Episode 242: Time Slipping Away? What's the Secret to Becoming a Time Management Pro?
What does knowing which days you need to shower and put on *real* pants have to do with time management?
Everything and more, lol.
In today’s episode, Erin shares the moment she realized that the five-day work week wasn’t working for her anymore; her top tips for staying focused and fresh (especially when you work from home); and how we can embrace the idea that our careers are marathons, not sprints. We’re in it for the long haul, so might as well make it achievable, peaceful, and productive.
Erin shares her 5-step checklist for making the most of your week, every week. Hint: it has a lot to do with “batching” your days.
If you’re struggling to keep your brain organized or churn out the work you know that you're capable of – this is the episode for you.
Special sprinkles on top of this episode: why batching her days helps Erin keep track of her hygiene and wardrobe choices
What are the 5 keys to time management?
Set reminders for all your tasks.
Create a daily planner.
Give each task a time limit.
Block out distractions.
Establish routine.
-michaelpage.com
Why do I fail to manage time?
A Lack of Tools and Improper Use of Technology
If you are using the right tools — that is, the tools that properly fit your workflow and specific needs — time management becomes far less of a mental struggle, and more of a habit or daily activity that turns into second nature. -stormboard.com
If you liked this episode, you can keep the party going with:
Episode 216: How Does a Four-Day Work Week Impact Your Team? with Special Guest, Jenna McDonnell
Episode 210: Work Less, Achieve More: Tales from a 4-Day Workweek
Show Links:
Purchase Erin’s book, I See You! A Leader’s Guide to Energizing Your Team through Radical Empathy
Get our free Book Club timeline and checklist here
Did today’s episode resonate with you? Please leave us a 5-star review and drop us any Qs you want answered in upcoming episodes
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Check out Shorter by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang that the improve it! team read and used to implement their own four-day work week.
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!
Episode 242 Transcription
Erin Diehl (00:02.534)
Hello my gorgeous and prude peeps. Welcome to today's show all about time slipping away What's the secret to becoming a time management pro my friends my peeps? I got you today's show is action -packed now I want to give you a quick quick housekeeping item because if you're having trouble sticking to a routine
but you've tried everything. My team and I have created something incredible for you. It is called the Four -Step Consistency Planner. This planner gives you the four big reasons why you struggle to stay consistent and guides you through the four big solutions so that you can take back control of your week every single week. So if you're looking for a time management accountability partner,
This planner is yours for free. All you have to do is go to the link in our show notes and click on that link. It'll ask you to enter your email. It will come right to your email. It will be a thing that you can make a copy of so you can actually fill it in, keep it with you on your phone, on your desktop, wherever makes the most sense for you. So get your four step consistency planner by going to the link in our show notes and get
control of your weeks. All right, my friends, let's get into today's show. The theme of this month's podcast is all about becoming. Becoming. And if you want to become a time management pro, okay, friend, I got you. Like, for real, I've got you so hard because this, what I'm gonna share with you today has.
literally changed my life. It's changed how I show up at work. It's changed how I feel about showing up at work. So if you want to become a time management pro or you want to reverse this limiting belief thinking, so maybe you say things like, there aren't enough hours in the day. I'll never have enough time for that. I'm so busy. Let me say this for free, friend. This is a quick kick in the pants.
Erin Diehl (02:25.862)
We have as many hours in the day as Beyonce, okay? And she's got Blue Ivy, the twins, Jaycee, and the whole crew of dancers and backup singers and a full band and a full tour to worry about, all right? We have as many hours in the day as this amazing human. And I wanna help you kick these limiting beliefs to the curb and become the highest version of yourself.
And that means you have to manage your time like a pro. So let me back up. I got a little story settle in for story time. Okay, because I want to take you back to 2023. Now, this wasn't that long ago. This episode is airing in 2024. 2023 for me was a very scattered year. I wrote a book. I
a concussion. When I had that concussion, my life felt super hard. It was extremely hard to get through everyday tasks. We take these everyday tasks for granted. Let me just tell you that. And through this concussion healing, which lasted about four to five months, I had to really learn how to take control of my self -care.
and how to take control of my time. And through this, I started to really realize that the five -day work week was not working for me anymore, that I'm in this business for the long haul, that improvement is my career, that what I'm doing right now will need to exist for another 15, 20 years. Longer than that, probably.
But if I'm going to be doing it at this pace for the remainder of my career, it wasn't working.
