All right. So I'm giving you one of my hacks here. I did a time audit. I outsourced the things that I could not, did not wanna make time for in my schedule. And then I decided here's how I'm gonna plan my week. I'm gonna do all internal meetings on Monday. So I don't talk to any clients. I don't talk on podcasts. I don't do anything external. If a workshop comes up, I will do it on a Monday, for sure.
Erin (21:27):
But in a typical week, I don't wanna talk nor do I want to put makeup on. That is a thing I don't wanna really fully get ready. My team sees me look Haggard on Mondays and that's fine. The bags are real. This is not a shopping spree at Nordstrom under my eyeballs. All right. So Mondays for me, all internal meetings and I'm prepping stuff for the week. It's very administrative. And also I'm setting my team up for the week. I thought to myself Fridays, that is typically a day that I am just done. So no meeting Fridays for me at all. So I blocked my calendar on Mondays. So nobody could book a meeting. I blocked my calendar on Fridays. So no one externally could book a meeting and I use Fridays for everything administrative that I need to get done. So all of the accounting work, I need to do anything.
Erin (22:17):
I need to set up for social media for the next week. Any administrative or creative things that take time to write, I will leave for Friday. And then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I am on. I'm like this, I'm recording this today on a Tuesday. All right. So it's like, I know Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Erin, get up, maybe wash your hair, put foot on some eyeliner, you know, just drop a little, drop, a little eyeliner in there and then show up. You are gonna give, give, give, give, give everything you have for three days. Now, again, if travel, if a workshop comes up on a Monday or Friday, I'm gonna do that for sure. But on a typical week, if I had my ideal week, that's what it would look like. And then what I use is a system called Calendly and we are not sponsored by this show.
Erin (23:07):
Hey, Calendly. We'd like to be, I love you. And it's a very awesome service. It costs 10 bucks a month for a small account. And what I do is I send links to people to book my time. And that is just, has been the easiest way that I have found to make sure that I'm not going back and forth via email with somebody to set up a time to chat. And it automatically automates a zoom link in there. And they have the choice. Do you wanna talk on zoom or you wanna a talk on a phone call? I've multiple Calendly links for a variety of things. So I have 30 minute calls, 15 minute calls, discovery calls. If somebody wants to talk to me about a workshop podcast recordings. If when we record somebody for the show, they get a special link and then I'm able to input questions to help me guide the conversation when I chat with them.
Erin (23:58):
So if you can use Calendly within your organization, I strongly recommend it again, not sponsored by this platform, but would like to be. So if you know somebody, so I'm gonna call me. All right. So that's number four is ideal calendar your week. And then step five. I like to call it. Let me update. Yeah, my Beyonce. All right, like upgrade, but let me update you. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> you like that? Vibrato don't you felt that one. So let me update you. I want you to update your calendar the week before. All right. Friday, I want you to schedule your week for the next week that follows. Now, one thing I failed to mention on step four, taking a little step back here is within that ideal calendar, there's gonna be tasks that you have to do weekly. So set those up on a weekly basis and pick which day that you wanna do them.
Erin (24:59):
So all my accounting work, like I said, falls on Fridays. Every Friday, I have a standing hour to go in and do our accounting work. Every Friday. I have a standing hour to go in and create some content for the following week for social media. So plan your week with the things that you have to do weekly, leave white space in your calendar for meetings, and really define where you want these things to go on a weekly basis. And then the Friday before. So we're back to step five, schedule your week for the week ahead, leave an hour at the end of the day on Fridays to schedule for the week ahead. And like I said, I compartmentalize those weeks. Monday's my team. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I'm talking to clients, I'm doing podcast work. I am on Fridays. It's just me. I'm doing administrative work and I'm planning ahead for the week ahead.
Erin (25:56):
I also order I have on my calendar on Saturdays, I have to order groceries for my family. So I get those on Sunday. So those things are really what keep me going. They keep me com compartmentalizing where and what I need to be doing, because if I were to sit here and think about all of these things, my head would explode. If you were to sit there and think about all the things that you have to do in a week, your head would explode. So really being able to compartmentalize them, set them up for success is really gonna help you because time. And here's my favorite acronym that I came up with. Maybe somebody else did, but this came to my mind. And so I'm gonna say it's from me. All right, this is an anonymous Erin Diehl straight at you. This is a tweet.
Erin (26:44):
Get ready time. Here's your acronym for time. Time is money and energy. T I time is money and energy. How you spend your time is a direct correlation of how you feel, what's in your bank account, how you move your body on a day to day. So I really want you to think about your time. You know, I love a morning routine. So every morning my time is get up, spend that time on me. Then I go throughout my days, just like I gave you these time management hacks, 5:00 PM. I shut down and I'm with my family until my son goes to bed at eight o'clock. And then I give myself another hour or so to kind of catch up on the day. And then I relax. I've actually allowed myself time to relax, which is a direct correlation of me being sick about a month ago.
Erin (27:51):
And just realizing I ran myself into the ground for far too long. So I, I allow time for me in the morning and at the end of the day. So I want you think about your time. How are you spending it? Do you of the week assess your time it's money, it's energy and where your time goes. Energy flows. We have a great episode on this show, episode 1 0 3, how to stop people pleasing and accelerate your career. Highly recommend listening to that because one of the main takeaways is that if it's not a hail, yes, it's a hail. No. Sorry. If your kids were listening. All right. Think about the things that you say yes to, because that is your time, time. That's all we got. All we have on this earth is time getting real woo, woo with you. But you know, I go there.
Erin (28:56):
That is all we have. So make sure you are spending it wisely. Let me go back through these five steps for you. One last time. Step one. Remember define your roles. Step two, go through and give yourself a time audit list. Everything that you do each under each one of those roles. Number three, look at those things that you do, those tasks and decide what could be outsourced. And what's left goes on your calendar after you've put it on your calendar. I want you to assess your ideal calendar. That's step four. Decide what an ideal week looks like for you and make sure the things that you have to do fall under the time that is appropriate for those tasks. And then number five, step five. Let me JH. I had to do that one more time, update every Friday for the week ahead and give yourself the time of time.
Erin (29:56):
Does that make sense? Yes, it does give yourself time because you're giving yourself a gift of time. It is all we have in time is money and energy. So spend it wisely. You know what I'm gonna say? Improve it. Peeps. I'm so proud of you. Thank you for the time that you've given me today. If it was helpful, I'm a broken record here. Please leave mama review. She needs some. We do to get you some really good guests. And also it fuels me. When I hear from you, I'm like, yes, this is helping somebody. So if this helped you leave a review today and just know that I am rooting for you for your time, I know how valuable it is. And I am just so grateful to spend it with you. Keep failing, keep improving because the world needs that special. It that only you can bring, I'll see you here next week.
Erin (31:00):
Bye. Hey friends, thanks for tuning in to improve it. I am so happy you were along for the ride. If you enjoyed this show, head on over to iTunes to leave us a five star review and subscribe to this show. So you never miss an episode. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Now, if you're really feeling today's show and you've improved it even just a little bit, please take a screenshot and tag me at keeping it real deal on Instagram and share it in your stories. I'll see you next week, but I wanna leave you with this thought, what did you improve today and how will that help your future successful self? Think about it. I am rooting for you and the world needs that special. It that only you can bring see you next time.