By: Michael Collette (Owner of Prototype Training Systems)
It’s understood that we can’t add more time to our day, we have to work within the confines of what we have and make the most of it.
Close to a year ago when COVID-19 hit and quarantine began, we all seemed to have a bit more time on our hands. Now that life is starting to pick up and we are seemingly on the other side of COVID, (people are getting back to work, some kids are in school, businesses are slowly reopening), the flexibility we all once had might be fading away and our time is getting pinched again or will be soon.
I’ve spent some time in the Financial Services Industry, so to some extent, I understand the financial sales executive role, I spent time in business development and marketing, in the financial services space. I understand the stress that comes with the job and how maximizing your time can make an incredible impact on your bottom line. On the other side, I understand fitness and the power of having a coach or a personal trainer to hold you accountable to life’s goals, not just business goals.
Over the last 12 years I’ve been in the fitness industry and the biggest roadblock that I’ve consistently heard, regardless of the industry, is that we “don’t have enough time.” We don’t have enough time to lose the weight that we want to lose. We don’t have enough time to track our nutrition. We don’t have enough time to get our workouts in and we don’t even have enough time to drink more water (if you can believe it!)!
So, to be candid, not having enough TIME comes down to two main factors:
- How are you managing your time?
- How are you prioritizing your time?
Colin Lake and his team at Developing The Next Leaders very effectively help folks manage their time, however, this blog is about strategies to prioritize your time for your fitness goals, regardless of what they are.
No matter how you wrap it up, you always have some time BUT that time you have is dependent upon your priorities and how you are partitioning those priorities. If your fitness goals aren’t a major priority, then success is going to be more challenging AND take a lot longer. So before we get into these strategies, you first need to answer this one question:
On a scale of 1-10 (10 being the most) how important are your fitness/health related goals to you?
If the answer to question is anything less than a 10, my next questions are Why didn’t you give a lower score? And what’s the worst case scenario of not achieving this goal?
As a sales executive, you may know that FEAR is a greater motivator compared to anything else. In order to prioritize and manage your time more effectively, what you may lose always “out motivates” what you may gain.
If you’re motivated and ready to make the changes necessary, below are 5 proven tips and strategies to help you prioritize your time more effectively and help you crush it in the sales world AND on your fitness journey!
1.) Talk To Yourself
The first strategy is how to reframe the way you talk to yourself. You need to literally avoid saying things like “I can’t”, “I won’t” or “I have to do (insert activity)”. You won’t prioritize anything if you don’t believe you can do it and you sure as hell won’t act upon it.
How does changing how you talk to yourself give you more time? The easy answer is, it doesn’t, however, it sets the stage for you MAKING THE TIME to do anything. We are more likely to AVOID doing things if we don’t believe we will make it happen.
This is true for your sales goals as it is for your personal health goals.
Strategy: Change from “I can’t” to “I can”, “I won’t” to “I will” and “I have to do this” to “I get to do this”. You’re confident in your role, you need to take the same confidence and put it towards your health. The power of positivity can go a long way and it doesn’t matter how much or how little time you have if you talk yourself out of it. Get into the habit of doing this when you talk to your clients as well, it can make a noticeable difference!
2.) Priority Reminders
This gets into something called Emotional Reasoning. Emotional Reasoning is the habit of making decisions based on how we feel rather than what we value. When we use our emotions and feelings as evidence for what we should or shouldn’t do, we end up spending all our time running away from discomfort rather than toward the things we really value.
Examples:
I’m not going to work out today, I just don’t feel it.
Or
I’ll eat the rest of the cookies and start eating better tomorrow…
We often believe that successful people need to be motivated before they do something. The reality is successful people understand that action comes before motivation.
Strategy: Writing your goals and putting them up on the wall or somewhere that you can see it every day is one strategy. What I have found to work better for our clients at Prototype Training Systems is to take what is most important to you (your fitness goal) and make it the background on your phone. Every day you wake up and look at your phone, right? The first thing you see every morning should remind you of why you are getting up and should remind you of why you need to make the time to prioritize fitness.
3.) Create Appointments You Can’t Cancel
When you have an appointment on your calendar (Doctor or Dentist as an example), you’re less inclined to cancel that appointment. You made a commitment. When we have to hold ourselves accountable to taking action, we have to do the same thing. You need to schedule that workout in your calendar and treat it like something you can’t break or cancel. When we make verbal or soft commitments to ourselves, we are less inclined to follow through.
We call this a Commitment Device and it’s an incredible tool to hack your likelihood of success.
Strategy: Map out your next week’s workout schedule over the weekend. Set the appointments in the calendar on your phone with multiple reminders. This will allow nothing to get scheduled over it (if you use a scheduling software) and you will have a higher success rate of completing them. Additionally, add some buffer time before and after your planned workout (5-10 minutes) so nothing can be booked immediately after or before your workout in case your time runs over by a few minutes.
4.) Self-Accountability System
To piggyback on the previous point of Commitment Devices, when we make verbal commitments to ourselves that we are going to do something, we are less likely to follow through on them. We need something in writing to hold us accountable. That’s why people that take the time to write out their goals are more likely to be successful than the people who just keep their goals in their heads. Same principle here, if you struggle with self-accountability, you need to put it out there.
Strategy: Take a few minutes and write a Facebook post on your personal page outlining your goals and the commitments you are going to make. Let your whole social circle see it! Does this make you uncomfortable? Good, then you should do it! In a year from now, that post/memory will appear in your news feed. The next question is did you decide to follow through or not?
5.) Start Before Everyone Else
Have you ever said to yourself “I can never get up early” or “I’m not a morning person”? At some point in your life, you probably said that. I said that when I was in college. I would go to bed around 11:30 pm and wake up at 6:00 am for a 7:00 am class. I can see why I said I wasn’t a morning person, I didn’t get enough sleep! Here’s the thing, there are people who are more inclined to be a morning person vs. a night owl, I get it. But getting up early and getting the hardest part of your day over with is a decision. If you want to maximize your time AND your productivity, get up early, and get it done. A great quick read to help you with this is The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod, give it a read it can change your life!
Strategy: Start on Mondays (first day of the week) and get your workout in first thing in the morning, before everyone else is up. Do that for 4 weeks. Then add on the 2nd day… and so on. Gradually get into the habit. Start the week off on the right foot. YOU CAN DO THIS!
I hope this helps, now get after it and PRIORITIZE THE TIME!