Erin Diehl (04:29.894)
And what wasn't working was how I was managing my time. And for me, I knew that my team and I wanted to do a four -day work week really bad. And we have episodes on how we created that. So we'll drop the link to those in the show notes for you here if you want to know more about the four -day work week, because it was a game changer. But in order for a four -day work week to work,
we had to get really serious about how we were managing our time. Now, as a human being, as all of us are, I'm just gonna share with you my day -to -day titles. Now, I'm sharing this with you as a learning opportunity for you. So as I'm saying mine, I want you to think about yours as well. So for me, I'm a business owner. I have to run a business, which means I have to have sales calls.
I have to work on accounting. I have some of the back end really fun work like dealing with insurance and websites and sites and hosting sites that get hacked. I get that fun work. I also get to oversee our director of talent who oversees all of our improv professionals. I oversee our marketing team, our social media. This year I also became an author and launched a new book.
And I also created and launched this podcast four years ago. So I am responsible for coming up with new content. My team and I are responsible for booking new guests. We're responsible for launching this show every week. So I do wear many different hats. I'm also a mom. I have a family. I'm a mom to a two -legged and a four -legged child. I also have a fish now named Rainbow. He's a beta fish. He killed a lot of other fish in the tank. That's a whole other story, but.
I wear many hats as I know every single human being listening to this show, you my friend, do too. We are not one dimensional. We are multi hyphenated, multi passionate human beings and that's what makes us great. But how in the world can we be great at all of these things? Now I will tell you prior to the four day work week, I had systems in place. My team and I are.
Erin Diehl (06:52.23)
We're improvisers, but we're also extremely type A system process -y based humans. And we love a good system. We love a good process, but we knew we needed to automate more systems and that we needed to batch our days. Now, I'm gonna get back to that in just a minute. When I say we had systems in place, but our days were scattered, I mean, I was...
so scattered. I would go from a sales meeting with a prospective client to a call about social media to setting up and recording a podcast, breaking that down, getting back to my desk and having a call with my publisher about my book in the same day. It was exhausting and my brain wasn't able to keep up with all of the different areas. I needed a plan to make all of these things happen in harmony.
and I realized there was only one way to do it. As I mentioned, batching. Now, I had been batching my days before, but I knew that if we were going to a four -day work week, I needed to get super strategic on how we were going to do this and how my team was going to do this, not just me, but myself and my team. So I have a five -step
action item list. It's a checklist here for you, my friend, on how to batch your days, how to batch your time. Here's how it works. Now, step one, you're gonna write a huge list. It could be a Word doc, it could be handwritten, whatever works, of every reoccurring thing you do in a week.
So for me, I always have Monday meetings with my team. I have a content meeting. I have a weekly 10 with Jenna who runs our sales. I have a call with Christie every week. I have time on my calendar every single day to do social media. I have times to do podcasts, recordings and guests on podcast shows. Those are some of my things, all right? I'm just giving you examples, but I want you to think of all the things that you do reoccurring.
Erin Diehl (09:16.646)
every single week.
Step two, you're gonna filter this list into four or five buckets. So for example, every week I know I'm doing a weekly 10, a Monday meeting, a content meeting, a Christie meeting. So those are internal calls. I know that I'm gonna have a couple sales calls. So those are all bucketed under sales. I know that I'm gonna record two to three podcast episodes.
every week. So that's my bucket called podcasts. I know that I'm going to post on social on LinkedIn on Instagram every single day. So I need to have a bucket for social.
And I want you to filter your list. So maybe it's sales, maybe it's internal meetings, maybe it's web design meetings, maybe it's outside networking, whatever those buckets fall into, I want you to label four to five buckets.
Step three, from these four to five buckets, you are going to take those buckets and assign them to specific days of the week. So, one day for me is internal meetings. So my Monday is always internal meetings. That's where I set up my call with Jenna, my weekly 10, my call with Christie, my content team meeting. If I have a monthly meeting that month,
Erin Diehl (10:56.422)
it's going to fall on a Monday. So Mondays are the days that I batch all of my internal meetings. And it's great for a Monday because it gets everyone in line for the week ahead. Now, I also have a ton of reoccurring sales items on my list. Now, I have mostly outsourced all of the sailing. I sound so South Carolinian right now. I've outsourced all of the selling.
to Jenna on my team. So she handles any inbound leads, she handles any prospecting, she handles anything that comes to us or that we prospect goes through her. So I also do a little bit of sales still as a founder, I believe every founder should. So I keep my Tuesdays open for sales. If I don't have any client calls or prospective client calls on that day, then my job that day is to help
bring business to improve it. The professional development company that uses improv comedy to train leaders and teams on soft skills, just in case you needed a reminder, all right? Now, Wednesday is my day where I podcast. So any guest spots, and I have been now on over 200 shows at this point, any guest spots will always be on a Wednesday. And if...
