A day in the life: time management coach

Why time management matters

As I see it, time management is the foundational skill that will help you achieve your goals, both professionally and personally.

Time is involved in every aspect of your life, from your career to your relationships to your health.

If you’re fed up with feeling stressed or never actually achieving your goals, I believe you need to fix the foundations… and your time management is a skill that will have a positive ripple effect across so many areas of your life.

It’s my mission to to guide and inspire people to cultivate conscious time management practices that lead to intentional living and sustainable success.

I’m always intrigued by how people spend their days, and so I thought it might be interesting to peel back the curtain and share ‘a day in the life of a time management coach’.

My morning routine as a time management coach

I do my best to get out of bed before my children do (which is a lot easier now that they are 12 and 14!). Want to read my earlier blog post with my tips of getting up earlier, you’ll find it here.

For my morning routine, I like to grab a cup of tea (and invariably need to let Evie out to the garden for the toilet!) and then return to bed with my journal and/or book. I try not to look at my phone, but I’ve slipped into not so great habits recently and do tend to check my phone first thing too… something I’m working on! On Monday’s I host a weekly co-working session with my membership programme, so I’m straight to my laptop for a 6am start. It’s always powerful to start the week this way, and I use the time to get ahead with my content marketing.

My routine is fairly similar on the weekends too, and I tend to get up at the same time irrespective of what day it is.

On school days when my daughter is with me, I’ll make sure she’s up and getting herself ready (and every 10 minutes or so I’ll give her a time check, because she gets distracted very easily). In parallel, I’ll be getting showered and dressed. My son isn’t currently attending school, and so if it’s just the two of us then it’s a little more relaxed as there’s no school run. If he’s feeling up to it, we might walk the dog round the block and grab a coffee.

Once the school run is done, and if it’s during the week, I’ll move into ‘work mode’.

Client sessions and delivering my programme

I work best in the mornings, and so I’ve been slowly adjusting my schedule towards this (I have an ‘ideal week’ that I’m targeting). My most recent move was swapping my membership programme calls from the evenings to a Monday lunchtime. What a difference that has made to my weeks - I love the new timings.

Monday is dedicated to my membership programme, and Tuesday and Thursday are delivery days - so client sessions, delivering workshops etc. Although I don’t always get to dictate when the workshops take place, and so I’m just mindful about how many I agree to and when they are in relation to my other commitments.

Marketing + sales

Marketing and sales are activities that happen throughout the course of the week, which might look like scheduling my Instagram and Facebook content on a Monday morning, writing my blog post and email newsletter (which I try and do on a Monday afternoon; it feels good getting ahead in this way) or being a guest on a podcast, talking at a networking event and so on. I’m trying to be more proactive with pitching to the press this year, so this features in my task list. I’ll also be showing up on Instagram in my Stories most days.

Using technology to manage your time

I live by my Google calendar, to the point that I’m a bit OCD about it. But I guess if you’re going to be OCD about something, it being your calendar is probably not a bad thing! My calendar is time blocked and colour coded, and I love being able to plan a robust yet thoughtful schedule for my weeks. Not all my ‘to-dos’ get put into the calendar though, at least not in detail. In my calendar it might look like 2 hours for ‘deep work’… and so I run my calendar in conjunction with my project management tool, Asana.

Within Asana I have detailed tasks broken out into the various subtasks (or little steps) so that things feel manageable. It’s within Asana that I prioritise my tasks. Want to find out more about how I use this free digital tool to manage my life + biz? I’ve linked my workshop at the bottom of this post.

At the end of my working day, I’ll check-in with my calendar and to-do list, and make any adjustments needed and make sure I’m clear on the plan for the next day.

Taking time for me

I tend to work 4 days a week. Typically on a Wednesday I’m off, and this is when I volunteer at the local hospice and will get some chores done at the house.

I also have been prioritising my exercise, so I make sure that I’ve got walks with my dog scheduled, as well as sessions with my PT Joe (@the_plant_pt) and I’ve recently started Muay Thai classes with my daughter, and we’re going to be doing joint tennis lessons too. Oh, and I’ve started running again so I’ve got that in my calendar twice a week.

Time with friends is also something that I plan ahead for, and I’ve got various brunch dates and coffees dotted across my calendar. I don’t have a childcare calendar for 2024 yet, so it’s a bit more tricky for me to plan my weekends and holidays, but hopefully will get to that shortly. I like to have something to look forward to. I’ve a ‘List of 100 dreams’ in my Asana that I’m working towards ticking off! Some are little things, like visit an art gallery or take a trip to the salt spa. Whereas others are big, like take the kids on safari, and visit Meow Wolf again.

My evening routine

My kids think it’s hilarious, but I start winding down for bed around 8pm. I’ll do a sweep of the house returning any items to their home, and give the worktops in the kitchen a wipe down. It feels good to wake up in the morning to a clean space. I’m trying to get back into the habit of using my sauna blanket, so I might hop into that for 30 minutes and then have a quick shower before bed. When I’m in the blanket I will read a book or listen to a podcast. I’ll also do my evening skincare, and generally just slow things down ahead of going to sleep. I’m normally asleep by 10pm-ish, it’s my target to sleep for 8 hours a night.

So, there you have it… a day in the life of a time management coach!

Want to learn more about Asana?

Here are the details of my on-demand workshop: