3 Clever Ways To Use A Default Diary To Boost Your Productivity

In my last post I introduced the concept of the Default Diary, an hourly schedule blocking out how you plan to use your time each week. In this post I’ll share 3 practical ways my clients have used the diary to achieve greater levels of time mastery, control and freedom in their businesses.

1. Define your personal time as a priority

Many of my clients and colleagues now define the time they spend out of their Business as their priority. Time dedicated to partners, family, friends, health, fun and holidays are now the first entries that go into the diary each week rather than the last.

Obvious ones to book in are the start and end time of each working day, visits to the gym, meal times and weekends.

This tactic works particularly well for those who work closely with their partner or family, where boundaries between business and personal time are often very blurred.

Everyone I know who’s tried this has said they ended up happier and less stressed. And here’s the really interesting bit – almost everyone said that it had no effect on their business or it even improved the performance of their business

2. Share the benefits

The default diary has practical applications not just for you, but for your entire team too. Mike Bradley who runs SEO provider 1^st Page prophets, uses the concept for all his team, including any part-time team members or interns.

He says that it helps because it means everyone has clarity on where they should spend their time each week. They all love the concept and it gives Mike peace of mind that they are taking responsibility for how they use their time, rather than him having to constantly check up on what they’re doing.

3. Make time for your team

Many Business Owners complain that their teams don’t do what they are meant to. Dean who runs Cloverleaf plumbing and maintenance, tasked his team in the office with booking jobs over the phone and collecting payments.

The credit control was not under control so I asked how much time he spent training his team on how to do that….you can guess the answer.

Like many business owners, he assumed that after a few days in the job, his staff would automatically know what to do. To improve this situation, we implemented a 1 hour team meeting every Friday morning in everyones default diary.

In the meetings we gradually worked on improving the team’s understanding of the credit control system. Sure enough it was the consistent weekly meetings that generated improvements over time.

The result from this one simple change was that the next 3 months were his best ever for credit control and improvements in his bank balance.

I’m a firm believer that making time to train your team is the one task that should be in every Business Owner’s default diary.