I can't get them on a Wednesday, it might be a boundary that I'm not going to do it. All of my recordings for this show happen on Wednesdays. We also launch a new episode every Wednesday, so it's a great day to have everything for podcasting in that bucket fall on the same day. Thursdays, I leave this day open for internal projects.
So this could mean that I'm working on an insurance audit. It could mean that I'm working on building out things for a graphic designer to help implement within our business, our website, some type of graphic or PDF that we need created. I also have two internal team meetings on that day with, we call it our Thursday meeting, myself and internal team. And then I have a meeting with Kristi who heads up all of our talent and improv professionals on this day. So.
Erin Diehl (13:19.398)
Monday and Thursday are two days where I'm really focused internally on building our projects. Tuesdays, I'm helping bring business in. Wednesdays, I call it like I'm the face of the organization on Wednesdays. I'm showing up here for you, I'm showing up online, and I'm really making sure that this podcast gets the love that it deserves. So, I gave you all of my buckets and labels because I want you to think about,
how you could do this for you. How could you make every single day of the week a theme and keep the tasks in that day towards that theme?
Step four, once you take a look and you've labeled your days, you're gonna see what doesn't fit in those days. And you can decide to add them to a day where it makes sense, or you can decide to outsource.
Step five, you are going to try to stick to your batched day as much as possible. Now, you can be flexible with some things, but let me say this, when I try to record a podcast, have a sales call, create social media all on the same day, my brain goes in eight different directions. Batching allows me to stay in that same mode.
and stick in that mode. So it allows me on Monday to know, all right, I'm getting the team and myself on the same page. Tuesday, I'm making sure I am bringing in business or helping bring in business. Wednesdays, I'm here with my community, showing up and showing up in other people's communities. And Thursdays, I'm making sure any projects for Improve It need to get done. Now.
Erin Diehl (15:23.206)
This is a side funny note because I want you to hear it. These days also help me with my hygiene. Okay, you weren't expecting that twist with my hygiene because it knows what days I need to show up with real clothes and which days I could talk to you or just be in my yoga pants and bedroom slippers all day. So it also reminds me, Erin, probably take a shower. Just kidding, I shower every day. All right, just side note, you needed to know that. But.
it does remind me which days I need to put on a blazer, I need to put on a nice jean jacket or where I can wear a hoodie and be comfy. So today I'm actually recording this on a Wednesday, which now you know is my podcast day. And I am fully dressed, head to toe. I curled my hair with the Shark hair dryer. Highly recommend all of my long haired locks friends out there. Get yourself the Shark. And I've showed up today.
ready to record. This is actually the third podcast that I've recorded today. Am I tired? Not really. This gives me energy. I love this. If I could, I don't know if I would want to do this every day all day, but doing this on Wednesdays brings me joy. I get so excited for Wednesdays because this is what I love to do. Now, here are some reminders for you. This is never going to be perfect.
This gives you an outline, but it is somewhat Tetris. Remember that Game Boy game Tetris that we used to have back in the day? Because we have to fit things into certain days and sometimes certain things don't fit in certain categories. So you just have to make it work. Or sometimes somebody can only take a meeting on a day that isn't your specific day and you have to decide if you're okay with that boundary or if you're willing to bend for that person.
Here's also a reminder, traveling for work. All of this goes out the window when I'm traveling. And the days that I'm traveling become travel days because I don't know if you are listening to this and you travel for work. For me, traveling for work is awesome. I love seeing the world and getting paid to do it. However, what I find is that my real job still waits for me and expects me to be on when I'm...
Erin Diehl (17:49.574)
in a totally different place. And so I just allow myself on those days to be so present where I'm at. And then the rest of that week is just making up for being gone. So when you travel, this all goes out the window. But if you're home and you're working Monday through Friday, Monday through Thursday, what have you, trying to stick to the batching as much as possible is so helpful. It gives you a guideline. Now,
I also want to preface this by saying I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a founder, I am somewhat in control of my schedule. I do have a toddler who really is my boss and our clients in our workshops and keynotes, those things also, they are the top priority. I will do those any day. I love doing those. So those also are going to contradict my batch days.
I do want to say that I know that many people working for other people, this may be challenging. So here's what I want to say. You already have scheduled reoccurring meetings during your week. Try to categorize your batch day around those meetings. So let's say on Tuesdays, you have a team meeting every Tuesday. That could be your day to get any internal projects done.
