Podcast Introduction
“Hi, I’m Tracy Heatley. Welcome to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast. This episode is all about goal setting and time hacks that will help you make time for marketing, achieve results, and get more out of your day! Actioning a few key things every day can make a massive impact on your marketing success. There’s lots of talk about
goals, resolutions, areas of focus, reflections, planning, and developing new behaviours, at this time of year. That’s because, as I record this episode, it’s January! It doesn’t matter whether it’s January or not, as you’re listening, right now, because what I’m about to share with you will help you at any time of year.
Resolutions
Personally I don’t believe that resolutions and goals should be set once a year, I believe that if you want to achieve something, then having the flexibility to plan, at any time, is crucial to success. I, however, a few essentials that are easy to follow that will help you reach your goals.
Mastering Goal Setting
Write your goals down in the present tense and do this every day. You don’t have to keep the paper or book that you’ve written, but you do need to fulfil the action of writing them down. The motion of writing and the subliminal messages you send to your brain will help you so much more than just thinking about what you want to achieve. I practice what I preach! I do this every single day for my personal, professional, and business goals. It works! I shred mine after I’ve written them, but recently I found an old notebook with twenty goals written down. This was about 8 years old! As I read through them, I realised that every single goal, bar one had come true. That was to be a published author. I’m currently writing a business book, so I’m getting there. My point is….it works! Give it a go!
Committing To Goals
Committing to other people about what you’re going to do can be the difference between knowing that you must do something, and actually doing it! So, confide in someone else if it will help you gain momentum and success. Even better if you know someone with the same or similar goals support each other. Teamwork makes dream work and all that!
That said, there’s no harm in setting yourself audacious goals and keeping them to yourself. Last year, I set myself a goal to get into TV. I wrote down, daily, I’m regularly on TV. Granted, I was cutting it fine, but on 23rd December, I was invited onto GB News to be interviewed about business networking. I didn’t tell anyone about my desire to be on TV. Yet, I still achieved it. I kept it to myself because I didn’t want any ‘energy zappers’ to tell me, I couldn’t. Also, it’s such a courageous goal, I kind of didn’t want people thinking, who does she think she is. Courageous goal! I love that term. I’d love to tell you that I thought of it, but I didn’t. I got is off the lovely Katy Mason from Another Way. My point it that in some instances, it’s good to keep goals to yourself. I guess if you’re writing them down, though, you’re still externally committing to your goals.
In the next episode, I’m going to share to top tips based on lessons I learned from my first TV appearance. These will be tips that you can use if you’re doing videos too.
Wasted Time
Wasted time is the thief of time! Monitor your tasks to review how much time you spend doing certain things. It’s so easy to get distracted by the dreading scrolling or viewing the next video! However, if you know that you’re timing yourself, it’s almost like having someone watching over you. Do this for a few weeks. Monitor tasks, because not only will it help keep you focused, but it will also help you pinpoint exactly how much time you need to allocate for things. This is something I’m doing right now! I’ve only been doing this for a week, and it’s really been an eye opener. One thing I’ve learned, which you may be able to relate to, is that I over task! By that, I mean, I underestimate how long it will take me to complete things. Consequently, I put too many things on my task list. Doing that is no good at all. Not only does it mean that completing your task list is impossible, but the pressure is also immense! So, let’s all stop punishing ourselves with over tasking. Perhaps we should treat ourselves how we would treat our customers by under tasking and over delivering.
Time Blocking
Another time management and goal achieving nugget is to do with time blocking and scheduling. Scheduling is something that I picked up a couple of years ago, from an Action Coach, which I’ve adapted to suit me. Instead of just putting meetings in your diary. Put everything in there. All your tasks, so that you’ve got so much more than just a daily task list. You’ve got everything scheduled into time slots. I’d even put things like going to the gym or going for a walk in there too. Personal health contributes massively to business success, so make sure that you make time for you too. Time blocking like this will help you maintain focus on the job in hand. The only way it works, though, is if you stick to it and don’t deviate and start doing different things. Even if an urgent email comes in! Stick to your schedule! This really is the hardest bit.
Emails
Emails, I can’t ignore emails! Or can I? Yes, I can! This is going to be a killer for some of you I know, but who said that we must respond to emails immediately? If you think about it, emails have replaced letter that used to come in the post. The post used to arrive one or twice a day. It would be opened and put to one side, then dealt with later. Yet, these days, we live in a world of urgency. To stay focused, I’d turn your email pop up notifications off. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing your emails a couple of times a day. They’re so demanding and take up so much time. The height of distraction and guaranteed to drag you away from the task in hand. It’s up to you, but I see no harm in putting an auto responder on saying that you only read your emails twice a day.
Final Thoughts
Take from this those bits that you think will work for you and give them a go. 90% of my marketing mentoring clients tell me that they struggle with making time for marketing and networking, so I thought these may help.
Making time for marketing is making time for success, so I hope you find them useful.
There are regular guides and tips in my all new Be Better Marketing And Networking Facebook groups, too, which you’re welcome to join.
If you would like to find out more about my networking training or online marketing mentoring services, check out my website www.tracyheatley.com.
Please take a few seconds to leave me a podcast review too, which could lead to you winning a free one hour online marketing mentoring session with me.
I’m Tracy Heatley, and I thank you for listening to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast”.
“Better Business, Better You”.
