As a coach, your most precious resource is time. While being able to work from anywhere sounds glamorous, we both know there are unique productivity challenges to navigate.
From auditing calls and creating content, to handling admin tasks and marketing your offerings – coaches wear a million hats. Which can quickly lead to feeling scattered, overwhelmed, and spinning your wheels.
After all, your ability to show up fully present and energized for clients directly impacts their experience and results. And that’s where intentional productivity strategies come into play.
In this guide, I’m sharing 9 powerful hacks to help you streamline your work days, increase focus, and maximize those precious billable coaching hours!
- Time Inventory Audit You can’t expect to regain control over your schedule until you first bring awareness to where your time is currently going. That’s why starting with a time inventory audit is so impactful.
For one week, diligently log every activity you spend time on throughout the workday, whether it’s billable coaching calls, administrative tasks, content creation, running errands, or even idle social media scrolling.
By categorizing how much time is being allocated to revenue-generating activities versus non-essentials, you’ll identify major time leaks to address immediately.
- Themed Day Batching Rather than trying to juggle a million tasks every single day, coaching productivity soars when you apply the batching method instead. This means dedicating specific week days to accomplishing related tasks and responsibilities.
For example:
- Mondays = Content Creation
- Tuesdays = Admin/Finances
- Wednesdays = Client Coaching Days
- Thursdays = Marketing/Sales
- Fridays = Misc To-Dos and Catch Up
By clustering similar tasks together, you avoid the constant mental whiplash of switching between unrelated activities. You’ll stay in a concentrated flow state longer and ultimately get more done in less time.
- The 90-Minute Productivity Cycle Numerous studies show our brains can only fully focus for 90 minutes before feeling fatigued and needing a break. So instead of chaining yourself to your laptop for hours on end….
Try applying productivity cycles where you set a timer for 90 focused, distraction-free minutes. When the timer goes off, walk away for at least 15-20 minutes to recharge. Get up and move, meditate, grab a healthy snack, etc.
By respecting your brain’s natural ebb and flow of peak energy, you’ll avoid inefficient plateaus of work where your mind is just spinning in circles.
A helpful tool that I love is a Chrome Extension you can add to your browser called Momentum.
Here are some of the things that I use Momentum for:
- Brain dumps and to do’s
- Pomodoro sprints (undistracted work sprints)
- Music that helps me focus
- Quick reference notes
- Hiding tabs to avoid distractions
- Inbox Insanity Intervention How many times per day do you find yourself aimlessly clicking over to your inbox, only to emerge from the endless black hole of emails hours later? It’s a coach’s biggest productivity pitfall.
Set designated email checking periods twice per day, and then log completely out of your email when not during those times. You could even use an app like Boomerang to schedule batched inbox processing periods.
Only reply to high-importance emails first, unsubscribe from distracting lists, and set up smart filters and labels to quickly sort and organize everything else.
- Optimize Your Device Notifications Which is more important – the notifications dinging on your devices every five seconds, or making meaningful progress on your top priorities?
Be ruthless about switching off or removing any apps that frequently interrupt your focused workflow. Only allow notifications from essential communication tools and apps you use for work.
Consider muting group text conversations during work hours, setting your social media apps to block after a designated period of time, and leaving your phone in another room or on airplane mode when you need to go head-down on a task.
- Offload and Outsource As coaches, it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking we have to handle every aspect of our business and client work ourselves. But that’s the surest path to burnout!
Take inventory of which tasks frequently fall through the cracks, stress you out, or simply aren’t great uses of your unique expertise. Those are prime candidates to delegate or outsource.
Perhaps it’s hiring a virtual assistant for things like scheduling, inbox management, and basic administrative work. Or bringing on a copywriter, graphic designer, or tech support to enhance your client experience and free up your time.
The investment will allow you to stay in your zone of genius while ensuring all the details get handled behind-the-scenes.
- Curate Your Environment for Focus While an aesthetically inspiring home office space is great, it’s not just about making it pretty. You’ll also want to optimize the setup to cultivate peak focus and energy flow.
Make sure you have plenty of natural light and calming greenery around. Gather noise-canceling headphones, blue light glasses, ergonomic seating and accessories that keep you comfortable during long work sessions.
Even ambient details like using the Calm app for soothing background noise, integrating motivational decor pieces, and lighting a mood-boosting candle can make a major difference in your mindset.
- Protect Your Peak Hours Every coach has their own unique window in the day when they tend to experience peak energy, creativity and productivity. Whenever possible, safeguard those precious hours of focus!
Maybe your peak is bright and early before the rest of the world awakens. Or perhaps you flow best in the afternoons after getting movement and meals in earlier. Whenever your personal prime time falls…pencil in your most important revenue-generating projects first.
During those sacred focus hours, don’t schedule meetings, calls or anything else that breaks your momentum. This needs to be distraction-free time carved out just for you to tackle your biggest goals.
- Automated Systems and Workflows Whenever there are recurring processes or client deliverables involved in your coaching… look for ways to systematize and automate as much as possible.
Maybe it’s creating Dubsado workflows for client onboarding and off-boarding processes. Setting up an Acuity scheduling system for clients to self-book calls. Integrating calendar management tools like Calendly or Satori. Or having email marketing sequences and pipelines pre-written for potential leads.
By taking these kinds of repetitive tasks off your plate and having them run on autopilot, you’re freed up to focus on the big-picture, revenue-driving activities.
Bonus Tip: Schedule Recharge Days As a coach, self-care and protecting sacred rest days is absolutely essential not only for your productivity…but avoiding burnout long-term.
Make sure to block off 1-2 full days per week where you completely unplug from client work and truly recharge mentally and physically through activities that light you up.
This is non-negotiable time for catching up on chores, running personal errands, enjoying hobbies, getting quality time with loved ones, exercising, etc.
You’ll emerge feeling refreshed, energized and able to operate at maximum capacity again!
None of these tips alone are groundbreaking, but incorporating a blend of these productivity habits is how the world’s most successful coaches effortlessly maximize their output and revenues.
It all comes down to thoughtfully auditing how you currently spend your time and being more systematic about optimizing your energy, removing distractions, and only reserving your peak hours for high-level, revenue-generating activities.
Because at the end of the day, the coaches who master productivity mastery are those who gain the priceless freedom to work less while still serving their clients at the highest level.
If it is time to start taking some things off your plate and automate your business, let’s set up a time to chat and we can see how my team of experts can support you.
Schedule a call here