Let's say that you also have a big project that you're working on and you meet with your partner at this project on Thursdays. That day could be specific to the project. So something to keep in mind, I understand and caveat that this is because I am a business owner and I also encourage my team to do this. So by the way, they batch their days as well.
and I don't dictate those. I've encouraged them to do that. So approaching leadership about this idea, sending them this episode could also be really beneficial. Now, I will say there's also something about having a weekly cadence, but a monthly cadence. So a couple things to add to the monthly. I am now giving myself one day a month to do what I call a CEO day.
Erin Diehl (20:08.582)
So I'm blocking out a day, which is probably gonna have to be a Tuesday or a half day on Thursday before my team meetings, where I am planning the future of this business. I have to block a day a month in order to do that. I'm also giving myself one L &D, Learning and Development Day per month.
where I finish a course that I'm working on. So I'm taking my friend Judy Holler's digital course right now. I will spend that day devouring the course and applying those learnings, putting them into notes so I can break it down and hopefully get some great insights for my team. So I will remove one of my typical categorized batch days on those two days because those two days are important to the growth of our business.
I know this is a lot. So I want to go back really quickly and recap the steps. Step one, write out a list of every reoccurring thing you do in a week. Step two, filter this list into four or five buckets. Step three, from these four to five buckets, label and categorize your day. And step four, what cannot fit in those days, realize where it needs to go or outsource where it needs to go elsewhere. And step...
Five, try to stick to your categorized batch day as much as possible. Now, I also want to give you some pro tips for making this happen. I want you to set timers for you for certain tasks. Get an idea of how long you think a task will take. Set a timer when that timer goes off. Try to complete the task or give yourself an allotted amount of time to keep you focused.
Remove tabs off your computer. We've all heard this a million times. We hear it because it's a great reminder. It really helps. I also love to change locations with certain days. So Monday, my internal day, I'm usually in my office taking meetings with my team and I'm usually wearing on this day, very comfy clothes, no makeup and very relaxed vibes.
Erin Diehl (22:29.734)
Tuesday, I know it's my sales day. I'm washing my hair. I'm getting in real close. I'm putting on some makeup and I'm in my office. Wednesday, or if I'm doing sales meetings here locally, I'm in person meeting with clients or prospective clients. Wednesday is my podcast day. I'm here in this podcast closet and I'm wearing full makeup. My hair is done.
Thursday, I am doing my internal tasks. So sometimes I like to go sit at a coffee shop and just get the vibes of different people working until I have my internal meetings later that afternoon. So changing locations also helps make keep things fresh, set a new tone, set an environment. I also love to set the mood. So whenever I know I'm coming into the podcast closet or studio, whatever you want to call it, I will
light a candle. I will make sure that my my office is nice and cool because this closet tends to get hot and I really enjoy that vibe. Some days, for example, on Thursdays when I'm doing a lot of internal work, I love to wear sweatpants, a hoodie, have a blanket around me while I'm on my laptop on my couch and
pump out work that way if I'm not going to a coffee shop. I just want to preface, you don't need to sit in an ergonomic chair to be productive. This is 2024. We've moved away from breaking our backs at work. So my friends, in conclusion, I want you to talk to your leadership about how batching can benefit your productivity because I have seen myself and team be so productive these last six months.
Since we started a four -day work week, we have tuned out the things that don't matter and really drilled in on the things that do. I want you to try this batching for 30 days and see how it feels. And if it works for 30 days for you, continue it for 60, and then continue it for 90. And I want you to see and measure.
Erin Diehl (24:42.79)
how you feel mentally. You can even do like a one to five scale. One is I don't feel great, five is I feel great. And measure that at the beginning of the 30, the end of the 30, the beginning of the 60, the end of the 60, the beginning of the 90, the end of the 90 and so on. And I want you to set some productivity goals and see if you are hitting both the emotional and qualifiable, qualitative, hello people.
Sometimes words don't come out correctly. Qualitative goals as well as the quantitative goals. And I don't want you to beat yourself up if you get off track. It is not the end of the world if you have to categorize another meeting in one of your categorized days that it doesn't fit. It is not the end of the world. You got off track, just get back on track the next day or the next week.
I wanna make sure you got this message because I want you to reach out, get on our email list. I will reply back. I get all of those emails, but we send out newsletters about this show every single Wednesday with recaps. So this is gonna come in a beautiful email to you so you can save it, have it, and use it and refer to it whenever you want to start batching your days.
Y 'all, I'm so proud of you for taking this time. I know this is a lot of information, but I can promise you that when you start to batch your days, you will not only feel more productive, you'll feel more clear -headed, you'll have more clarity, and your brain will be so relieved that you gave it this focus, this intentional focus. I'm so proud of you. Thank you for clicking play and investing in you today.
I want you to know, I want you to keep failing, keep improving because this world needs that special it that only you can bring. I'll see you next time.