Blog
HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME FOR BETTER PRODUCTIVITY
I want you to meet Lisa G. She’s the founder and coach at the Business Chick. She helps business owners find that balance that makes a profitable, healthy business. She works with individuals and businesses who want a fresh perspective on where they’re going and how they’re going to get there. As an elite athlete in her earlier years, she understands the commitment that it takes and the mindset we can develop to achieve success. The strategies and techniques that were once a secret of the elite sports person are now being applied to corporate sales, business mindset, and personal success. And now she wants to unleash those strategies on your goals. So, if you’re looking for someone to help you create a clear direction, goals, and measurable results for the business that you really want, then you need Lisa
TEL US A LITTLE BIT AOUT YOURSELF AND WHAT YOU ARE DOING NOW?
“So, I am a business coach, and no one really knows what a business coach is because we all do different things. We all have different strengths, don’t we? And we all specialise in different things. Generally, I work with businesses in any industry, but I really specialise in helping them go up to the next level. So often a business will have had a massive growth and so now they’re dealing with all the complexities and, the wheels not turning properly because of that. And I help them fix that problem. Or they really want to have a massive growth. They want to have a massive growth. And that means that I help them with their sales and marketing and their team performance really to help that growth happen. I love doing it and I really love being in different industries all the time because it keeps me thinking and it keeps me growing myself.”
COULD YOU BREAK DOWN TIME MANAGEMENT FOR US AND SHARE SOME OF YOUR BIGGEST STRATEGIES FOR MASTERING IT?
“Property managers constantly deal with the full-time management issue in the business, whether you are the business owner or are part of the team, it is constant, isn’t it? I know, I have a couple of property managers as clients and that’s the number one problem, either having enough staff to deal with it or just constantly things come up that you must react to every single day. So, I think I was thinking about this before I came on and, I really think the number one thing that makes a difference to your day and the way that you approach managing your day especially in property management, is around that whole mindset of abundance or lack. And I think most people have heard of this abundance mindset before, but often we’re told to think of it on the topic of money or what we’re able to earn. But I’d like you to think about the mindset of abundance in time rather than money. So we can walk into our day thinking, oh my God, I’m so busy. Oh no, another person’s ringing and needing maintenance and oh no, someone else has been flooded. And just constantly react to that lack mindset. Or we can start our day with a mindset of abundance of time. And I know that’s about that. Yeah, it’s, and a but a lot of people won’t be loving this right now when they hear it, they’ll be thinking, how is that even possible? I’m so busy. But if you can walk in the door thinking I have time to deal with all the important things that need to be dealt with, just your whole approach to the day is different. I guess it’s gratitude piece as well, isn’t it? Like being so grateful to have so many things to do and so many clients to service. And that was kind of the word that came to me then was gratitude. I’m grateful that I have got all this business to be working on. And what about practical strategies, I mean I’ve always got a to-do list, but do they work time blocking? I mean there’s all these different things.”
WHAT STRATEGIES DO YOU RECOMMEND?
“My go-to is the time management quadrant. It’s my favourite. It works every time if you can consistently do it and get into the habit. So, you draw up a page with a line down the middle and a line across. So you’ve got four quadrants on your page, right? And the very first quadrant will say important and urgent. So you put that up the top, important and urgent, and then next to it, in the next quadrant, it’s important and not urgent. Now what do you think the difference between these two things are? The important and the urgent is really reactive tasks. The things that come up every day that you absolutely must get done because they’re urgent. Like someone’s house flooded or whatever. It absolutely must be done by a deadline in the next two or three days or else all hell’s going to break loose. But the important and not urgent is usually when you fill that up, it’s usually the things that are proactive that you often don’t get around to doing. Because you’re so busy doing all the reactive stuff and so it sits there and doesn’t get done. But that proactive list, that’s the things that actually fulfil you, make you feel like you are actually getting ahead. Make you feel like, alright, I achieved something today or I did something great that I wanted to get done, ticked off my list, or it’s something that’s going to grow your business or grow your role. They’re really positive, proactive tasks. So, you need to balance out now how do I do one and still get some of the other. Now the other two quadrants, let’s move on to them. So we’ve got important and urgent, we’ve got important but not urgent. Now we’ve got not important, but urgent. Now that’s really a sensitive area because now we’re all thinking, what would I put in there? Because everything’s urgent and everything’s important, right? There’s our mindset playing with us. Our mind tells us, no, you need to run because everything’s important and everything’s urgent. But this square gives us an opportunity to write things in it to say to ourselves, okay, well, it’s urgent and important for them, but how urgent is it actually? By putting that piece, that task into this square and writing it down, it makes you stop and realise, oh okay, it’s not as urgent as they’re making me feel. It can wait a couple of days until I have a few other things for the maintenance guy to go out and do in that area or whatever. And then the other quadrant, the last one is not important and not urgent. Now this is key because often you’ll have a huge list of things, and you take from that list and put them all in these quadrants and you’ll also find some of those things on the list land in the not important not urgent list. So what do you do with those? Stop worrying about them, stop putting them on your massive, long to-do list because they’re not important and not urgent. Just shove them in that corner and come to them one day when you need to.”
WHAT OTHER TIPS DO YOU HAVE FOR US?
“Property managers have a massively full inbox. So, every day you’re coming into a hundred emails. So, what do you do? I would take that urgent and important and create, we’ve done this many times and create a new folder in your inbox or a new in folder. So as you’re sorting through every day you go through your emails, say, oh that’s an urgent important, I’ll just put that in there and that in there and that all the rest. None. So now you actually have a little folder in your inbox just for urgent and important. They’re the things you need to get through first. That’s the box that you look after, not this one with 500 emails in it.”
BREAKDOWN SOME OF THE AREAS THAT HELP PROPERTY MANAGEMENT BUSINESSES?
“So, there are three things that come up in every single business. You need to have an awesome plan to start with. And planning means a strategy or a map of where you want to be in 12 months’ time and two years’ time and three years’ time. And this goes for the staff, the team, the owner of the business, and the business itself. So personally, and professionally where we want to be in 12 months’ time, and then the action plan to get there. So, I really help businesses find the weaknesses and the gaps that are going to seal up those gaps, that’s going to boost business a lot quicker. But then the second thing is the processes. Because if we can streamline your processes and get some really good systems in place, that saves you money because it’s saving time and it’s saving energy and it’s saving manpower, and everyone just wants more time in their day. So the processes, using AI now, things are changing so quickly that, there’s going to be even more opportunity to streamline your workload over the next five years. So that’s exciting. And it’s not going to take your jobs away, guys. It’s just going to give you more time to do a better job. That’s all. If you’re really good at what you do, AI can never take away that personal relationship that you have with people. But the third thing then is the teams and the people helping teams really feel like they’re getting value out of their work every day and feel like they’re part of a team and that they’re supported and that everyone’s striving towards that same end goal. And they get some value out of their week rather than just coming in and working because they want the money. That’s really one of my passions, making people light up and have fun.”
